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While many people are familiar with Pre-K 4 SA’s four education centers serving young children around San Antonio, some may be unfamiliar with the schools’ efforts to provide professional development to community educators, connect providers with one another and strengthen the overall early childhood education ecosystem.
Pre-K 4 SA is an early childhood education initiative that supports making high-quality early learning accessible for children. Voters first approved creation of the initiative through a one-eighth-cent sales tax in 2012. It was reauthorized for another eight-year period in 2020 and is now on the November ballot for a 20-year reauthorization period.
Sarah Baray, the initiative’s chief executive officer, said Pre-K 4 SA’s four education centers are designed to serve as demonstration sites.
“The vision of Pre-K 4 SA, which long precedes me, was really to change the entire ecosystem by creating these demonstration sites that show what’s possible,” Baray said. “And then helping other providers to replicate those programs, those practices, so that a family has access to high-quality early learning wherever they choose to have their child educated.”
Large windows looking into the center’s classrooms support Pre-K 4 SA in welcoming current and aspiring educators to observe and learn from staff. The South Education Center also has three observation rooms that look directly into classrooms.
“If someone’s earning their child development associate’s, they’ll go to the classes, but then they’ll also have time to come in here and look at ‘what does it look like in practice?’ and talk with teachers,” Baray said.
Pre-K 4 SA leads the San Antonio Shared Services Alliance, which comprises a network of childcare providers that share resources and collaborate to improve their operations.
Edna Bermea, director and owner of Imagination Child Development Center, credits the alliance with giving her the opportunity to visit and learn from other centers. She was inspired to buy land and construct a new building, bringing her enrollment capacity from 42 to 259.
Bermea said she knows the alliance has helped centers like hers acquire and maintain Texas Rising Star quality ratings. Imagination Child Development Center has maintained a four-star rating since 2020.
The center has also supported many of its teachers in earning their Child Development Associate® (CDA) certification.
“It’s really, really, really neat being part of the alliance because we have a lot of resources, like we have the director coaches, we have teacher coaches,” Bermea said, “And then … we also have sometimes we have things going on with licensing or things come up, then we can reach out to other fellow shared service alliance members, so that they can guide us a little bit of, ‘how can we resolve this issue?’”
When the alliance first began in 2019, Baray said it was evident that many providers viewed Pre-K 4 SA and one another as the competition.
“Through many conversations and understanding, we’re like, ‘there’s plenty of families for all of us to serve’ and ‘let’s work together because if we work together, we can all get ahead,’” Baray said. “And they began to see each other as not competition, us not as competition, but as part of a larger solution.”
Pre-K 4 SA currently partners with about 90 childcare providers. Elaine Mendoza, tri-chair of the Renew Pre-K 4 SA campaign as well as chair of the board for Pre-K 4 SA, said the program hopes to increase to 300 partners.
“Pre-K 4 SA is not gonna build a Pre-K 4 SA center on every corner,” Mendoza said. “That’s not the purpose. We have our demonstration sites — these four centers — and we have our mission, our goal. The way we’re going to lift it all up across this community is by working with the whole ecosystem to make sure everybody is in sync with early childhood education.”
Baray echoed a similar sentiment about Pre-K 4 SA’s future goals.
“Pre-K 4 SA is really about San Antonio having a strong early childhood ecosystem, and really our authorization is about being able to be the first city in the country that figures out early learning and care makes it affordable, accessible for families through public-private partnerships and working across the system.”
