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Patricia Mick, Leader of State's United Methodist Women, Elected as KIDS COUNT's First Female Board President
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA - September 1, 2010 - Today, at the West Virginia KIDS COUNT Fund's quarterly board of directors meeting, long-time board president L. Clark Hansbarger, M.D., announced his retirement, and the board unanimously elected Patricia D. Mick of Hinton to succeed Dr. Hansbarger as president. Mick becomes the first female president in the organization's 20-year history of championing the needs of West Virginia's youngest children. Tom Hamm, West Virginia Administrator of the law firm Dinsmore & Shohl, was elected vice president and Bruce Lawson, a certified public accountant, was re-elected as treasurer.
Patricia Mick has served on the West Virginia Conference Leadership Team of the United Methodist Women since 1998 and as president of that group since 2007. While serving on the Leadership Team, she served two years as Mission Coordinator of Social Action where she helped promote the Campaign for Children, focusing on advocating for children and youth in education. She has also served on the Conference United Methodist Church's Justice and Advocacy Ministry Team. During the 1980s, Patricia was part of a pilot program to advocate for children and youth, and, as a result, helped start a tutoring program for at-risk students at her local library. She is a retired public school teacher who taught secondary math and French for 34 years. Mick is now working part-time with NetWorth, a project of the West Virginia State Treasurer's Office in partnership with the West Virginia Department of Education. The project promotes the teaching of personal financial literacy for the 21st century in grades K-12. She is the mother of two daughters and a grandmother of two. She has served on KIDS COUNT's board since 2008.
Mick said of her new post as leader of the KIDS COUNT board, "The children of West Virginia are not just our future, they are our present. For that reason it is imperative that we provide every opportunity possible now to get them off to a good start, a start that will help make them successful in life. It is my hope to continue the efforts of the board to raise funds which will be used to champion the educational, physical, and emotional needs of our state's children, especially the youngest, at-risk children."
Click here to read the full news release about KIDS COUNT's new board leaders.
Why a High Quality Early Child Development System is So Important
From the moment they are born, children are profoundly shaped by the world around them. Their earliest interactions with Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa and all other caring adults lay the foundation on which their futures will be built.
The fact is 64,000 West Virginia children under age six spend a large part of their day in the care of someone other than their parents because their parents are working, and there is currently no good way to measure the quality of that care.
We need better public structures to ensure that every West Virginia child can benefit from a high-quality, early child development (ECD) program. According to Marshall University, for every dollar West Virginia invests in this high-quality ECD system, we will earn a $5.20 return through outcomes such as higher academic achievement and adult earning power and lower juvenile delinquency and dropout rates.
About KIDS COUNT
For 20 years, KIDS COUNT has been West Virginia's most trusted source of information about the well-being of children and a leader in the effort to educate parents, policymakers and the public about what children need to thrive and achieve.
Our vision is to create a culture that values, nurtures and realizes the potential of our youngest children.
KIDS COUNT's recent work has been focused almost exclusively on the importance of improving access to and the quality of early child development programs. For example, the organization has played a major role in the development of standards for West Virginia's pre-kindergarten (pre-k) program, fought to save the pre-k program from legislative cuts, studied the importance of early literacy, educated business leaders about the economic impact of ECD programs, launched a multi-county campaign to improve early literacy practices, and spearheaded a successful effort to improve the quality of the state's childcare system by advocating for a childcare quality rating and improvement system.
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