1. You’ve been mayor of Dayton since 2014, following two terms as a City Commissioner. What do you love most about your city?

I really love how gritty and resilient it is. This grittiness is something I saw following the tornadoes, mass shooting and other issues that happened in 2019, a particularly tough year. This strong culture of Dayton has helped our city recover, and the generosity of our people and communities has been really beautiful to see.

Also, Dayton has its own identity. It has a history of innovation, yes, but it also has a history of believing that no one will come in and fix it, so we work to fix it on our own. You can see it in our response to tragedies. After the shooting, our community raised $3.8 million for the victims to support people who lost loved ones and for those who were injured.

Our people are very proud of what this community is accomplishing. We know it has its challenges, but we’re working together to do the best for our community. You can see it in our communities’ demand of action of our state and federal legislators around gun legislation.

Come see our city and you’ll learn how our communities have come together.

2. You decided to call Dayton home after attending the University of Dayton. What has education meant for you?

My parents went to college but didn’t graduate. They made education a key goal for my brother and me. They wanted us to graduate college. They reinforced that every night at dinner, beginning for us at the age of 7 when we had discussions about college, where we’d go to college and when we’d graduate. So, we are first-generation college graduates, and for both of us, it provided the gateway from the working class. I still consider myself a working class kid but getting a college degree has opened doors. My parents didn’t have that opportunity and it’s amazing to see how much more stable our lives are because of our college degrees.

3. Tip O’Neill taught us that “all politics is local.” And you have said that the most effectively functioning part of government is at the local level. Tell me more about how mayors are on the front lines of key national issues like education, housing/homelessness, economic restructuring, gun control and technology.

Because of the gridlock both in our state legislatures and in Washington, D.C., we’re seeing a renaissance of local leadership. It’s out of requirement more than choice because if you have national issues that are affecting your community, like education and housing, there’s no help coming from the statehouses and DC. We have to figure it out locally. And I know from the that amazing efforts are happening at the local level, including Universal Pre-K and stopping evictions so people can have a higher quality of life. This is a big change from the 1970s when there was significant help from Washington, D.C. Now, “locally” is where democracy is happening.

4. Regarding early learning, what are your city’s top challenges and how are you meeting them?

We decided, particularly around the test scores and kindergarten reading readiness, that we must prepare our kids for kindergarten. In the continuum of education, the is a real predictor for how kids do long term. So, we knew that if we prioritized investments in preschool, we could really start moving the needle on the zero to five range.

We’re now in our third full year of our program and we’re making great strides just by investing in classrooms for 4-year-olds. It has had great impact on children ages zero to three as well because the program includes the whole building, and we’ve seen that all the kids’ test scores go up because of this work. Fifty-seven percent more students in the Dayton Public School Districts who attended Preschool Promise sites were ready for kindergarten than children who weren’t enrolled in our program.

5. What will it take to make Dayton an early learning city?

Dayton has invested quite a bit in this early learning area and we’re continuing to do the work. Right now, our focus is 4-year-olds but we’re working to expand it for all children ages zero to 5.

We’ve seen the city and the county—the local government—step up in meaningful ways. The city passed an income tax to fund our high-quality preschool efforts. Our hope is that it would be matched by the state or by the federal government, but we haven’t seen that. So we’re going at it alone.

And we have small partnerships, including with , which gifts free, high-quality books to children from birth until they begin school. But we don’t have any major partners in this work when it comes to state and national funding. We’ve gotten a little bit of state funding, which we’re hoping to leverage in ways for national partnerships, and greater reach and impact. I think that’s the next frontier frankly, and to see more national and state leadership around preschool. That will make a big difference for Dayton.

I love that Burlington’s size and dynamism result in it being a unique place that has both the familiarity of a small town and the attractions – the food, art, economic opportunity – of a big city. As someone who grew up in rural Vermont and then spent more than a decade living in big cities, I feel fortunate to have landed in a place that in many ways offers the best of both worlds.

2. Regarding Early Learning, what are the city’s top challenges?

I’m the son and husband of early childhood educators, and I’m also a close follower of the research that shows that high-quality early care and nurturing can have a huge impact on a child’s life, particularly in the earliest years. Yet, too many children don’t receive that care. In Burlington, one of the barriers we face is that there simply are not enough childcare spaces available and they can be expensive. The city’s research has shown that though about 350 children are born in Burlington each year, there are fewer than 200 high-quality childcare spaces available for the roughly 1,100 children in our community 3 years old and younger.

3. Burlington has launched a program: the . How does the Initiative work and why did you prioritize early childhood development so significantly?

I am a believer that cities must deliver well on basic municipal services, and also must innovate to address the great issues of our time. I see access to and affordability of early childhood education as one of those great issues. From the very beginning of my Administration, I have been drawn to the notion that in a small city like Burlington, where we can almost name every child, there must be a way to ensure that every one of our community’s children, no matter their background, gets the support that they need to succeed. We started studying how to design a program to achieve this in 2015, and what we found is that we would need a multi-pronged approach. In 2018, we launched the Burlington Early Learning Initiative and we have funded it with $500,000 annually in our last three budget cycles. Our program has two parts, each focused on children from birth to age 3: Capacity grants to help organizations expand the high-quality spaces they are able to offer, and a scholarship program to connect families with low incomes to that new capacity. We are starting to see results: The capacity grants are supporting the creation of 85 new high-quality spaces that are coming online over the next 16 months, and we are in our pilot year of the scholarship program and have actually exceeded our first year placement goals.

4. You are a son of Vermont who left the state for education and work opportunities but you returned. What brought you back to your home state?

