Who We Are cont...
In many ways, The Children's Movement of Florida evolved from the highly successful August 2008 reauthorization campaign for The Children’s Trust in Miami-Dade County.
In that election, conducted as the economy was collapsing, 85.4 percent of Miami-Dade's voters agreed to a modest but permanent increase in their property taxes. This tax now raises about $100 million annually for hundreds of early intervention and prevention programs that serve the county's children.
The reauthorization campaign was led by David Lawrence Jr., a nationally known journalist and former publisher of The Miami Herald. After retiring from The Herald in 1999, Lawrence devoted himself to children's issues, leading The Early Childhood Initiative Foundation and emerging as a national leader in the field.
The campaign's chief strategist was the internationally known Sergio Bendixen of Bendixen & Amandi, a public opinion research and communications consulting firm based in Coral Gables, Fla. In recent years, Bendixen also has emerged as a champion of early childhood issues, often working in close association with Lawrence.
Based on the success of the 2008 effort in Miami-Dade County and his decades of involvement in local and national political campaigns, Bendixen sensed that there might be significant citizen support for a statewide movement that focused specifically on children’s causes.
One key organizing principle of this movement: The Children's Movement of Florida does not advocate new taxes or an increase in existing taxes. Rather, it would be built around the firm belief that Florida's children must be viewed as the highest priority when it comes to receiving a full and fair share of the state's resources.
Another key to success, Bendixen and Lawrence determined, was to identify what state residents believed were the most important priorities when it came to early childhood programs, and to build a consensus to achieve those goals. This must be a bottom-up movement based on grassroots needs, grassroots support.
Hence, in January 2009, Lawrence and Bendixen hosted a group of citizens from throughout Florida. For more than two hours, those attending the meeting focused on specific children’s policy issues. They developed an initial list of 15 policy issues, later narrowed to four.
At that point, Roberto Martinez, a former U.S. attorney in South Florida, now a member of the Florida Board of Education and long identified with Gov. Charlie Crist and with former Gov. Jeb Bush, suggested additional discussions with civic, business and community leaders to determine if they might identify additional children’s policy issues and/or frame them differently.
That led to gatherings in Orlando (hosted by former Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings), Panama City (hosted by former House Speaker Allan Bense) and in Tampa (hosted by Kathleen Shanahan, now a member of the Florida Board of Education and formerly Gov. Bush’s chief of staff).
Armed with valuable perspectives and recommendations, Lawrence, Bendixen and other leaders of the group took the next step: They conducted eight focus groups of likely Florida voters – two in Tampa, two in Jacksonville, two in Fort Lauderdale and two in Miami (these last two in Spanish).
These sessions probed for the respondents' opinions of six potential policy initiatives. Listed in order of the support demonstrated by these likely Florida voters, the initiatives were:
No. 1 – Health care: Ensuring that every child in the state has access to health insurance and to an ongoing relationship with a pediatrician, well-child visits, immunizations, other preventative measures, and treatment of illnesses.
No. 2 – Early intervention: Screening every child at birth and at ages 2, 4 and 6; assessing within a month every child with a suspected special need; ensuring timely access to speech, physical or behavioral therapy.
No. 3 – School year: Lengthening the school year from 180 to 220 days and the school day by two hours.
No. 4 – Quality child care programs: Requiring a one-star, two-star, etc., statewide quality rating system for all child-care and preschool sites, intended to substantially enhance the educational quality of these operations and help parents make informed decisions.
No. 5 – Quality pre-kindergarten opportunities: Substantially enhancing quality standards for Florida’s voluntary pre-K program by requiring associate degrees and, eventually, bachelor’s degrees for classroom leaders, along with research-based curricula and quality-based accreditation.
No. 6 – Parent skill-building: Offering every new parent a free skill-building program and every first-time and teen mother a home visit by a qualified pregnancy and early childhood expert.
That was the qualitative phase of the research. Now, it was time for the quantitative phase.
In August 2009, Bendixen & Amandi, noted for its work with Democratic issues and candidates, joined with The Tarrance Group of Alexandria, Va., nationally known for its polling and strategy work for Republicans, to conduct a scientific survey of Florida voters.
The poll of 1,515 likely voters, with a 2.5 percent margin of error (suggesting high reliability), showed two of the six issues rising to the top – both with significant statewide support:
1. Health insurance for all Florida children.
2. Accessible, affordable screening available to all parents during their children’s early years to determine if there might be special needs – ranging from autism to speech and hearing challenges to attention deficit disorders – that, if treated early, could improve their children’s chances for success in school and in life.
The top education issue: Improving the quality of Florida’s voluntary universal prekindergarten program. This program, passed by voters as a constitutional amendment in 2002, still lacks many of the quality measures that lead to positive outcomes for children.
Next, Lawrence and the researchers traveled to 11 Florida communities to share the results and gather comments and potential support. Those two-hour gatherings of 20 to 35 people, each conducted by one of Florida’s most prominent leaders, were held successively in Panama City, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Jacksonville, Boynton Beach, Port St. Lucie, Orlando, Tampa, Naples, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Martinez of Miami attended the final six sessions.
From those sessions came enthusiastic support for The Children's Movement of Florida from Democrats, Republicans and independents. Twenty-five of those leaders agreed to join Lawrence and Martinez on a steering committee to develop and evaluate steps to follow.
The first of those steps: The Children's Project of Palm Beach.