[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi, and welcome to Inside Louisville, where we introduce you to the people, places, and things that make up Kentucky's largest city.

This week, we go inside thrive by five.

Louisville.

This nonprofit organization is the brainchild of the Mayor's Early Learning Action Group, established to make universal pre-K available to every three and four year old in the city.

Right now in Jefferson County, 61% of children who enter JCPS in kindergarten aren't ready.

That means they're behind from the start.

Thrive by Five was created to implement a five year plan to make universal pre-K a reality in Louisville.

One of the first steps was recruiting existing preschools and child care centers to participate in a pilot program.

The Quality Plus pilot program launched in late 2025.

Here's a look inside one of those centers.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Today.

They say it takes a village.

For thrive by five.

That village consists of 26 early learning centers identified to be part of the Quality Plus pilot program.

>> Today is Friday.

Today is Friday.

>> So this time in their life, it's a very.

You're in the developmental phases.

So we try to get them socially available emotionally, academically ready.

So there's a lot that happens in that phase and that age group.

>> Max Child Care in southwest Louisville is one of those early learning centers selected for the two year pilot.

They are a nationally accredited level five early learning center.

You can call it a lot of things, but don't call it daycare.

>> When I think of daycare, I think of babysitting.

I think of someone taking their child to somewhere.

I'm going on a date.

I need you to watch my child for a moment.

When you think about a high quality program and when you think about education, we're teaching, we're engaging.

It's not the same.

We're preparing your child for a better future.

And our start to kindergarten.

>> A, B, c, DEFG.

>> Studies show kindergarten readiness leads to later academic success.

And for many parents, it's not only about kindergarten readiness.

Child care is a necessity.

>> So I'm a dental hygienist and so I make good money.

But it's just being a single mom, it's really hard to be able to, you know, pay for daycare and all the daily necessities that we need.

So I've done so many budgets and I've found I've called so many daycares trying to figure out what I'm going to do.

And the cheapest that I found was going to be over $400 a week.

I mean, and I couldn't afford that at all.

>> Thrive by five is connecting parents with those early learning centers and offering scholarships for those families who don't qualify for other assistance.

>> I'm in that in-between setting to where I don't get help with daycare assistance or like food stamps or anything like that.

So it's like, this program is so great for working families because we'll qualify.

>> The nonprofit is also investing directly in the centers to increase not only access, but quality too.

>> We've have received technology assistance, educational assistance.

We've had new reading systems, new sound systems for the reading materials, everything just to keep us going.

Training hours, professional development, and not only us, but they're trying to get as many facilities as they can because that requires a lot to maintain the consistency of a quality child care facility.

>> Thrive by five is betting this is an investment that will pay off in the long run.

>> That's an important part for a kid in this phase, is developing those skills, and those skills turn into long life skills.

And you have to think ten, 15, 20 years from now, these same children who were molding now are going to be our doctors, our lawyers, our caregivers.

So what would you invest in them early on?

Its positivity, a safe and nurturing environment.

That's why that's important because pretty soon they'll be taking care of you and I.

>> Raelene Robinson is the executive director of Thrive by five Louisville.

And Doctor Thomas Williams is joining us to as director of programs for Thrive by Five.

So we just saw there what's happening on the ground there at Max Child Care, which is one of these quality plus pilot programs.

So explain this phased approach to making this a reality across the city.

>> Yeah.

So thrive by five.

Louisville started just about a year ago.

And the early childhood education sector is very, very intricate.

And we know that there's a lot of things that we would like to improve on.

One of them being quality.

We want to increase the access for families to access early childhood education.

And we also have a workforce issue.

So we have lots of different things that we're working on.

Quality plus is our flagship program.

And Doctor Williams has done amazing work with our Quality Plus sites and helping us increase the quality.

So I'll let him talk a little bit about what that looks like, what that means and what we're doing.

>> Yeah.

So quality and quality plus.

So when we think about quality, we think of high quality programs in our, in our early learning programs.

And when we think about quality plus in the thrive way, it's more of how are we providing resources and supports in order for these programs to be high quality and running effectively.

