Posted on August 26, 2010

Marin Community Foundation Awards $2 Million for Early Education Efforts

The Novato-based Marin Community Foundation has announced grants of nearly $2 million to help ensure that low-income students and students of color get off to a strong start in their early education.

The foundation will support efforts in eight schools and four districts where the foundation is focusing its five-year, $35 million commitment to close the education achievement gap: San Rafael, Sausalito Marin City, Novato, and Shoreline in West Marin. In all four districts, a proportionally higher number of low-income students and students of color often struggle to keep up with their peers academically. In addition, Peter Haas, Jr. will provide $236,000 through the Joanne & Peter Haas Jr. Fund to expand the coalition to a ninth school in Novato.

The grants will support teams of teachers, early childhood educators, representatives of afterschool programs, administrators, and parents working to involve families in their children's education, improve the quality of teaching, extend learning time, track the progress of individual students as they advance in grades, create school cultures with high expectations for all students, and set curriculum standards across grades.

"There is growing consensus across the country about the effectiveness of this kind of multi-grade, team approach to helping young students get started in school," said MCF president Thomas Peters. "Plus, we're learning more about the importance of early childhood preschool activities, including ones that parents undertake with their kids at home, so that young children enter school prepared to succeed."