ELEVEN SECTION : Pinal

Drop-out Rates of Inner-city Daycare at all time High

By: Bianca Pinal

Chicago, IL. The Chicago Board of Education has recently issued a national emergency due to the highest number of Daycare dropouts. "Children are the future and its starts with toddlers. This country has a crisis on its hands, and that crisis is that inner-city daycare centers are in poor condition," said vice president of the school board, Clare Munana. Munana, along with the rest of the board, will be taking a tour around the city to investigate the state of the city's daycare centers. Daycare centers such as Honey Tree Early Learning Center, My Corner Playroom, Little Hands Learning Center, Jolly Fun House Playschools and many others have been constantly asking the city for money to repair conditions to the centers. Principal of ABC & Me, Ebony Jones remarked, "The resources we have for the children are limited. We can't expect our kids to go far with this lack of resources. We just can't. The teachers we have are amazing, but they always come to me and ask for more money in their budget for more supplies and I just feel awful because I have to turn them down, when I know that it's for the kids. I feel like I'm letting down the kids, but there is absolutely no money to spend."
As the drop-out rate rises, so has the number of fights and delinquent activities. Carla Flores, a teacher at Little Angels Daycare Center, spoke about the rising violence at her center, "the toddlers are not learning as much as they can because of the resources, so they feel that no one cares if they succeed. That's when they resort to violence. They are just angry at this system they will probably be stuck in for the rest of their life. And that's just sad because education is what levels the playing field." Toddlers will steal each others’ toys, graffiti the naptime mats, and not finish their juice as a protest to this unfair system.
Inner-city daycare centers have had a bad rep for education but many blame it on the environment. Latoya Lewis, a teacher for My Corner Playroom, remark on this issue, “Yes, the streets need to be cleaned up and that starts with getting our kids off the streets and in schools. But the tots feel like they can learn more on the streets hustling then read books that have pages torn out. And they know that in other daycare center, the kids there are learning their abc’s on Macs. If we want to enhance their learning abilities, level the playing field, and keep them off the streets and on track, then we need to provide the necessary resources to nourish their young minds before their short attention span falls to the streets. They happens everyday where these kids quickly turn to the streets. You see them walking around, trying to get the other toddlers to join them, wearing baggy pants, their diaper showing, water guns in their pocket, SpongeBob tattoos on their arms. I don’t want that for my baby and neither should you. So they need to give them a safe and nourishing environment. l