WTOL11: Toledo nonprofits share reasons with community for needing a pre-K program

TOLEDO, Ohio — Right now in Lucas County, there's not a free universal pre-K program for parents to take their kids to.

However, there's been talks around the community in efforts to change that very soon.

An education summit hosted by the Toledo Rotary Club and Chicks for Charity invited the community to gather at Glass City Center to discuss more of the matter and support HOPE Toledo, a nonprofit working to find better educational experiences for area youth.

"We don't want to let another day, another year go by waiting on the federal government, waiting on the state to do something that we know we can do ourselves," Rev. John Jones, president and CEO of HOPE Toledo said. "Now's the time to do it."

He said the goal of the summit is to get others on board with seeing how a lack of early childhood education leads to more issues.

"If parents aren't able to go to work because they can't find adequate high-quality affordable child care, then that limits their ability to be productive in the workplace and that impacts our community's economic future," Jones said.

Jones said he knows that this plan will require financial help through the support of local businesses, such as SSOE, a business that's been supportive of HOPE Toledo thus far.

"The program needs funding right now, it does not have a public funding component which is down the road," Vince DiPofi, president and CEO of SSOE said. "But the goal here is to get the business community motivated to do that."

Elected officials, local educators and business leaders were all at the event.

There were also guest speakers and panelists at the summit, including a parent who was able to explain her previous struggles with finding a pre-K program that was affordable and accessible for her child here in Toledo.

One speaker on the panel highlighted that it costs cities more when there isn't a pre-K program.

"The cost of juvenile detention is 10 times higher than high-quality preschool. Research also shows that for every dollar invested in high-quality early childhood education, programs yield 7 to 13 thousand in return, reduced crime rates," said Susan Brown, a panelist who worked for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections for 30 years before retiring as an institutional inspector and deputy warden at the Toledo Correctional Institution.

"If people fall behind, if kids fall behind early on, they never catch up and so you end up not being able to fulfill those jobs. It impacts us economically," DiPofi said. "It impacts the families being able to support themselves economically, it has, really, a ripple effect and it really needs to start at the beginning so it's a long-term investment."

Although Toledo may be one of many few places without a program for preschool, it isn't alone in the struggle for childcare services.

At the summit, data was shared from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation that more than half of parents in the country have had to leave their jobs due to them not being able to find childcare services that meet their needs.