Presentation:
Ken Culver was awarded an “Honorary Membership” by the Board of Directors. President Brad explained the criteria for an Honorary Membership:
(A) Eligibility for Honorary Membership. Persons who have distinguished themselves by meritorious service in the furtherance of Rotary ideals may be elected to honorary membership in this club. The term of such membership shall be as determined by the board. Persons may hold honorary membership in more than one club.
(B) Rights and Privileges. Honorary members shall be exempt from the payment of admission fees and dues, shall have no vote and shall not be eligible to hold any office in this club. Such members shall not hold classifications, but shall be entitled to attend all meetings and enjoy all the other privileges of this club. No honorary member of this club is entitled to any rights and privileges in any other club, except for the right to visit other clubs without being the guest of a Rotarian.
President Brad spoke of Ken’s various accomplishments which included his involvement in creating our Rotary Club of Bellingham Foundation starting in his Presidential year of 1996-1997. He was the President of the Foundation until recently. He joined our club in 1989, became a Paul Harris Fellow in 2000, 2001-2002 Community Service Award winner and the 2013-2014 Will Griswold Club Service Award winner. Of course the favorite for Brad was Ken’s contribution as a member, and chair, of the Mt. Baker Board of Directors. He has also been involved with the YMCA and Museum… Ken’s acceptance was really short and sweet “I’m honored.” Congratulations Ken!!
Program: The Bellingham Promise
Dr. Greg Baker, Bellingham School District Superintendent was the featured speaker today. The topic was/is “Bellingham Promise” One quote that is not attributable to Greg is that if he had his druthers, he would shift as much resources as possible to the early childhood education. If that meant short—changing high schools, middle schools etc. that is the way it would be. Now remember that you did not hear that here. Dr. Baker in a short time laid out a persuasive argument for placing much of the resources at the early stages of human development. He even had an economic argument…
There were a lot of statistics. Among the most outstanding were:
- There are as many as 700 new neural connections created in a young brain per second
- By the age of 18 months disparities in vocabulary show up in youngsters with not so good stimulation.
- There is a large chance of developmental delays in children from low income families
- There is a $4-$9 return for each $1 spent on early childhood education.
That’s why it is so important and such a good investment.
Greg also talked about what the school district is doing about early childhood education. It is emphasizing the importance, and relaying this to the parents, teachers and community. The district has instituted a pre-kindergarten to give the kids who need the extra help a chance to succeed in kindergarten. This program is called Promise K.
Tied in with this is a program titled GRADS. This is a program for teenage parents, to give them a day care center at the high school, so the parents can finish high school. Dr. Baker emphasized that they were teaching parents how to be more effective parents, giving their children a better opportunity. This program only exists at Squalicum and Sehome High Schools at present. And there is a waiting list…
He also needled the mayor to step forward and help to fund the pre-K program.
A very short video was also shown bragging about the program. There were much better narrators (young kids) on the video. A suggestion for any future video would be to only use kids to narrate, and discuss the pre-K program. (Just a suggestion). Anyway it was a stimulating program and certainly opened the eyes of this reporter.
.jpg)