>> And we also heard from the parents, and that's another aspect of it.

These parents who this parent particularly never qualified for any type of assistance.

But child care is too expensive.

She's working in a great job.

So how is that?

How are you all providing funding to those families?

How does that work?

>> Yeah, you know, Kelsey, this is something we hear all the time.

Early learning is incredibly expensive.

It's incredibly expensive because you literally need people to do the work.

You literally have to hand your child off to somebody in order for you to go to work.

And families across the city, families across the state are having to make really difficult decisions.

These decisions are essentially, is it more cost effective for me to stay home with a child or to go back to work?

And so thrive is working on increasing access because we know that when a child has an interaction with an early learning environment, it is they are far better ready for kindergarten and being ready for school, regardless of what that looks like for them.

And so with the average early learning setting being about $14,500 a year, that's sometimes more than a college education.

For a year.

We are providing scholarships to families who could use the assistance.

And so what this looks like is we are going up to about 400% of the federal poverty guidelines.

What that means is it's about $132,000 for a family of four.

Wow.

And so what we are really looking at is how many families does this enable somebody in the household to go back to work?

>> And obviously, the parent issue is one thing, but let's talk about the impact for these three and four year olds and how that impacts their readiness for kindergarten.

But beyond that, when it comes to academic success.

>> Yeah, yeah.

So, absolutely.

So when we think about kindergarten readiness, kindergarten readiness is more than just academics.

The academic foundation, kindergarten readiness is making sure that we're supporting children physically, socially, emotionally, and developmentally and developmentally in order, in order for them to learn and succeed in school.

>> And we know that children who are prepared for kindergarten have a 20% higher high school graduation rate.

We know that they tend to earn more money across their lifetime.

And so there is a part of it that is very much focused on the child and getting them academically and socially, emotionally ready for school.

But also, we are setting these children up to be lifelong, productive citizens by addressing issues early.

>> Absolutely.

And also looking at the development of milestones along with those kindergarten readiness, just to make sure we're meeting the needs of the whole child.

>> So I think everybody can agree that, you know, parents need to be able to work and kids need to be ready for kindergarten, but at what cost?

Right?

And so the critical piece of this is how is this all being paid for?

And this particular program is a public private partnership.

Explain how that works.

>> Yeah, we have been very intentional about how we've moved through this space.

Yes.

Early learning is very expensive.

We also know that there's we are solving problems that we as a society are paying for later in life.

And so with our public private partnership, we have taken a bit of a different route than other cities have taken.

A lot of other cities have gone to public funding mechanisms to fund this work.

And through a lot of early diligence that many people across the city did, we wanted to take a look at public and private partnerships, because there are benefits to everybody in our community when we can get a child into early learning.

And so we have an early allocation from Louisville Metro government, and we also have secured donations, grants from local and national foundations who are looking at what an investment in this work will do.

So we're looking at and and we're talking about really diligently what the ROI on this is.

And it's it is a big dollar.

It is very expensive.

But we know that when we when we invest these dollars, we can figure out a solution that will help our city grow in the future.

>> So let's go back to the beginning.

Explain how this program was conceived in the first place and and why here, right.

>> So.

Mayor Craig Greenberg knew that early learning was something that the city talked about but not yet tackled.

So when he came into office, he created a group that's called the Mayor's Early Learning Action Group.

And it was a number of people, people who have been in the field for several decades, people who were new.

It included parents.

It included community members.

And the group did some really, really deep, diligent work on what would it take for us to get every three and four year old in a quality early learning setting, no matter what part of the city you live in, every child.

And so this group, they did several studies.

There was a study that was done by Metro United Way about workforce readiness or workforce demand.

There was a study done on parents like, what are parents looking for?

Where are we missing the boat?

And all of this work, as well as looking at nationally, what's being done, came to a recommendation from that group to create an entity to tackle this problem.

And we were created as an independent 501 C three, because we really wanted to be able to navigate the public and the private waters easily.

And so, you know, that created this vision for thrive by five Louisville, we did out coming out of that recommendation were three focus areas.

Facilities.

