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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Advocates of Pre-K Pushing Cuomo, Obama: “Go To The Library”

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Monday, March 11, 2013   

CENTEREACH, N.Y. - Gov. Cuomo wants to expand full-time pre-K education, and President Obama put support for early learning in his State of the Union address. They should both go to the library, according to advocates for using the public library as a key part of the learning process for toddlers to 4-year-olds.

Many libraries these days are more than musty book stacks and card catalogs and maybe an occasional story-time session. They are becoming fun and inexpensive places for children and parents to write the opening chapters in a lifetime of learning.

Sandy Feinberg runs a national program, Family Place Libraries, that teaches librarians how to adapt to the needs of pre-kindergarten kids.

"A public space, well stocked with materials, open from nine to nine every day and the weekends, where parents or caregivers can go with their young kids," Feinberg envisioned the local library. "It's a wonderful idea waiting to happen, isn't it?"

A recent nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of those polled "strongly support libraries offering free early literacy programs to help young children prepare for school."

Anita Douglas, Centereach, said she takes her toddler to the Middle Country Library, where he finds a myriad of activities.

"He's 2 years old and he uses the iPad. That's a nice resource. He can go there and use the iPad; he also went to the coloring station; and he played around a little bit with the little toys they have, like a truck and cars and stuff like that. "

Chris D'Amato, Lake Grove, N.Y., is a stay-at-home dad with a 3-year-old and a 1.5-year-old. He's so fond of the library's services that he asked the town clerk how much from his annual property taxes went to fund it.

"I have two kids, and we use this library," he said. "I'm like, $919 out of my pocket a year. What they're getting is a drop in the bucket - I mean, it's such a minute amount of money, if you know what they're given out of this library."

Sandy Feinberg is pleased at the attention paid to pre-K issues by the governor and the president, but said she wouldn't mind some public support - and funding - for libraries.

"The government can only think, 'Well, we'll put money into schools, therefore we can do universal pre-K,'" she said. "But it's really at the young level that the parent can be so much more empowered. Libraries are just a silent kind of institution so many times."

However, she quickly added, libraries are not THAT silent: It would be a lost cause for toddlers using library learning areas to be "shushed" by librarians.




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