{"id":22721,"date":"2014-07-29T16:21:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T20:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=22721"},"modified":"2014-07-29T16:21:14","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T20:21:14","slug":"letter-das-back-pre-k-to-fight-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=22721","title":{"rendered":"Letter: DA&#8217;s back pre-K to fight crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>To The Editor,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Letters1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-897875\" style=\"margin: 4px;\" alt=\"Letters1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Letters1.jpg\" width=\"140\" height=\"98\" \/><\/a>The passage of the 2014-15 state budget included an important funding increase for future crime prevention \u2013 a $10 million increase for PA Pre-K Counts.<\/p>\n<p>What does Pre-K have to do with crime prevention?<\/p>\n<p>Considering that approximately 70 percent of our nation\u2019s state prison population failed to receive a high school diploma, education is a pivotal factor between incarceration and productive citizenship. Long-term research is clear that high quality pre-k can boost graduation rates by as much as 44 percent and keep young people on the right side of the law.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, sans-serif;\">Knowing this, district attorneys have long supported investments in high-quality pre-kindergarten as a key crime prevention strategy.<!--more--><!--more--><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: arial, sans-serif;\">Unfortunately, even with this funding increase, more than 65,000 three- and four-year-olds in southeast PA and more than 200,000 statewide do not have access to high-quality pre-k programs. For this reason, we support the Pre-K for PA Campaign<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Symbol;\">,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-family: arial, sans-serif;\">a non-partisan effort seeking greater state investment in high-quality pre-kindergarten programs to ensure that all children are ready for and succeed in school.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As we discuss important issues in this year\u2019s state elections, we should recognize that expanding access to high-quality pre-kindergarten not only promotes school readiness, but future crime prevention as well.\u00a0 We encourage you to join us in supporting Pre-K for PA by visiting the Campaign\u2019s website at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/prekforpa.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">prekforpa.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Risa Ferman<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Montgomery County District Attorney\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>John Whelan\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Delaware County District Attorney\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Thomas Hogan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><strong>Chester County District Attorney<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Ferman, Whelan, and Hogan are members of Fight Crime: Invest In Kids &#8211; a bipartisan, nonprofit, anti-crime organization comprised of nearly 5,000 police chiefs, sheriffs and district attorneys, more than 200 of whom are in Pennsylvania.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To The Editor, The passage of the 2014-15 state budget included an important funding increase for future crime prevention \u2013 a $10 million increase for PA Pre-K Counts. What does Pre-K have to do with crime prevention? Considering that approximately 70 percent of our nation\u2019s state prison population failed to receive a high school diploma, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[685,1172,1027,5902,903,2576],"class_list":["post-22721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","tag-crime","tag-district-attorney","tag-education","tag-pre-k","tag-state-funding","tag-thomas-p-hogan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}