with arms and legs sadly he had also lost his mother would you would you consider helping in partnership with the children of war foundation a fund raising effort has been established to allow him to travel to the united states and receive medical treatment artificial arms and legs and we have the project twenty one thousand well complied for transportation as court medical care and housing if you like to help please visit w w w daft go fund me dot com slash transform a child's child's life or you can visit because so much for to do the time to watch a video that i really hope you can all come together to help me with my collaboration with the children of war foundation don't forget to subscribe to my channel so that you can stay updated just can't pay to get so much well it's very important because it's the preschool for all and it's the all day preschool that's coming in seattle and this sessions where one was about family engagement and one was about binding well and b you my name is holly miller and i'm director of the city of seattle office for education so today we held the first two meetings of six that are helping us to shape the seattle preschool program and i can tell you that these six meetings are absolutely key to how this program is developed from now on so they're really essential to our work so there are several elements in the plan that are focusing on dual language and support of bilingual families for example classroom teachers who are bilingual will get extra compensation they'll get extra money and their salaries for to compensate them for that skill and children if a classroom has three or more bilingual children in the classroom will get extra staffing support to support their development ok well i guess if there were a simple message that i would offer to everyone is that quality matters we have to keep our standards high if we expect to get good outcomes for children so that's why this effort today was so important is that folks were helping us understand how we can implement high quality and also have a complex enough program that really meets a needs all kids we saw a terrific representation from ethnic groups today i was astonished and we're thrilled but we have far more meetings so we hope that we continue to get great diversity of of representation this morning a family engagement session we also had we had more people because i think more people are you know interested in that topic cuts across more lives so we had about sixty folks at that session terrific diversity though so yeah we'll we'll keep working on it i'm erica johnson and i'm the project manager for the seattle preschool program in the city of seattle's office for education well i know the mayor has emphasized the need for community input in basically everything we do but with special emphasis on the seattle preschool program he was everyone's voice heard and involved in the process and so that's why coming out of the community and having this event and making sure everyone has a chance to participate and say what's important to them it's very important point to the wire about the dual language programs well one of our contracting priorities so the city will actually contract with preschool providers across the city to host these classrooms and one of our contracting priorities is to contract with programs to provide dual language programs so that just means that if you all other things being equal and you have one program that has dual language and one that's just modeling will the contract more likely go to the dual language program well i wasn't actually in the room when most of the kind of most important input came in because the folks from my office we stepped out to let everyone just feel free to speak and say what they want and really have that kind of authentic time to to give the input and that's going to come through our facilitators and they are going to pull together all of the products that everyone created here and pull together the feedback and that's going to actually go straight to our advisory committee and they're going to start meeting in the beginning of december so all of the feedback is going to come well it will come to our office obviously it'll come directly to us but it also comes to the advisory committee and then they are going to be charged with asking a few questions how does this help support racial equity how does it support  positive outcomes for children how can it be implemented is it practical is it feasible do we have the capacity do we have the time do we have all of the resources necessary to make this happen and how can we do it in a way that's not  just not just a wish list it's not just a value were thrown out there like hey this sounds great but how can we really really support it yeah there's going to be if you signed in which i know every single one of you did receiving some of the  materials that were used today and also there will be other ways so people who didn't get to come here today they are going to be able to purchase a he threw surveys on line to give whatever information that they wanted to if they couldn't come and then so all the information goes the advice or committee in the advisory committee is going to advise the visor committee advising both the office for education and the mayor and as he deliberates over our implementation plan and that implementation plan is due to city council on february twenty third so there is a quick but there's a there's a process involved and then city council will deliberate on the different elements of program that will get started  open classrooms in the fall come come out to the offense that we're hosting and there's a series of them we have some that are starting we have a few in december we have materials available so if you have if you want to post them in various locations we would love for folks to do that we have interpretation available so no worries just let us know you're coming we'll have someone here sometimes we have people here who aren't being used but where we'd be happy we're ha one nation and manifestation strategist for ny whaler consulting so i own the facilitation company that's here today oh sure portions of today's event is like any big thing that's happened in the the city you want to make sure you get the community a chance to give their opinions and contribute to the development of whatever process so it's really important just because it gets the community out and gets their voices heard so that when decisions are made they're pressing in the conversation now some of these are now the first resource is clearly the office of education for the city of seattle but i also think one of the other resources are any of the programs that are already working with a lot of the programs in the munity already know about the work that's going on and they're going to try to make themselves available and connect the program they're like if a community members already connected to a preschool program that program can help them get more connected to the office of education so you always start where you are in your neighborhood and then you build from there come to community meetings they're so important i know people are busy but my goodness so much of what happens in community meetings ends up having an impact long term so we have to make sure that when we're invited to be a part of a discussion like this we show up and we get our voices heard and documented so it's all about you it's all about you it's all about the programs that will impact you your families your communities and very often programs that will last for generations so you have to make the time it's really important to get in early and often when it comes to making decisions like this my name's mike o'brien and i'm a seattle city council member so today we're talking about preschool specifically about duelling which programs to really exciting time because the voters in seattle just a couple weeks ago passed early education levy to help fund and a pilot form preschool for all youth three and four year olds in seattle and it be fully subsidized for folks so that regardless of your income level you could have access to a very high quality preschool but this is starting new and so we're going to have to build on what we already know in the community and design this new program and the aspect today we're talking about is where do dual language preschools fit into that and as folks know in seattle there's a lot of different languages other than english being spoken in various homes and we want to make sure we have preschools programs that support those types of learners and today it's great because one of the things i'm learning and i've heard before is that kids who grew up in a dual language environment whether that's in the home or in preschool or significant benefits later in life and so it's a real advantage for folks we want to figure out how we can encourage that to language environment and support it  well for me as a city council member it's really important that i grew up in a single language family and english is my only language and most of the policymakers at city come from that background and i want to avoid is making sure when we're putting these resources these millions of dollars into a preschool program there we're not just supporting the background that i came from that i'm familiar with and so it's great for me to hear and i want to make sure as many people in seattle hear the power of these dual language preschool programs and then as a policymaker i want to make sure that we're investing in those programs for all kids in the community and make sure we have some options for folks to welling which is obviously a huge part of that  specifically around the east african community i'm not an expert on this but what i have seen both obviously a lot of young children in various preschool programs that are being raised in households where their parents native tongue is not english and also a lot of parents is really mothers who are acting as preschool teachers in the home or other environments who are making a career out of this so both supporting the youth who are getting educated and supporting the parents or mothers who are making a living off preschool how does this new program wrap around that existing strength and elevate it as opposed to push it off that's going to be really important i