Rapides Parish School Board Hosts Early Childhood Development Conference

February Is Early Education Month and schools are encouraging parents to apply early for fall registration.

The Rapides Parish School Board believes all children deserve access to high-quality early education.

Rapides Parish Early Childhood Director Cindy Rushing says, “Early childhood is the optimal learning time to increase their knowledge, their language skills, and actually meet those developmental milestones and it gives them a head start into making sure that we are preparing them for kindergarten and beyond.”

Teachers and school board members are working together to promote positive childhood experiences.

Rushing says, “We have early learning and development standards for infants, for one-year-olds, for two-year-olds. We provide a language rich, print rich environment for them, we train teachers to be knowledge of those teacher-student interactions that young children need. We have a Tier 1 curriculum that is vetted by the state that is for all ages.”

Rapides Parish School Superintendent Jeff Powell says it is important for parents to be informed about the resources available to their children.

“We have Pre-K programs within our schools, we have the Head Start programs that’s also part of the Rapides Parish School system and so we want to continue to pull folks to together and celebrate their successes that they’re going to share with you today as we continue to show growth in the programs and the outcomes of our students. We want to make sure that our parents, all of our parents know that there is access to high quality programming for their children and resources to help the parents in reading, brain development, emotion, things, needs that our children have so our children can be prepared for everything they’re going to face in this life.”

Their district goal is to promote literacy and inspire children to read on grade level.

Rushing says, “You see the things we expose children to and those experiences that they get, and the light bulb goes on and they develop in an appropriate way and they’re meeting those developmental milestones, they’re hitting the marks that they are learning.”

City officials made a proclamation to dedicate themselves to developing childhood education.

The Rapides Parish School Board urges the public to become early childhood education advocates.