Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott on Monday announced a $500,000 investment into early childhood education with the goal of improving access to childcare programs. 

The grant funding will be managed by the Fund for Educational Excellence and will be used to gather data on child care access and enrollment in Baltimore to help providers improve care for young people with special needs and help drive enrollment through readiness campaigns and assistance from navigators who help parents find programs for their infants and toddlers. 

"Closing the early childhood education gap is no easy task, the mayor said. "It is a problem facing every community and every parent in the country." 

The mayor also said he directed his team to identify investments that the city can make to expand access to and increase awareness of quality Pre-K child care programs in the city.

Early education gap in Baltimore

According to the mayor, a young person who is kindergarten-ready — or those who attend Pre-K — is almost five times more likely to be reading on grade level by the time they get to third grade and is more likely to graduate in 10 years. 

"For neighborhoods that have faced intentional disinvestment for generations, like here in Cherry Hill, the problem is much greater," Mayor Scott said. 

According to the mayor's office, every year in Baltimore, 800 to 1,000 young people enter kindergarten with no prior educational experience, making it harder for them to keep up in school.

"I know this isn't an easy or simple problem to solve, but there are incredible educators, providers and advocates who have been working on this for a very long time," the mayor said.   

Increasing child care facilities in Baltimore 

During the news conference Monday, Mayor Scott also said he directed the Planning Department and Planning Director Tim Keane to identify vacant or underutilized properties in the city that could be repurposed as Pre-K and child care facilities with support from the private sector. 

The department will look at mixed-use properties that could house Pre-K and child care programs. 

Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen directed the council's Education and Youth Committee to take action to increase child care in Baltimore by holding a series of hearings to analyze the cost of child care and access to Pre-K. 

"We think a lot about, like the mayor said, the areas in our city that have been historically and intentionally disinvested, and we see the results is parents who are often extremely stressed out, overburdened by child care, particularly mothers and, in many cases, grandmothers and extended family," Cohen said. "Baltimore is a city that has infinite capacity, that has infinite resources when it comes to early childhood, but it is incumbent on us to help put it together."