Advocates push for millions for child development

Who took the cookies from the cookie jar? The suspects, at least according to the children’s book based on the classic schoolyard tune, are a sweet-swiping cabal of woodland creatures. A bird. A turtle. A mouse. And ultimately, an army of ants.

The Pre-K students at REM Learning Center in South Dade had no trouble identifying each of the offending critters when education advocate David Lawrence Jr. read to them Tuesday. They also knew their ABCs and 1-2-3s — which for 4-year-olds is a leading indicator of great scholastic potential, he said.

But Lawrence — chairman of the Children’s Movement of Florida, who appeared with the voluntary Pre-K class Tuesday to promote his group’s nearly $30 million agenda for the 2012 legislative session — hasn’t always been as encouraged.

Last summer, he read Old MacDonald Had a Farm to a similar group of kids. A picture of a bunny rabbit was on the cover, but none of the students could name the animal. A few thought it was a cow.

“That’s tragic for them, it’s tragic for their families, it’s tragic for the country,” said Lawrence, the former publisher of The Miami Herald. “I think it’s very hard to fix fourth grade, or seventh grade, or the 11th grade. But you can help children before they get started with formal school.”

For the past dozen years, that has been Lawrence’s crusade. He is a member of the Governor’s Children’s Cabinet and led the 2002 campaign for The Children’s Trust, which secured early intervention and prevention funding for children in Miami-Dade County.

But as his travels throughout the state have reaffirmed, there’s still much to be done. That’s why Lawrence, flanked Tuesday by state Rep. Frank Artiles and Early Learning Coalition CEO Evelio Torres, is barnstorming the state, stopping in 11 cities to state his case.

The Children’s Movement has laid out a five-point agenda for the upcoming session: funding for parent skill-building programs; developmental screening diagnosis and treatment for special-needs children; bolstering curricula and progress assessments for voluntary Pre-K; securing healthcare for Florida’s uninsured children; and support for high-quality mentoring initiatives.

“The challenge is, there’s just one pie, and everybody’s fighting for the same slice of that pie,” Torres said. “We would like for less monies to be spent on prisons, on building roads, and a lot more on preschool education, which is where we get the biggest return on our investment.”

The estimated price tag for the wish list: $28.5 million — or four-hundredths of 1 percent of the state’s $69 billion budget. That price tag has been scaled down from the group’s 2011 agenda, perhaps a nod to the nearly $2 billion budget shortfall legislators are expected to face.

Argued Lawrence: “If you couldn’t be serious about this, how serious could you be about the future of children and the future of Florida?”

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