At a luncheon at the Bellingham Golf and Country Club, Gates called the current education system a moral failure and a public policy disaster. It directs most of its funding to kindergarten to grade 12 education and neglects early-learning programs, leaving a majority of children unprepared to enter school.
"Our current model is bad business, and the consequences keep piling up over the years," Gates said. "More than half of children in this state walk into kindergarten prepared only for disappointment and frustration. We need to rethink the dimensions of public education."
Improving the day care and preschool programs offered to county children allows them to succeed once they begin school, he said. Investing in these programs results in a better trained and educated work force, which translates to economic prosperity.
Other speakers reinforced Gates' views. Nancy Jordan, the executive director of the Bellingham Whatcom Economic Development Council, pointed to several studies that connect participating in earlylearning programs with lower pregnancy and arrest rates as teenagers, and higher salaries and home ownership as adults.
Ken Gass, a pediatrician with the Madrona Medical Group, said the programs influence children ages 1 to 6 at a crucial time in their development. Their brains have a higher number of synapses and are more receptive to learning and education. Children who fall behind once they begin school often face a difficult time catching up, he said.
"We can remediate later in childhood, but it's more efficient economically and biologically to get it right the first time," Gass said.
Gates said improving the hundreds of programs in Whatcom County starts with community activism. He encouraged the approximately 200 people in attendance to call on local political leaders and advocate increased funding for these programs.
Retiring state Sen. Harriet Spanel, D-Bellingham, attended the luncheon and said she was disappointed that more wasn't done to improve early-learning programs during the state Legislature's most recent session. Lawmakers failed to create a much-discussed program that would give mothers who recently had children paid leave from their jobs so they can nurture their infants.
In tough economic times, policymakers often focus on the immediate and ignore the long term, she said.
"But the thing that all of us have to remember is that we'll save dollars later on (with early-learning programs)," Spanel said.
Reach Peter Jensen at 756- 2883 or peter.jensen@bellinghamherald.com.
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