Peter Nowak’s investment in the restaurant business has paid off. He now owns and operates six McDonald’s in Pensacola.

Nowak is hoping that his investment in early learning pays off as well.

Nowak’s Learn & Earn project at Woodlands Heights Community Resource Center is designed to help preschool children learn while earning coupons for free meals at McDonald’s.

"If we don’t start here, we don’t have a chance in high school,” said Nowak, CEO of Nowak Enterprises. “I want people to come to the center to get an early start and talk about early learning.”

The Earn & Learn program will offer more than 100 video messages in areas such as phonics, geography, math and language arts. Designed in 2012 with the help of the Early Learning Coalition, the program follows the lessons of the state’s voluntary prekindergarten curriculum.

Woodland Heights director Thomas Brame said training for programs starts this week. He hopes by the next week for children to begin their lessons.

Woodland Heights already has seven computers used mostly by adults, teenagers and older children. There were no computers or programs available for preschool children.

The Learn & Earn project will bring in additional tablets and computers for the children to use alongside their parents.

“We’re really excited about it,” Brame said. “To have prek programs is really nice.”

When the learning stations open, children will use nametags to log into the computers. They will receive credentials after their parents sign them up. From there, the system will remember and record the work they have completed in what’s called L3 (Look, Listen, Learn)

Once a child has watched a certain number of messages, his/her parents will receive a text coupon for meals at Nowak’s McDonald’s on Bayou Boulevard to thank them for participating.

Nowak’s idea to create the early learning program came to him at a conference in Cincinnati on generational poverty. He said he didn’t fully understand the issues relating to poverty, but had seen its effects on some employees at his restaurants.

“For most people there is no way out other than education,” Nowak said. “And it has to start at an early age.”

Nowak knows that his project is a small step toward a bigger goal of providing quality preschool for every child in Escambia.

He hopes to get community and business leaders interested in and excited about early childhood education.

“This is not just the responsibility of families,” he said. “We are connected together in the community we live in and we need to embrace it.”

Nowak has gained support from Mayor Ashton Hayward, who he described as “a great advocate for early learning.”

It was Hayward who suggested to Nowak to use Woodland Heights as the incubator for the early learning program.

The center is near Pensacola Village, a low-income housing project. Many of its residents use the center for various activities, including computer access and summer programs.

“It is critical to expose children to education and reading, which builds a foundation to learning,” Hayward said.  “We want to expose as many children as we can to early learning at Woodland Heights.”

Research indicates that providing quality education for children before they turn 5-years-old yields significant long-term benefits.

One study showed that young people who were in preschool programs are more likely to graduate from high school, to own homes, to become better citizens and even have longer marriages.

Other studies show children engaged in preschool programs are less likely to repeat grades, need special education or get into future trouble with the law.

Nowak and Hayward hope business owners, public officials and community leaders come aboard to enhance and expand early learning throughout Escambia County.

“It’s critical to tie early education to the workforce,” Hayward said. “Early learning is paramount to the success of our children.”

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