Partners announce $11 million to build Educare California at Silicon Valley to close the achievement gap.
SAN JOSE, Calif. – In a display of public/private partnership, which has made Silicon Valley a global leader in collaboration and problem-solving, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, David and Lucille Packard Foundation, FIRST 5 Santa Clara County, Franklin-McKinley School District, Health Trust, Santa Clara County Office of Education and East Side Union High School District, among others, have partnered to launch a new nonprofit school focused on early childhood education, teacher professional development and family service.
The goal is to build California’s first “Educare” school co-located with the Santee Elementary School and Franklin-McKinley Children’s Initiative. Educare will serve as the region and state’s leading professional development and research institute, training early childhood education professionals in scientifically proven best practices in an effort to improve the quality of care and instruction in sites beyond the walls of the center, including K-12.
A signature component of the Educare school will be its Professional Development Institute, a center that will provide high quality training to early education providers (public and private sector) and to K-8 teachers from throughout the Bay Area and northern California in the latest science and evidence-based teaching methods. The institute will partner with the region’s colleges and universities to ensure that educators bring robust teaching practices back to their schools and classrooms.
“Research shows that children who experience Educare’s practices arrive at school performing on par with their kindergarten peers, regardless of their socio-economic standing. Educare’s teacher professional development institute and robust research will allow us to bring these practices to scale in the Bay Area and to affect education policy in California. Silicon Valley is built with the best minds. Now is the time to focus on the foundations of human capital development and high quality early childhood education,” states Carl Guardino, President and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
At Educare Schools, teachers work with children—beginning in infancy and through preschool—and their parents to develop pre-literacy and early math skills such as letter and number recognition, problem solving, and counting. Equal emphasis is given to developing social-emotional skills: the ability to focus on a task, persistence, impulse control and cooperation with peers. Each Educare School is a comprehensive early childhood program aimed at preventing the achievement gap that takes root between children in poverty and their middle-income peers long before they enter kindergarten. Independent research shows Educare works.
In the past year, Educare of California as Silicon Valley has been conducting a private capital campaign to raise the majority of the $14 million needed to build the school and the professional development institute. To date approximately $11.1 million has been raised from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, FIRST 5 Santa Clara County, Franklin-McKinley School District, East Side Union High School District, Santa Clara County Office of Education, Health Trust and the national Educare Learning Network. The project has also qualified for tax credit financing through the federal New Market Tax Credit, which must be matched.
“Educare is a proven model that uses the highest quality programming to prevent the achievement gap from taking root in these essential early years. It engages parents, community members, caregivers – fully empowering them to assess and meet the needs of each child. We are proud to be part of bringing this innovative model to our home in Silicon Valley,” says Carol Larson, President and CEO of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Through a growing coast-to-coast network of state-of-the-art, full-day, year-round schools, funded mostly by existing public dollars, Educare serves at-risk children from birth to five years. Each embraces a community’s most vulnerable children with programming and instructional support that develop early skills and nurture the strong parent-child relationships that create the foundation for successful learning.
Located in San José’s Franklin-McKinley School District, Educare of California at Silicon Valley will serve as the region and state’s leading professional development and research institute, training early childhood education professionals in scientifically proven best practices in an effort to improve the quality of care and instruction in sites beyond the walls of the center, including K-12.
The 35,000 square foot facility will contain a Teacher Professional Development Institute; learning technology for the teacher training programs; sixteen state-of-the-art classrooms as well as multiple indoor and outdoor learning spaces to meet the developmental needs of children. The site will also include a resource center for families and the community. Educare of California at Silicon Valley joins a network of twenty other Educare schools across the country, committed to preparing young children for success in school.
CONTACT: Dennis Cima, Senior Vice President, Silicon Valley Leadership Group, dcima@svlg.org (408) 501-7854
1399 Santee Drive, San Jose, CA 95122
Phone: (408) 573-4800
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