Children Count

Addressing disparities faced by children and youth in Minnesota

Restore Childcare Funding

I will restore funding to the childcare fund that was taken in 2003. We cannot continue to forget our children are our most precious resource and constitutionally we are bound as public servants to see that an equal education is bestowed on each child in Minnesota.

I consider in this new century that the education of a child starts at home, and when both parents need to work outside the home, the childcare provider, whether in a home childcare setting or in a daycare center, is educating that child when the parents are at work. Children under the age of four absorb everything. This preschool age is where they learn all of the basics.

We must either fully fund these programs now and pay at the front end, or pay later a much more costly sum when children are struggling with behavioral and literacy issues in our school system. We must give every child a great opportunity to be ready for our K-12 education system. By providing them with a safe, stimulating environment before school in a rejuvenated childcare system, we prepare all children holistically for life in society at large. We help parents raise up good citizens who are ready to achieve scholastically and serve society well into adulthood must be paramount

Children are the future of this state and nation.

Providing a quality education system

Educate Parents to Better Parent

My vision begins at the birth of each child. We need to educate and equip new parents with education to raise a child that is healthy physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

We need to reach out to young couples through faith-based and the Family Formation Project through the University of Minnesota can help many couples gain a new understanding of their relationships how parenting will be improved if their relationships are healthy.

We need more Community Education programs available about parenting skills that range in topic from child development and appropriate discipline to helping children to love learning.

More Teen Options for Care

Providing more teen drop in centers, and more comprehensive home daycare programs that specialize in this age group will keep our children off the street and out of trouble. Teens need more supervision and nurturing before and after school than we all realize. Encouraging home teen care businesses that will provide snacks, help with homework, and be there for them until parents arrive home from work can make a child feel more secure.

The emphasis needs to be on ALL stages of a child and adolescent's life. We can fight juvenile crime by prevention before the fact. For society to bear a life out of control is far more costly to the taxpayer and tragic waste of life, whose course could have been set in a differently in the beginning.

Preparing the way for Learning Readiness

Encouraging and Educating Parents to Focus on their Child

Paramount to my plan is to emphasize how important it is for parents to talk orally and read to a child from infancy on. Teaching young parents that that the ability of their child to read and communicate effectively is one of the most essential building blocks to their educational and career success. We are seeing a prolific incidence of illiteracy in our adults leaving the public school system. Parents who cannot read to their cannot help their children achieve.

Literate Parents Create Literate Children

WE MUST work with illiterate adults so they can lift themselves to a higher potential in their educational prospects, and attend to the literacy needs of their children. It is better to teach a parent to read when their child is in infancy or teach the parent along with the child as the child enters school.

We need the faith-based community to rise to the call of adult literacy. I encourage every church to consider an adult literacy program along with a tutoring program for children in elementary and secondary school. Together we can really make a difference in the lives of people in poverty if we teach them to read.

Embed ECFE and HeadStart to the K-12 Funding Formula

ECFE and Head Start must be mandatory pieces in the funding formula and yet optional for parents. However I believe a single parent in trouble with the law, must participate in these programs. Parents on probation must be participants with their children in these programs emphasizing parental educational required for the parent that must involve intense literacy training and personal or group counseling.

Caring for Children Outside of School Hours

Caring for Children and Teens in After School Hours

We must as a state invest in activities for children before and after school with so many parents in the workplace. Using our community centers, churches and other organizations such as Student Achievement, and Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA programs and Scouting programs for boys and girls provide opportunities for students after school. As funding has been cut from individual schools, programs of this nature have been slashed. Finding new sources for assistance and making this a priority will be at the top of my agenda.

Motivate Teens to Volunteer and Reap the Rewards

Providing volunteer opportunities for teens that would allow them to build a resume of skills so that when they leave high school they would have a great start to finding a job with the volunteer experiences they have had. We need to connect volunteer organizations with students from school and bring them to the place where they can volunteer, meet new friends, and gain a skill for use in the future.

The volunteer component would also encourage civic responsibility as the lifestyle of a youth that will live on in the adult of the future. It would be great expand the VISTA program that is operated federally, allowing for VISTA opportunities for teens, allowing some compensation for their efforts, as well as showing them the need in our society and changing the life of someone around them.

Encourage Companies To Offer Employment Hour Flexibility

Minnesota companies should begin thinking about the workers of the future, by allowing multiple choices for employment hours as options for workers with school-aged children. Job sharing has been part of the mix for some time, but we can enhance that by offering incentives to companies that provide split shift hour that would allow mom or dad to pick up their kids from school and wait for the other parent to arrive home before they head back to the office to finish out their day. The family is well served with the emotional and safety needs of the children met by companies responding to the need.

