Columbus, nonprofit team up to increase kindergarten readiness

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Future Ready Five, a Columbus-area nonprofit, is calling the current kindergarten readiness level in Franklin County a significant crisis.

Together with Columbus City Council, the county, and others, the group is working to find a way to help prepare local children for kindergarten and set them up for success. 

The organization is developing systems to help enhance early childhood education with a focus on four infrastructures it said impact kindergarten readiness. Those factors are families and communities, health and behavioral health, education and developmental supports, and public and private infrastructure.

The movement is about creating a system that supports each child because kindergarten readiness is different for everyone.

"Your ability to make letter sounds, to look at letters, to identify them, to write your name, you know, little things like that, that ultimately show impact, the ability to do basic math functioning as well as the look at social-emotional learning competencies," Future Ready Five CEO Mario Basora said. 

Those areas are things Future Ready Five said can have an impact later on.

"If you're not ready for kindergarten, you're often not ready for the third-grade big reading assessment and of kids who are not ready for the third-grade reading tests, we know that impacts high school graduation rates, college entrance rates, acceptance rates," Basora said.

He said that is because 90% of the human brain is developed by age 5.

"If we can get it right in the first five years, we think we can not only impact kids down the road, but I think our entire society and the community here in Franklin County," Basora said. 

The nonprofit said that overall, 65% of children in the county are not ready for kindergarten. However, the number is higher in minority communities, estimating 78% of Black children and 85% of Latino children are not ready.

Kindergarten readiness is something Columbus City Council has supported and is investing in again.

"This kind of investment, I think, is really key on the front end to make sure that we're setting these kids up for success," Columbus City Council President Pro Tem Rob Dorans said. "Rather than just targeting a zip code, rather than just targeting a childcare center, this is going down to the individual child. I think that's something that really sets this program apart as far as how specific they're being with regard to the resources they're bringing to bear."

"The commitment from the city is more than just the funding dollars. So, it really means that they're standing side by side with what we believe in," Future Ready Five VP of Advancement and Community Relations Neeta Agrawal said.

With previous funding, the nonprofit established a universal early learning assessment and now is building a way to reach more people and create solutions on an individual level.

"We really are tied to the work that we're doing because we really believe that we can help better our community and serve families and children here in Franklin County," Agrawal said. 

Future Ready Five says the goal is to have 100% of children ready for kindergarten by 2030 with plans to start the assessment in a pilot phase in the next few months.