Latest news, weather, high school sports for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

MARQUETTE -- It's called the zero to five plan.

President Barack Obama's plans call for $10 billion to be pumped into funding early childhood education programs.  The professionals at today's 25th annual Early Childhood Conference at NMU say this funding could be beneficial.

"The research indicates that when young children especially from low income circumstances and cultural minorities have good early year lives, that when they have their basic needs met for health and shelter and stability and their learning needs met through encouragement and support and lots of fun things to be actively involved with, those kids do better in school and in life," said Dr. Dan Gartrell, Professor of Early Childhood Education at Bemidji State University in northern Minnesota.

Without proper funding, there would be fewer programs, the quality of care would suffer, and the children would suffer.

"The number of licensed facilities has decreased and a lot of that is due to economic times and families losing jobs or being laid off.  For example with the mines and everything; licensed programs aren't necessary able to continue going," said Marianne Saarivirta-Kolpack, the Executive Director at 4C of the U.P.

And it's not just about funding for these programs.

"We need to have quality standards for childcare programs, but we need to give them the resources that they can improve the quality of service to meet these quality standards," Gartrell stated.

So what's needed?  More programs and further education to better train professionals.