“Early literacy lies at the heart of advancing GEEARS’ mission for a Georgia where every young child thrives. It’s not just an essential for third grade reading proficiency. It also predicts a more successful future in school, the workplace, and society. This is why we’re proud to partner with Get Georgia Reading and incorporate the four pillars into our values.”
Kristin Bernhard, Chief Executive Officer
At GEEARS: Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, our mission is to ensure that all Georgia’s children, birth to age five, thrive by championing research-backed policies and investments, fostering collaboration, and leading a statewide movement to advance public will. Through advocacy, research, partnerships, and community engagement, GEEARS rallies business, civic, and government leaders to invest in early childhood. As an alliance, we advance policies and practices that enable young children and their families to achieve success in school, health, and social-emotional development.
We believe strong foundations and unlimited potential come from families, schools, and communities who provide safe, stable, and nurturing environments during a child’s earliest years. And those environments should include an emphasis on language & literacy development.
Like Get Georgia Reading, GEEARS understands that third grade reading proficiency absolutely depends upon high quality, literacy-rich learning in the pre-elementary years. We also know that optimal early learning opportunities must be framed around the values expressed by GGR’s four pillars.
The imperative of early learning has inspired GEEARS to champion Georgia Pre-K improvements, and a “3-K” pilot and advocate for increased funding for Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) child care subsidies. We’ve also fought for the preservation of Head Start and SNAP.
Our policy priorities that strive for greater health and stability for Georgia’s youngest children are natural companions to our focus on early childhood education access. All are essential for building early literacy, which in turn will get more Georgia children reading proficiently by third grade. We’re proud to partner with GGR in our pursuit of these goals.
The GGR pillars and our shared values have shaped GEEARS programs like the Mayor’s Summer Reading Club. With literacy-rich programming produced by more than 100 diverse community partners throughout the summer, the MSRC joyfully promotes early literacy and vocabulary enrichment in children ages birth through five, while engaging their families, community organizations, and child care providers. All programming is oriented around original books produced expressly for the MSRC and provided at no cost to participating children.
The four pillars also align with the Mayor’s PAACT Commitment, a multi-year, City of Atlanta-led investment of $20 million in early education that was conceived and continues to be administered by GEEARS. Today, PAACT: Promise All Atlanta Children Thrive and partners have increased equitable access to high-quality early learning environments across the city by repairing and renovating child care facilities, providing child care scholarships to families, and supporting the early childhood workforce with cash bonuses and professional development.
To learn more about GEEARS, visit our website.