While I lived outside of the state for nearly 15 years, I always had a deep sense that Vermont was home. Although I had some great jobs and adventures during my twenties and the beginning of my thirties, I was always sure that Vermont would be the place where I would raise a family and to which I would commit my career.

5. What are the key ingredients of an Early Learning City?

Here in Burlington, a few of the principles of our Early Learning Initiative are to focus on ages zero to three, where we know there is the least investment nationally and the greatest potential for impact; to ensure that our limited resources are channeled toward children from families with low incomes; and to seek to strengthen our provider organizations and raise wages for child care workers – thereby helping to fix the childcare system overall. A key ingredient in our ability to get this program right has been our partnership with a local organization, Let’s Grow Kids, to tap into expertise on program design and administration without having to fully build out a new City function. We are also planning to evaluate our program rigorously over time, and hope to be able to show the kind of measurable benefits that will enable us to recruit other funding partners and expand the program as much as five-fold in order to fully serve the need that we see in our community.

Milwaukee is a city rich in diversity.  In many ways, it’s a microcosm of our nation, embodying our most encouraging opportunities as well as our most serious societal challenges. On a daily basis I see both hope and frustration. I also see a city where—in every neighborhood—parents love their children and want to see them get a good education.

2. Regarding Early Learning, what are the city’s top challenges?

There are challenges in affordability, quality and access, including proximity. There have been a number of communities across the country that have raised the issue of quality linked to the wages paid to childcare and pre-K educators; Milwaukee’s experience is much the same. What we hope to do in the City of Milwaukee, is to utilize every available platform, whether through the K-12 system, or education-focused civic organizations or the strong networks of parent-led groups, to improve the lives of Milwaukee’s youngest learners. Numerous stakeholders are dedicated to help these systems improve. As Mayor, I believe we have a moral obligation to increase the “hope factor” by engaging parents, providers and policy makers toward everyone being better informed and educated. Our City government’s role and goal is to ensure a coordinated, aligned and higher standard for serving the entire population of Milwaukee’s youngest children.

3. You’ve been Mayor since 2004. Within the last year, you’ve created an Office of Early Childhood Initiatives. And Milwaukee has been selected as an Early Learning city with an inaugural meeting of the OECI’s Advisory Council in September. What is the Council and why did you prioritize early childhood development so significantly?

I really recognized the challenges in serving our early learners, so I worked with our Common Council to elevate the goal through the creation of the Office of Early Childhood Initiatives (OECI). Part of our reaching the goal and sustaining the standard is through OECI’s work, which will act as the clearinghouse for coordinating the people, places and practices that drive better outcomes for our youngest children. The Council’s structure allows for goal setting and shared decision-making to address what’s needed. The earlier we create an early childhood infrastructure for children and families, the better the guarantee we’ll have for a world-class city. I want that for Milwaukee, and for every child born and raised here.

4. You’re a son of Milwaukee, born and raised in the city’s north and west sides. What has education meant for your life?

Education has opened countless doors for me. It has given me the opportunity to have a career and experiences I could never have dreamed of if not for the educational opportunities I’ve had.

5. What are the key ingredients for building an Early Learning city?

I recognize that the key to becoming an Early Learning city is the City’s leader acting as the executive convener for everything that touches our youngest learners in any educational setting. We need a keen eye for making sure they get the very best of the best. That includes community-based environments rich with resources, early childhood educators who are valued by profession and pay, and the assurance of seamless educational standards in every setting throughout the city.  My goal is to get us to that position of what I would call, our shared level best, and to do it as soon as possible.

I love the people. Having grown up in the 19^th Ward, I know first-hand many of the challenges the people of Rochester face. But there’s a lot of hope, a lot of creativity, a lot of entrepreneurship. There’s also a great spirit of community and collaboration. If you visit my city, you’ll see some amazing murals; you’ll get to hear top-notch musicians; you’ll rub shoulders with dynamic inventors and entrepreneurs. It’s a fun place.

2. Regarding Early Learning, what are the city’s top challenges?

About half of our children are growing up in poverty. About a third of all families live below the federal poverty level, and our city school district has had a revolving door of superintendents that makes it hard to sustain progress. There are jobs being created in Rochester, but we need to do more to make sure our residents have the skills and education to fill those positions and to earn a living wage.

3. You’ve been Mayor since Jan. 1, 2014. Just two months into your tenure, you formed an Early Learning Council. What is the Council and why did you prioritize early childhood development so significantly and early in your tenure?

I started the Early Learning Council — made up of experts, business leaders, funders, practitioners and parents — because I knew education was key to giving Rochester’s children a fighting chance at life. That meant building a strong foundation for learning – and that’s why we started the 3-to-3 initiative. With high quality preschool and evaluation and remediation for any developmental delays by age 3, we’re getting kids on track to read by grade 3, which is critical to future success in school.

4. You’re a daughter of Rochester, born and raised in the city’s 19^th Ward neighborhood. What has education meant for your life?

Education has meant everything in my life. My grandparents were sharecroppers in the South before they came to Rochester to give our family better opportunities. Like many Rochester kids, I faced challenges as a teen, and I benefited from the support of people like my grandfather and my high school principal. I knew I wanted to be a lawyer from a young age, but it took persistence for me to achieve my goals.

5. What are the key ingredients for building an Early Learning city? 

One of the things that allows Rochester to stand out in addressing early childhood education is that it is a community effort and it involves our local businesses, our universities, our health centers and our nonprofit community. Collectively, we’re working to empower parents as their children’s first teachers. And we’ve got wonderful professional men and women who serve as mentors in our schools, showing kids that success is possible. These partnerships — and our collective commitment — are critical to our success.