The margins in early learning education are very low.

And sometimes when when providers, small business owners are having to make decisions, they're choosing to invest in the children and the and their workers instead of their buildings.

So we knew facilities was something we had to tackle.

We knew that the workforce was something that we had to tackle, and then family financial assistance and financial assistance really includes assistance to families, but also to the providers.

And so that has been our guiding document as we launched.

And as we started to look at how how do we look at this differently?

How do we look at the workforce issue in early learning as a workforce issue, and what are the things that we can do to incentivize and recruit more people to work in this area?

And so we're really looking at it from an innovative and different perspective than we have.

>> The mayor has projected that the cost to make this accessible to anyone.

Would be approximately $35 million a year.

Now, is that something that you think will always require public funding, or could it eventually be sustainable?

>> Well, I think that when you look at the sector as a whole, it is a very intricate issue.

And so we have lots of issues that are playing into that.

For example, we have a workforce issue with early childhood education and the the benefit of a public private partnership for thrive has been that we are not focusing on one singular input into the early learning sector to find a solution.

So we are focusing on parents, and we are focusing on the children kind of taking a deep look at what are we doing in the early learning centers to get them ready for kindergarten.

But we're also looking at things like workforce and our facilities, because all of these things play into that.

Now, to get to the question on funding, I do believe if we can stabilize the sector, if we can get to a point where centers are full, parents have a way to pay for this.

And we're operating sort of like with all cylinders running, we will have a more affordable cost on it.

Now, what we are doing through the Quality Plus pilot is that we're really evaluating that.

And so as we were planning, you know, in our early months, we kept coming back to the question of what does it look like when we have a fully supported early learning sector?

And that means partnering with other programs in the city and in the state.

Our state funded preschool through JCPS, our two Head Start programs here in the city, working together with Bezos Academy, we are all here to do the same work and achieve the same goal.

And so thrive is through family navigation services.

Not only are we offering scholarships, but we are able to talk to parents about their needs and make a recommendation and say, you know what?

JCPS might be the best option for you and your family.

Or maybe it's a head start or early Head Start program.

And that's something different that we're looking at.

>> How is this different from the statewide pre-K for all initiative, that there's a couple pilot programs in different counties?

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> So so I'll start with saying is that we all, whether it's pre-K for all or whether it's thrive by five, we all want the same for our young children and families.

We want them to be ready to learn and to succeed in whichever environment it is.

If it's pre-K for all or thrive by five, or a state funded preschool program.

So I'll start there.

But what differs, you know, I would say is that what we're focusing on, not just four year olds, you know, we're focusing on supporting those who are three and four in order to make sure that they are successful for preschool and beyond.

>> I will also say, I, I think that we are all in agreement, whether it's here in Louisville or it's in Paducah, that focusing on early childhood education is something that we as a state are ready to talk about, and that hasn't always been the case.

While we've been talking about it for a long time, there's lots of different communities who are coming at this problem from a different way.

We do know that the needs in Louisville are different than maybe the needs in in one of the rural counties.

And so we collectively are focused on this will help the whole state rise to a level that we want to get it to.

But also we recognize that there's different solutions for different parts of the state.

In Louisville, we very strongly believe in a mixed delivery system, and that mixed delivery system includes our partners at JCPS and Head Start and Bezos.

>> And we have all those.

>> Yes.

>> And some communities don't.

>> Correct.

But also like our private childcare centers, whether those are nonprofit or for profit small businesses, we believe that all of those entities together serve as the best model for getting every child ready for kindergarten.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

And that's been some of the pushback in Frankfort, too, from the statewide model is like, this will push out some of those private childcare facilities.

So how is the Louisville program?

Do you see it as being a model for other communities to learn from and grow off of, say it could be statewide?

>> Absolutely.

Like we're listening to the providers.

I'll start there is that we're listening to them and trying to understand their needs in order to support them.

Everything we do is with the provider and with the child and family in mind.

So with the quality plus, as Raelene mentioned with the program, is that we have 26 pilot programs.

And within this, within these individual sites, we're working with them to see what goals they want to focus on in order for them to have their high quality early childhood program.

