Knights Landing Children's Center is a non-profit organization created by the parents of Knights Landing who wanted quality early childhood education for their children. As parental involvement is a requirement of enrollment, it helps build a sense of community and camaraderie that is missing from most pre-school programs. In addition to quality curriculum and continued evidence-based instruction, we provide child care to help parents work. State pre-school is only a three hour instruction, leaving parents unable to find employment. As this community has a large migrant population, the closure of our program and institution of a state pre-school will leave many parents unable to find suitable daycare for their children.
When we discuss the cohesive environment that is unique to KLCC, we are talking about children from all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds being on a level playing field and interacting and creating friendships. Unfortunately, turning the program over into a state pre-school will not promote equality but rather segregation. I will mention that state pre-schools are notorious for being low quality, and we feel that by replacing a quality program with an inferior one, we are being insulted as a community.
As a program, we not only work on language skills with children, helping Spanish speaking students learn English skills, but we provide information to parents about nutrition, positive parenting, and the availability of community resources. As a community based program we also care about each and every family in a way that a bureaucracy cannot. We know when a family is in need and we take care of them.We have clothing swaps, food giveaways, we provide coats to children in need. We are more than a simple pre-school, we are an outstanding program dedicated to this community and see children as our future.
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