Helping Families Become Economically Self-Sufficient

Society needs to begin valuing ALL WORK. We have become a society that only values the work of those that are making the big bucks and that is wrong-headed thinking. We need to make the work ethic strong, regardless of the type of job that is done. We need to be able to connect families with the services, (not necessarily government funded) they need that will help them progress educationally by connecting them with services that provide resume building, and training in job search skills and information about continuing education training that will better their chances for career advancement.

By working with many community organizations we can connect people to the services they need such as adult literacy, parenting classes, resume writing, job searching, educational opportunities and crisis help for food, clothing or shelter. Our agenda for affordable housing and designing customized housing to meet the needs of various groups will go a long way to making family life more stable.

Heathcare for All

Under my health care initiative, every individual in the state will have an affordable policy and EVERYONE will be covered. Children will become covered at birth and senior citizens will have the same coverage that will replace their Medicare C plan if they so desire. My top priority is to provide accessible, affordable healthcare to everyone in Minnesota, detached employment. Many people lose their jobs and lose their health benefits as well. We can use the Minnesota Care program the vehicle to accomplish this. I believe that under my plan, health care premiums can be cut easily in half and provide unlimited options for provider and hospital care. I believe this one or single payer system will automatically control skyrocketing administrative costs immediately with no pain to the consumer. I believe that by building coalitions with states around us we can create a pharmaceutical pool that will lower drug costs overall for those in the pool. There is no need to wait for the Federal Government to get this done. As Minnesotans we can get this in place easily.

Keeping children Safe From Violence

First Call for Help Hotline for Children and Teens

Make the counties more responsive when it comes to violence. Many county agencies make "physical abuse" the litmus test for intervention. I believe angry language, behavior that is not behavior that is normal in their family, or bizarre behavior of a parent or older sibling, can breed violence in the home. Simply asking questions such as, "Are you bleeding or bruised?" may be inadequate and no indication of the danger the individual may be facing. We need to make certain our children and teens have a First Call for Help line of their own. Faith based community phone numbers available for children and teens to call in their neighborhoods as well ass block houses that will take in children for any reason to aid in protecting children and teens from becoming victims.

Fair Treatment of Children in the Legal System

End Social Promotion in the Education System

Part of the problem in public education that has caused great damage to the scholastic achievement of our children has been the practice of social promotion at the expense of literacy and competency within each grade level.

We cannot continue to promote students that do not achieve because we are afraid we might damage their psyche. We do much greater damage by promoting them to the secondary level where they cannot read or write. Students who are illiterate are at a greater risk for peer pressure and criminal activity. Many students are enticed into selling drugs because they don't need to read or write to sell a dime bag.

Stress Rigor and Achievement at Home and School

We need to stress rigor, homework and achievement and we need to encourage parents to come home and ask their children about homework and communicate with teachers on a regular basis.

Help Teachers

We must hire the best and brightest teachers, and encourage teachers to retire early if they are feeling the need, by offering financial incentives to do so. I am not a proponent of merit pay. I believe that when you commit to your life's profession, you should give it your 100% attention and quest for excellence. Anything less is unacceptable.

Investment must be committed to excellent professional education opportunities for teachers. Lets help teachers with classroom management techniques and give them opportunities to gain licensure in other areas they are interested in pursuing.

Evaluate Classroom Quality Early and Often

Beef up classroom evaluation and get school administrators to find the time to spend ad hoc time in the classroom. Evaluation of how much time students are spending in "in school suspension" classrooms should be assessed. Is this the correct approach or just a place of safe harbor for students who cannot behave or a holding tank for special education students who are not being correctly and caringly supervised?

Embed Ethics and Civil Behavior Early

Teaching responsible behavior and ethic-based civics in elementary school is very important. This should be a constant graduated thread of civics throughout the educational system K-12. Instilling respect for rules and the law of this land is paramount in preparing responsible students and citizens.

Prohibit Bullying Behavior

Educate children that bullying is unacceptable is crucial to solving the problem of violence in schools. There must be greater discipline in our schools and stronger juvenile delinquency laws requiring parental notification and intervention. We cannot allow students who are out of control to rule the day.

Lower Class Size

We can lower class size by providing an educational assistant in each classroom to assist the teacher and student alike. If class sizes remain at 40 students we can reduce that to accommodate a 20-to1 ratio by adding another staff member to assist.

Protect special Needs Students and Mainstream Students Equally

Protect the rights of special education students in the mainstream classroom and fund more educational assistants to accompany them to those classes. Those who are severely emotionally and violently disturbed should be educated in a facility that is custom made with the appropriate staffing and security suited them.

Protect our public schools from students who are criminally dangerous and make certain that our schools are safe. Install metal detectors at the entrance of every school. Students who bring a weapon to school should be expelled and arrested.

