There’s no single element more essential to building a better, stronger and more vibrant Hawaii than early child development. Far too many of our children are starting school not ready to succeed.

We know what we need to know and now must have the long term focus and discipline to take action. The science is well understood. 85% of a child’s brain development occurs by the time they are 5 years old. By the age of 3, a young brain is 2 ½ times more active than the brains of adults.

But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean there’s no hope for adults. To me it means we have to use our adult brains to help our kids to succeed early. We must be pragmatic and relentless, because the returns will be huge.

Right now we spend hundreds of millions of state taxpayer dollars cleaning up after the problems that get created because we aren’t giving children what they need on the front end. Whether it’s in the prison system, mental health, or in education, the smartest money we can invest is in a child’s early years.

Programs to support the sturdy development of “brain architecture” can be put in place simply by redirecting some of more than one billion dollars that the Departments of Health, Human Services and Public Safety already spend on social services. For every one dollar invested in early childhood development, the state receives $4 in value, according to Hawaii’s Good Beginnings Alliance.

The Good Beginnings Alliance also points out that the U.S. military has made high quality early childhood education a priority, because they found that 75 percent of young people ages 17 to 24 (over 100,000 in Hawaii) are unable to enlist in the military because they fail to graduate high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit.

Former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals John M. Shalikashvili and Henry H. Shelton said “We believe that investing in our children through early childhood education is not a Republican or Democratic issue. It’s a plain common sense issue critical to our National Security.”

If you believe that the time has come to close the gap between what we know about the value of early childhood development and what we are doing about it, please support me by making a contribution. And then let’s work on it together.

Let’s keep our focus on the future. Mahalo.