Over the last two months, Mayor Kenney and staff from the Office of Education have engaged with pre-K teachers, parents, center owners and directors from 109 early childhood education providers across Philadelphia. To date, the pre-K provider community have convened at seven roundtable discussions to hear the Mayor’s vision for increasing up to 10,000 quality, publicly-funded pre-K seats for three- and four-year-olds in need.
This week, Esperanza hosted Director of Pre-k for the City of Philadelphia Anne Gemmell who moderated a roundtable discussion which convened more than 30 early childhood education providers in our community, and those in Esperanza College’s Early Childhood Education AA program.
“Public input about pre-K is critical,” Mayor Kenney was quoted in a press release. “My administration is committed to increasing access to quality pre-K, but we certainly can’t do it alone. We need the knowledge of experienced practitioners who do this work every day in order for this initiative to succeed.”