By State Senator Cathy Cook

Governor M. Jodi Rell has made early childhood education a priority of her administration. As a long-time legislator - and the mother three adult children - I share her belief that being ready for school is the first, and possibly, the most important step children make toward reaching their full potential in life.

Towards that goal, this year the General Assembly extended the state's School Readiness Grant Program to 50 poor municipalities, an increase from 28. This is in addition to priority school districts and big city districts. We passed legislation expanding the allowable uses for state Department of Social Services Quality Enhancement Grants for school readiness programs and daycare providers, and we expanded the state's school construction grant programs to promote classroom construction for full-day preschool programs in priority school districts.

We also passed legislation requiring municipalities to convene local school readiness councils in order to qualify for state school readiness grants. We established an Early Childhood Cabinet to do a variety of things, including developing early childhood budget requests and promoting consistent quality and comprehensiveness for early childhood programs. We created a 21-member workforce development to promote professionalization of the early childhood education workforce by developing pathways to college degrees for nursery school teachers. This workforce committee will report its findings and recommendations to the General Assembly by January 1, 2006.

We also passed legislation requiring the Eastern Connecticut State University's Early Childhood Technology Center to work with local school readiness councils to address their child-care and early education needs. Also, looking to the future, we passed legislation requiring the state education commissioner to develop a statewide developmentally appropriate assessment to measure individual kindergarten readiness by October 1, 2009 and we passed legislation raising the minimum education qualifications for school readiness staff beginning on July 1, 2015.

This year each school readiness classroom must be staffed by someone with credentials from a State Department of Education-approved organization and 12 credits in early childhood education or child development from an accredited higher education institution, an associate's or four-year degree from an accredited institution with 12 credits in early childhood education or child development, or a teaching certificate with an early child education or special education endorsement indicating the grades or subjects a certified teacher is qualified to teach.

The new school year is just a couple of weeks away. In the months and years ahead, I look forward to seeing today's pre-school children - and those yet to be born - benefit from the improvements that Governor Rell and the legislature accomplished in 2005.