TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Two local organizations will use grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to improve school readiness for young children — a critical community priority identified by a local advisory committee.

These are the first grants in Knight Foundation’s five-year investment in nonprofits working with families and child-care centers in Tallahassee’s Southside neighborhoods. The grants hold the potential to ensure children’s success in and out of the classroom, said Alfredo Cruz, Knight Foundation’s program officer in Tallahassee.

Florida State University’s Center for Prevention and Early Intervention Policy will use a $1 million grant toward improving the quality of 10 child-care centers serving families in Tallahassee’s Southside. The grant will provide a combination of mentoring to achieve improvements in the child-care centers and comprehensive services to ensure children achieve optimal health and development to be ready for school. The funding also supports classroom improvements and education programs to enhance staff training.

“We want to optimize each child’s development because research shows the higher the quality of the child care, the better school performance of the children,” said Mimi Graham, director of the center.

In addition, Capital Area Healthy Start Coalition will use a Knight grant for $890,600 to launch Smart Start. This new home visitation program will provide 50-low income families in the neighborhoods near Bond and Wesson elementary schools with parenting classes, tips on improving reading skills and access to comprehensive health services.

“We have Healthy Start and Healthy Families. There are all these different programs to help children, but we knew there were certain needs that were falling through the cracks. One of them is literacy,” said Ann Davis, executive director of Capital Area Healthy Start Coalition.

Smart Start will give parents and their kids one-on-one consultations with social workers and teachers. Parents will learn how to help their kids with their schoolwork by reading to them and visiting the local library, all under the guidance of an expert in literacy education. Families also will receive assistance with planning, budgeting and preparing meals. These nutritional sessions include visits to a local supermarket and information about the importance of healthy nutrition. Weekly visits by a social worker will help track each families’ progress and determine if they need counseling or additional health care services.

“Children raised in low-income neighborhoods often face a number of challenges that may prevent them from entering school ready for learning or performing well in the classroom,” Cruz said. “The best chance we have to get these kids off to a good start is by providing them and their parents the skills to succeed at school and in life.”

The grants to FSU and Healthy Start signal the launch of Knight Foundation’s five-year investment of up to $2.5 million in Tallahassee school readiness efforts. The foundation’s community advisory committee, a 10-member group comprised of business, nonprofit and government leaders, crafted the funding strategy after reviewing research that pointed to the need to improve the developmental skills of low-income children.

The following statistics about local conditions led to decisions about working with school readiness partners:

• In 2000, 32 percent of children living in Leon County lived in single-parent families — a higher percentage than in Florida or the United States. Women headed most of these families.
• 38 percent of children in Leon County are born to unwed mothers. According to Vital Statistics, nearly 1,140 infants live in single-parent households. Black children are three to four times as likely to be born to unwed mothers as white children (70 percent vs. 19 percent in 2001).
• The rate of births to teen-age mothers has been declining in Leon County and in Florida, but a large racial disparity remains. As of 2000, the rate of births to black teen mothers was about three times the rate for whites (41.5 percent vs. 14.5 percent).
• According to Kids Inc. in Leon County, 45 percent of all infant and preschool children in need of child care reside in unmarried female-headed families.

“If we do a better job in early education, the children will be affected and they will have a much greater opportunity to lead greater lives and that’s what we wanted to focus on,” said Michael Pate, chairman of the advisory committee and president and publisher of the Tallahassee Democrat. “And the education of children is influenced by the education of the parents.”

Tallahassee is one of seven communities served by the foundation electing to invest in school readiness initiatives. The others are Long Beach, Calif.; Wichita, Kan.; Charlotte, N.C.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; San Jose, Calif.; and Boulder, Colo. The local committees were convinced that long-term good comes from early, sustained investments in school readiness; lessons learned in any of the Knight communities will be shared among the others.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities. Since 1967, Knight Foundation has invested more than $18.8 million in the greater Tallahassee community.