Karen Howell-Clark, United Way’s Director of Early Learning, is Voting YES on King County Proposition 1, Best Starts for Kids.  With ballots arriving in the mail, Karen reminds you to vote, and asks you to consider supporting King County Prop. 1, Best Starts for Kids.

Karen, like all of us at United Way, wants every child in King County to succeed in school and life. We have an ambitious goal to raise the percentage of kids ready for kindergarten from the current 40% to 80% over the next five years. Only by working together with many partners can we achieve a transformation of this scale.

Your philanthropy and volunteerism make a lot of great things happen. One of the best roles philanthropy can play is to demonstrate proof-of-concept. This mean ensuring a program is effective and saves public dollars so that taxpayers can invest on a larger scale with assurance that their investments  prevent expensive, negative outcomes like jail time, hospital visits, poor mental health, addiction, and homelessness – all things that cost taxpayers a bundle and impact everyone’s quality of life.

Wait, what? We know enough to prevent those bad outcomes? We could do things now to ensure young kids today are healthier and can face fewer serious life challenges than many of us have?  Actually, YES! We do.

Best Starts for Kids will invest countywide in the types of programs United Way has proven are effective. In early childhood these could include our signature Parent-Child Home Program, our investments in child care provider training, and screenings and treatment for developmental delays. In homelessness, it could mean keeping teens and young children from life on the streets. The important work you support through United Way has the potential, through Best Starts for Kids / KC Prop. 1, to scale up and by doing so to change our entire region.

You’re already supporting preventive solutions like these through gifts of your time and money to United Way, so why not leverage your investment by voting yes? It’s going to take all of us giving, volunteering, and making smart public policy to make big change happen.

United Way’s staff and supporters know what works to prevent poor outcomes and help people contribute to society. We do that work every day. Let’s broaden support for this great work. Please open your ballot as soon as it arrives and vote YES for Best Starts for Kids, King County Proposition 1.