Raimondo marks 1,000 days
Governor travels state in celebration of 1,000th day in office
WOONSOCKET – The children attending Highland Park Children’s Center, at 2390 Mendon Road, got a special treat at the end of the day on Monday, an ice cream party served up by Gov. Gina M. Raimondo as part of her 1,000 days in office tour promoting the good things around Rhode Island and efforts to increase employment.
Although, Highland’s event was an ice cream party for preschoolers, it also served to call attention to the need for working families to have good daycare opportunities for children.
“The Governor has been a very good friend to the City of Woonsocket so I am not surprised that she would include Woonsocket in her 1,000 days tour,” Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt said after joining the Governor in serving up the cool stuff.
“She knows the importance of early childhood education and I also have been supportive of early childhood programs and all-day kindergarten here in the city,” she said.
Baldelli-Hunt said there is an important connection between making sure families have education and daycare options and improving the economy by increasing employment.
“Working parents need to have options for daycare and preschool so that they can provide for their families,” she said.
Mary Varr, the executive director of Woonsocket Head Start, the agency running Highland Park Center, said the daycare was pleased to host the Governor on her tour and noted that she has been very supportive of early childhood education in the state. “She definitely is committed to high quality early childhood education and that makes sense because parents need to have a place to bring their child when they are going to finish school or go to work,” she said.
Raimondo said her tour had taken her from “Westerly to Woonsocket and every place in between, Pawtucket, Providence, Warwick, East Greenwich, and a few other stops,” and noted “it’s been great.”
The visits were a “really great opportunity to talk to Rhode Islanders and hear how they are doing, what’s working, what we can do better at and just connect to people and see how people are doing. So it’s been a great day,” she said.
And as for Highland, the final stop, Raimondo said the center was “a great facility, high quality child care, a nice facility,” and even more important, offered “high quality teachers and instructors.”
The governor said the state needs to “keep investing in child care. It is the right thing to do for our kids.”