The Studer Community Institute was fortunate to be able to bring Dr. Dana Suskind to Pensacola. Suskind shared her expertise and enthusiasm in early education at Booker T. Washington High School.

“If you care about your community, if you care about this country, (early education) is the biggest return on investment I can give to you all,” she says.

“While early childhood is really the story of parents,” Suskind writes in her book, “Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain,” “parents are often afterthoughts in program development and reforms for closing the achievement gap. They may be mentioned in the discussion but, in the end, they are treated as an add-on rather than the key to make the necessary changes.”

She uses the data from her research project, based on the South Side of Chicago, and a personal passion to make the case that "every child is our child," and that until we fulfill our responsibility to all of our children, we will continue to struggle.