Save The Children has been pushing the political agenda for full time kindergarten in New Hampshire for awhile now. According to a recent article from WMUR, this organization spent $1 MILLION dollars trying to defeat Governor Chris Sununu in the primary. Now this same organization is going to spend another $45,000.00 in ads to continue their political agenda to force the State to fund full day kindergarten.
This first should be a local decision since the State doesn’t have money that’s growing on trees. There are other needs schools face, and that was brought up at the hearing to fund full-day kindergarten. Some schools need building aid which is what one local school board member testified when she opposed the bill.
If this organization really cared about helping children, why are they wasting so much money on political fights and ads? This is an out of state organization that is pushing a political agenda, and not coming from the grassroots.
If Save the Children cared about children, why are they not saying anything about the developmentally inappropriate Common Core standards in early education? Why are they ignoring experts who’ve said these standards are inappropriate for kindergarten children attending a half day program? Now they want kids to suffer all day long?
Fix the early childhood standard first. Then let’s talk about whether this is good for children or not.
There are good reasons to delay kindergarten, not expand it: https://www.girardatlarge.com/2016/05/let-kids-kids-stop-political-push-universal-pre-k-full-day-kindergarten/
This is a political agenda brought to New Hampshire by an out-of-state organization. This doesn’t save children but has the potential to hurt children instead.
Ann Marie Banfield began volunteering as Cornerstone’s Education Liaison in 2009. As an education researcher and activist she took her decade long research on education to Concord to lobby on behalf of parental rights and literacy. Working with experts in education from across the country, she offers valuable insight into problems and successes in education. She holds a B.A. in Business Management from Franklin University in Columbus Ohio. Ann Marie and her husband have three children and reside in Bedford, NH
