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Success By 6, Local Leaders Give Updates to Stakeholders

Mayor Adler and Paul Cruz at early childhood briefing

UWATX held a breakfast briefing event at Google Fiber on February 5th to update business and philanthropic leaders and stakeholders on how far the Success By 6 program has come–and how many more children still remain unserved.

Success By 6 briefing at Google Fiber Austin

Speakers included Dr. Leah Newkirk Meunier, UWATX Vice President of Mission Advancement; Mayor Steve Adler; Dr. Paul Cruz, Superintendent of Austin ISD; Elizabeth Sobel-Blum, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Catherine Morse, UWATX Board Chair; and Mollie Duckworth, WLC Member.

Speaker Highlights:

–Elizabeth Sobel-Blum noted four numbers to remember:

  • 700 = In the first few years of a child’s life, 700 new neural connections are formed every second.
  • 18 = Differences in the size of a child’s vocabulary first appear at 18 months of age, based on whether they were born into a family with high education and income, or a family with low education and income levels.
  • 2:1 = By age three, children with college-educated parents or primary caregivers had vocabularies 2 to 3x larger than those whose parents had not completed high school.
  • 3:1 = Adults who recall having seven or eight highly stressful experiences in childhood are 3x more likely to have cardiovascular disease.

–Dr. Leah Meunier gave an update on the Success By 6 program. There are 6,344 low-income three-year-olds in Travis County. 2,036 are served through Head Start, childcare subsidies or their local school district; 4,308 remain unserved.

–Mayor Adler noted that the city has increased its funding for preschool by 25% and sees it as a highly important initiative.

View all photos from the event on Flickr.

Thank you to Google Fiber for hosting us and Baker Botts for sponsoring this briefing.