Thank you for the question, Mr. Long.
Although child care and licensed child care are very important in the situations where families are living in poverty, we definitely feel that more supports are needed for parents. The proposed pilot and the one that's operating in the south end right now are to engage not only the children but the parents, because the parents are the ones who the kids go home to every day. We try to instill skills in them, whether it's employability skills or just basic parenting skills to help them when the children come home at night.
That's what we're proposing through this model: to continue to engage parents. I think it's an issue in this school districts as well as kids go to school. If the parents aren't accountable and engaged, then the kids lose out at the end of the day, which also affects their learning. This model works to involve both the children and the parents in different ways, whether individually or together.