So again, it's not a top down approach.

We're listening.

We have our ears to everything that's going on in order to ensure that we are meeting the needs of the site and their community.

>> I will also add our family navigation program is is different than what we have seen.

The pathway for families use in in previously.

And so I like to refer to it as a concierge program because every family is different, every family has different needs.

And those family navigators are spending time, whether it's on the phone, on Zoom, whatever that is in a community setting with those families to figure out what they're comfortable with, how do we get it paid and what is the best path forward for that?

And I think that whether you're in whether you're in an urban or rural area, that is a key component of how we're approaching families to lift our communities.

>> Yeah.

You mentioned this is just early stages.

This is a five year program, right, of approach.

What what still is part of that five years?

What's happening next?

And then what does this look like beyond that?

Yeah.

>> So yes, we, we have a long term plan of where we want to be in the city.

Some of the things that we know that still have to be addressed is the program team is doing a tremendous job working with our pilot sites on curriculum and fidelity to curriculum.

And how do we how do we remove that gap between preschool and childcare?

But also, you know, there are several things that Kentucky is doing to lead the way in the country around childcare that we really don't talk about too much.

One of them is called the Employee Childcare Assistance Partnership.

We call it Icap.

But it is this amazing benefit that started probably about two years ago.

I would say that the state will match a contribution to help their employees pay for childcare.

So let's just say if we had a local corporation who was willing to contribute $200 a month for their employees to pay for childcare, the state can either match that at 50% or 100%.

And so you're looking at the potential of $400 a month for a family through their employees.

That's also a really incredible retention tool for employers.

And so it is a new program.

I was just at a conference last week, and they were talking about Kentucky in this very unique program that we have.

And so we're looking at ways how do we work with the business community and partner with the state in a way that really lifts this up and gets more local companies to take advantage of it?

>> You see it as an economic development issue.

>> Absolutely.

Yeah.

Whether we're talking about workforce in the sense of the early childhood education workforce or our workforce in general, and recruiting new talent to the city.

I mean, if we are looking to be an economic engine in the US and we are working with companies to come here, we have to be able to take care of their kids.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> And the city leaders, other nonprofit partners have really taken to this.

And that's what I find to be one of the most exciting aspects of this work is that we as a city, we get it.

Yeah.

Right.

And, and it's been all hands on deck about, you know, how do we structure this in a way that helps every family thrive?

And also, we're an emerging city in, in how we're doing business.

And so a lot of these things that we're focusing on while, yes, the child and the child development is incredibly important.

There's also another side of this.

There's the parent side of it.

That's really.

Transformational in how we're addressing who we support in the community.

>> Are there other cities doing similar programs to this, and have you learned from those?

Yeah, yeah.

>> So we know that a couple of our I'll call them sister cities, for lack of a better word.

But cities like Denver, Dayton, Cincinnati, New Orleans have all started to tackle this issue.

But also nationally, we're just seeing the conversation around this early learning school readiness issue.

It's it's everywhere.

And what we know is that it's a bipartisan issue.

I think everybody can agree that getting children into quality settings is something that we want to tackle.

Now, how we get there is something that, you know, different cities have different needs and different ways of tackling it.

And so we are incredibly proud of the work we're doing here in Louisville, because we've had the Small support of the mayor and Louisville Metro Council that have said, this is what we want to do.

You all take it with all of the experts at the table and and show us how to fix it.

And that's been an incredible blessing to thrive by five.

And it's I believe it's really what's going to be the game changer for us to be able to pivot and create innovation around this issue.

>> Yeah.

>> We're doing the work and, and just to thank all of our partners because we couldn't do it without them.

Because again, it takes it takes a village, right?

It takes a village in order to move the needle.

And I think that we're doing that.

>> You can watch and share this episode anytime.

You can find it online at ket.org/insidelouisville.

And don't forget to follow us on social media to follow along with the stories happening in our city.

You can find us on Instagram at KET N LOU.

Thanks for spending a little time getting to know Louisville.

I hope we'll see you here next time.

Until then, make it a great week.