Jasper County First Steps is ready! Ready to engage. Ready to empower. Ready to educate.

The release of the year one Kindergarten Readiness Assessment results for Jasper County has definitely shed a light on the ongoing and critical need for organizations that serve young children to engage, empower and educate. An our efforts must be multi-faceted, targeted, and intentional.

Ready to Engage – We must be ready to engage and convene key stakeholders to address areas of need, such as educators (school district, HeadStart, private child care providers), support agencies (ABC Quality, CCCCD, CCR&R, etc), and business partners (employers of parents) to work toward common objectives.

Ready to Empower – We must empower parents to advocate for the well-being of their children in areas of health, social exposure, and academic readiness. Parents must know that they should have an expectation that systems do not fail their children; and parents must know that they are their children’s first and most important teacher.

Ready to educate – We must take seriously our mandate to get children ready. Ready to learn, ready to grow, ready to thrive in kindergarten and beyond. For every child who enters a formal educational, social service, or community action environment, we must be ready to give that child what they need from us to be able to be assessed as “demonstrating”. Its time for Jasper County to be on the bottom of the state only on a map. But our children must rise to the top.

So we are ready… are you?