Make Certain incarcerated juveniles continue their studies

Students held in juvenile detention must work on school studies, but those who turn eighteen and have not made sufficient progress to graduate, will need to pay for their education for through the GED program. Allowing students to be taught in the regular K-12 classroom after age eighteen is not acceptable. A district wide citizen affairs board in special cases can review special circumstances.

I will explore a dorm style educational facility prototype available to students at the secondary level with highly disciplined classroom learning as well as trade school options emphasizing physical labor like auto mechanics, building construction and a strict physical education program that requires a daily physical work out. When students cross the line of the code of conduct, they need to be strictly disciplined with clear expectations for growth in achievement.

Ending Homelessness for Children and Teens

Multiple Housing Options

Our Housing platform creates better options by creating new housing clusters that build in the services needed. Social workers, after school tutoring and programs for children and teens, as well as onsite computer labs for parents to learn resume skills and students to type their papers and research on the internet will assist families with access to computers and education. If we are smart when we plan housing units, we can bring needed services to families who have transportation challenges.

Encourage non-profit groups, foundations and faith-based communities to consider fulfilling a need to shelter and house those who need temporary relief. We need to make it easier for churches to take homeless people into the church for shelter without having to provide costly liability insurance for this purpose

Meeting Transportation Needs

Providing more options for mass transit will assist those that cannot afford a car. Designing affordable rider programs for those who are getting back on their feet with a job or college careers could be part of the mix. Duluth's transit system allows all college students to ride free, on an unlimited basis. We could replicate this statewide for other purposes.

In addition, we need to connect children and youth who have been abandoned by parents or relatives with foster homes of caring people so they do not have to live in a shelter. Children and teens can be easy prey in a shelter when they do not have adults looking after them carefully.

Transform the Foster Care System

While there are many excellent foster care parents, there are those that are not committed to the child through times of emotional or behavioral upheaval. Far too many children are sent back to "try again" for parents that will discipline them and love them through turbulent times. I have known several teens that have been in more than ten foster care homes in their lifetime, making it impossible for them to bond or make a familial commitment to anyone.

Many of these teens end up in homeless shelters. We need to stop the cycle of ineptitude and failure in the system. This is a large undertaking, but we need to get a handle on this fast, or we just manufacture more adults that are emotionally unstable and ill prepared to function as healthy citizens and future parents. Pay at the beginning or pay at the end. I prefer to plan and pay upfront and avoid the costly expenses at the end.

Providing Affordable, Quality Childcare

Restore Childcare Funding

I will restore the funding that the current administration cut in 2003 and make certain that we do not ever disproportionately penalize those in poverty further from access to childcare.

Raise Pay For Childcare Professionals

In addition I believe we need to pay the professionals in this area much more than we are currently. We are not paying those that have dedicated their lives to this profession, and in reality we are paying them to take care of our most precious future resource. In addition, making certain that we build in daycare centers to affordable housing clusters so the child stays close to home for their care and builds relationships with other children in their neighborhood.

Ending childhood hunger in Minnesota

Redistribution of Food can Help

We need to make certain that all children have access to food. I believe there is much food that is wasted in our society and there are ways of picking up good food that can no longer be used in a restaurant or store but still has an appropriate shelf date. These foods can be directed to local food shelves. In Pine City there is a Community Church that picks up foods that are donated from different entities and has a once a month event that allows everyone to come and gather the items they need for a cost of $12.00 per month, there is no limit except what is available. This could be replicated in every town across the state as another approach to meeting the hunger needs of children and families. I would like to further develop faith-based programs such as Loaves and Fishes and offer them at more community and church facilities. I would like to connect restaurants and food stores with a network that would deliver good, unused foods to shelters and food programs such as Loaves and Fishes.

Encourage each House of Worship to Have a Food Shelf

We need to make certain that our Food Shelves are well-stocked and encourage each church to not only give to the larger community food shelves, but to have a small food shelf themselves for walk ins that need food assistance.

Reward Companies that Participate

Teen drop in centers and after school programs should provide snacks to augment the free lunch program at the public school system, and provide a light supper that could be provided by or sponsored by a food based company such as Subway, or other restaurants that supply good food. Those companies that participate can earn tax credit incentives to do so. We need to also set up a network of providers that provide free food to those in need and make these locations available to families so that their children are not hungry and they are able to eat as well.

Responding To Holistic Needs of Children and Families in Minnesota

You need only look at the way I have answered all of the above questions to see that I have thought about these issues. As a former home daycare provider, providing services to families has been part of my past. I believe that providing affordable options that work for families with regards to housing as well as the commitment I have to providing healthcare for everyone in the state will go a long way to pave the way to providing for the needs of children and families. Add to that my commitment to community, non-profit and faith-based partnerships and we can go a long way to meet the needs of our Minnesota families.

Will you help me work on these important issues for the future?