Children's Movement lays out its legislative battle plan

By Ashley Ames Democrat staff writer

With the quiet chatter of a prekindergarten class coloring in the background, David Lawrence, chair of the Children's Movement of Florida, leaned forward in his chair to explain the privately funded coalition's goals for the upcoming year. "This is about children as a priority," he said. "That's what we are after."

The Children's Movement's 2012 legislative agenda was announced Monday at the Early Learning Coalition of the Big Bend. The event, the first of 11 that will take place across the state, began with students from a local child-care center being read aloud to from a huge, illustrated children's book — centered on who had stolen the cookies from a cookie jar. Mel Jurado, director of the Florida Office of Early Learning, Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, and Dominic Calabro, president and CEO of Florida TaxWatch, were also present to discuss the movement's agenda.

The 2012 agenda items, determined after meeting with community leaders across the state, aligned with the five original goals of the movement: health insurance; availability of screening and treatment for children who may have special needs; improved VPK quality; and increased availability of high-quality mentoring and parent skill-building programs. The movement's goals for the 2012 legislative session are:

• High-quality parent skill-building programs • Developmental screening, diagnosis and treatment for children who may have special needs • The use of research-based curriculum as well as pre- and post- assessment for voluntary pre-kindergarten • Health care for Florida's uninsured children • Support for high-quality mentoring initiatives

Compared to the $300 million in the proposed legislative cost of the 2011 agenda, the movement calculated the total cost for this year's items at a drastically reduced $28.5 million. The last two agenda items would be accomplished largely through a grassroots campaign and private sector partners.

That, Lawrence said, should be doable.

"That should be an achievable goal in anyone's budget for the year to come," he said, adding that the total legislative budget was normally around $70 billion.

"We serve over 7,000 families across seven counties. And there is a lot of need," said Lauren Faison, CEO of the ELC Big Bend. "So we support anybody's agenda that is going to push for better standards for our children and put the resources that are needed to help them be successful."

"It's getting education in people's hands, it's raising the standards, its making those who are educating our children be accountable and that is extremely important," she said of the agenda.

Last year, the movement achieved an additional 19,000 slots in the Florida KidCare program.

Not to be confused with the Children's Campaign — a nonprofit, statewide advocacy group for children's issues — the Children's Movement was launched in 2009 and has since grown to a 28-member steering committee and email subscription list of 290,000. During the first year, the movement held rallies across the state that drew a total of 15,000 —including 1,200 in Tallahassee. The movement identifies itself as non-partisan and citizen-led, with a mission to inform the state and encourage the leaders and people of Florida to make children the highest priority.

"We work the process," Lawrence said. "We are people who believe in the system, but simply want the system to be more responsive to the people."

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