Education advisory council releases annual report

JACKSON — Gov. Haley Barbour has presented the State Early Childhood Advisory Council’s Annual Report “Keeping the Course: Mapping the Journey to High Quality for Mississippi’s Early Care and Education System.”

The Council received a $1,685,344 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to continue work to develop a comprehensive early childhood system that will create a seamless delivery of services to children in Mississippi. The executive summary and full report is available online at www.governorbarbour.com/links/earlychildhoodcouncil.html.

The report highlights the activities, accomplishments, and recommendations of the Council resulting from this past year’s work.  Recommendations in the report include:

• A career ladder for early care and education teachers

• Alignment of early learning standards for children from birth to four years with K-12 education

• A voluntary registry of family child care providers

• Information packets to parents of newborns to assist them as their children’s first teachers.

In 2008, Barbour established the State Early Childhood Advisory Council to develop a strategic plan to coordinate efforts, programs and resources supporting children from birth to age five and to identify opportunities for and barriers to collaboration and coordination among programs and agencies.