My name is Nancy Bruski, and I have been a clinical social worker for the past 25 years. For the past nine years, I have been on staff at a nationally accredited full-day care and education program in Evanston, Evanston Day Nursery. I am also the parent of two children who have gone through elementary school and I can speak out of that experience as well. I have seen the unfortunate results of the inequities of a system that traditionally has provided high quality preschool experiences only for the children whose families could afford it. The huge range of school readiness in the children facing our teachers each year is a major contributing factor to the achievement gap between minority children and white children in our schools. Despite tremendous efforts on the part of school districts throughout the nation, the gap remains. Until the need for all children to have access to high quality preschool education is met, these serious achievement problems will continue to haunt us.        

I urge you to advocate for a significantly greater investment in the Early Childhood Block Grant so that the hundreds of children in our community and those throughout the state who are not currently receiving needed preschool educational services can be served. The research has been available for many years that demonstrates the cost savings to government that are involved in providing high quality preschool education for young children. The estimate a number of years ago was that for each dollar spent on preschool education for children, seven dollars are saved over the course of that child's life for the cost of remedial education, costs involved in handling delinquency issues, and even the cost of maintaining adults in jail. I am sure that the cost savings today would be even greater. Within the past week, two major articles in the Chicago Tribune, by Ron Kotulak, have outlined more research that demonstrates what many of us in the early childhood community have known and observed for years: that what children need in order to be successful in school is a solid basis of emotional support and a strong sense of self, both of which are provided or bolstered in the best of available preschool programs. Interestingly, the second article described the deleterious effects of chronic stress on the child's brain development, Measures of stress hormones in saliva demonstrated the differences that exist for children enrolled in high quality, versus low quality, preschool or childcare settings. In high quality settings, not surprisingly, children's stress hormones are reduced as they go through their day, enabling them to build neural pathways in the brain that encourage learning. In low quality settings, which comprise the bulk of what is currently available to families, the stress hormones stay high over the course of the day, inhibiting the development of these essential neural pathways in the brain and dooming children to lower levels of academic achievement as they proceed into elementary school.        

I would like to share with you two examples of real children from our program who have benefited from participating in the prekindergarten program we provide through a grant from the state that is administered by our school district. First, I would like to describe Sally, an African American child of a single mom with two other children who is working very hard to make a living for her family. Because of a variety of stresses this family faces, this mother has not been able to be  sufficiently emotionally available to this child, and the child exhibits her longing for closeness by clinging to any available adult. Over the past two years that she has been in our program, we have been able to provide individual play therapy services, as well as specialized socialization group time in a small group run by our prekindergarten teacher on a daily basis. Although cognitively Sally seems well endowed, she is unable to stay on task, and often her expressive language seems disjointed. Because of our relationship with the school district, we are able to work closely with their experts to proceed with testing that will enable us to better diagnose her psychological difficulties and arrive at interventions that will increasingly meet her needs in the classroom. Currently, Sally is well attached to her teachers and to me as her therapist, and she is lapping up the attention she receives to help her feel more settled. Through our collaborative efforts with the school district, Sally will enter kindergarten with a much better chance of success, despite her family problems, because we have been able to provide some important supports for her within our setting. The transition into kindergarten will be handled carefully, and Sally can look forward to having a kindergarten teacher who will be aware of and able to tune into her vulnerabilities, such that she will helped to perform at the highest academic level she is capable of. Had Sally not been in our program, she would probably be seen as a trouble maker in kindergarten, and a cycle of school failure might easily begin that would be difficult to remedy.        

The second child I will describe is Alan, a Mexican American child from a large, intact family with six children. We have had every child in this family in our program over the past nine years, and Alan is the second youngest. We have built a strong relationship with the parents, and the trust they have in us has been very important in accessing needed services for Alan. Alan is a very appealing child who has some learning deficits that became obvious to us during his second year in our program. Though we are careful not to push children into letter and number recognition at age three, generally most children become interested and capable of such tasks by age five. Alan always avoided fine motor tasks and was included in our prekindergarten program because of being somewhat delayed in that area. While most of the other children knew their colors and shapes by the end of their first year with us, Alan's knowledge in this area was inconsistent even as an almost five year old. Because of our closeness to the family, I also knew that at least one of his older siblings had been struggling with learning to read in elementary school, even though he was in third grade last year. I felt that Alan most likely had some learning disabilities that needed to be diagnosed and treated in order for him to be successful in school. I met with the mother and discussed my concerns with her, and she gave me permission to write a letter to Alan's elementary school principal urging them not to wait until the end of Alan's kindergarten year, as is common practice in our district, to assess and design interventions for his learning problems. I received a call from the school social worker within the first two weeks of school that diagnostic testing would be initiated for both boys as soon as possible, and I was able to help the school personnel get the mother to attend the necessary staffing. Had I not had the strong relationship I have with these parents, I would not have been able to advocate for these children in this way. With the proper diagnosis and intervention plan, Alan has a good chance for success in school. Without these services, surely he would have been doomed to fail.        

It is because of children like Sally and Alan that I am here speaking to you today. Please expand the Early Childhood Block Grant so that other children like them, of which there are thousands in Illinois today, can receive the supports they need in order to succeed in school and make a contribution to our increasingly complex society in the future. Thank you very much.    

Nancy Shlaes Bruski, 

Licensed Clinical Social Worker