Sitting, from left, film director Rob Reiner, teacher Janice Hall, and Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, D-Oakland, read a story to 5-year-old children in 2004, at St. Vincent’s Day Home in Oakland, Calif. Reiner championed a state initiative to raise tobacco taxes to pay for children’s education and health care.
Credit: AP Photo/Ben Margot
Today, we mourn the deeply tragic death of Rob Reiner, a man known best for an impressive range of film classics. I’ve seen most of his movies, but I knew him best for his remarkable accomplishment in an entirely different realm, when he changed the course of education and health for California’s young children.
In the mid-1990s, Reiner had already started an initiative called “I Am Your Child” to increase awareness of the growing knowledge around brain development in the early months and years of children’s lives. The research and discussion generated through this initiative led to the plan for a statewide ballot initiative to support services for children 0-5 and their families.
Reiner went to work and pulled together Hollywood colleagues and politicians from both parties to support Proposition 10, a constitutional amendment that created a cigarette tax to fund education and support for families with children 0-5 across the state. Voter-approved in the November 1998 election, this new funding source continues to support what we now know as First 5 both at the state level and in every county.
But the money alone is not what made First 5 the success it has been. Reiner and his team ensured the initiative was carefully crafted so that county decision-making drove innovation. Counties were required to establish local public commissions consisting largely of community members representing various constituencies while limiting the number of participating county officials. The local funds were emphatically not to be used to supplant existing funds and activities, but rather to foster new, creative programs and services tailored to local needs.
When I came to First 5 in 2000, local commissions were still trying to sort all this out; every county was a startup. Local innovation is not always easy, especially when real money is involved. Messes were made and had to be cleaned up. Relationships could be strained. But eventually, it was this process that led to a flourishing of ideas and approaches to meeting the educational, socio-emotional and health needs of children 0-5 across the state. The last 25 years have seen a remarkable uplift in quality in all kinds of early education settings.
Training and professional development for providers has dramatically increased. Teaching standards have been clarified and strengthened. More children than ever receive regular developmental screening and early intervention. Home visiting services and parent support centers have provided additional pathways to support parents in understanding their child’s developmental progress.
Early in their development, local First 5s understood that enhancing local programs would not be enough to create lasting change. To that end, First 5’s banded together regionally and formed a state association to raise awareness among policymakers of families’ needs to ensure all children are appropriately ready for school at age 5.
After many years of diligent education, we began to see a shift in legislative attitudes toward early childhood, particularly as legislators with backgrounds in the field rose to leadership. We saw county supervisors who served on local First 5 commissions taking that experience with them to the state Legislature; a few even to Congress.
We knew we had entered a new era when newly elected Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first budget included for the first time an “Early Childhood” section, one that included many of the policies we had been promoting. At last, we thought, a governor who gets it. We could be excused for taking a little credit for that.
Reiner remained active in First 5’s development for several years after Proposition 10 passed, serving as the first chair of the California First 5 Commission, and encouraging innovation at the state level. A school-readiness initiative at the state level funneled additional funds to county commissions to augment local activities.
And an extremely effective advertising campaign put First 5 in the minds of Californians everywhere. Thereafter, he would speak at the occasional statewide meeting, basking in the success of what he claimed started as an idea that came to him while driving one day. He also would talk about his parents, and never failed to mention his mother’s scene-stealing line in his movie “When Harry Met Sally.”
As I neared retirement, 20 years after Proposition 10, I sometimes thought I should get a vanity plate for my car, because I knew what it would say. Today, I still want to say, along with all Californians:
Thanks, Rob.
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Sean Casey was executive director of First 5 Contra Costa for 15 years.
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