Early Childhood Education

One of the problems with early childhood education in Oregon is that the state expects practitioners to have credentials, but those credentials cost money and the payoff in salaries is poor. The late John Gray was the developer who launched Salishan and Sunriver, among other projects. The John and Betty Gray Foundation has made a commitment that will continue for several more years, through which students taking early childhood education courses at Oregon community colleges can have their entire tuition paid for. At present, there is enough money to handle all applicants.

This still leave some costs to bear, including tuition for the general education courses that are required for most community college programs. This is an opportunity for Kiwanis to step forward and leverage the Gray money to provide full tuition coverage for these students. If it is true that one of the keys to success in early childhood education is the level of training of the providers, then nothing could be more cost-effective than this.

Another great thing for Division 76 is that Southwestern Oregon Community College (known generally as SWOCC although they are trying to change that to SOCC) has put its entire list of ECE classes online. To my knowledge, it's the only cc in Oregon to have done this. SWOCC's district almost exactly coincides with Division 76, except that Lane Community College covers Florence. The clubs in Division 76 could unite in supporting the SWOCC ECE program, which students in their communities could take classes either at SWOCC's Coos Bay campus or online, and could take the general ed classes the same way or through any of the satellite campuses which serve several other communities.