PBS Kids Summit: Changing the Status Quo intro

Paula Kerger, President and CEO, PBS

- Funding for 2011 is approx $430 million. 0.2% reduction.
- Lost the PTFP funding (comes to stations for technical needs).
- Ready to Learn grant - state of this is still not clear.  Have been told it's there but it's not clear in what form.

What does all of this mean for Public Broadcasting?

Q: How did you go from what looked grimm a few weeks ago to a reasonably good place in terms of funding?
A: Constituents. The reality is that as much as we'd like to believe we are articulate spokespeople for public  broadcasting, it's actually our constituents who have the voice and the power. PBS Stations banded together and helped focus / get a sense of where the public's feelings were in sense of PBS.

For Paula, what has been heartening has been that somewhere around the range of half a million people called, emailed their state reps. It got more calls / response than even healthcare. It shows that the view of public broadcasting as 'elite' is patently not true. 'We are the most american of organizations. We are in everyone's home'.

And that's what PBS is all about - we are the media organization that views our real work as being in communities.  We spend every day thinking about how we can make this country a bit better. The work PBS Kids are doing is at the heart of this. How can we make sure every child has every opportunity?

In the fall they did a national survey and the thing that came back as most important was childrens' education.

Even of the people who polled that said reduction of the national deficit was highest priority, 62% said that public broadcasting funding should be preserved.   72% of voters said they would be concerned if PBS had to cut back on educational programs and content for kids.  So it's clear that it's the work we've all done for children really helps them make the case for public broadcasting.

Now the task is to figure out how do we keep innovating and keep moving forward?

Right now in some respects we are in a complicated place because we've had such growth in the past few years. How do we keep this momentum going as kids' use of media continues to change? How do we really make sure what we're doing is as engaging and as important as ever?

But we also have limited funding so we have to be smart about the choices we make.

Public Broadcasting was envisioned as the place that would provide programming and content that was not found in commercial media. It's interesting now with all channels available territory one could argue was slipping away from us seems to be coming back - arts.   Eg. History, Bravo, A&E.  eg. History has big projects like 'monster trucks' to define the brand rather than how the channel defines itself. The arts is the one area that has completely fallen off the table in cable and broadcast.  eg. Visual arts is not present anywhere else except public broadcasting.

Why arts?  This is a place where we can step up - whether it's in teacher environments etc thinking about ways we can bring the arts into childrens' lives is going to be tremendously important.  Used Chuck Vanderchuck as an example.

Webinar Notes: Peep and the Big Wide World

Focused on kids 2-7 - 'Anywhere Science and Math'.

Goals model inquiry process skills
Encourage parents and caregivers to support childrens' hands on science and math

Half hour format
Narrated by Joan Cusack
110 animated stories
110 live action segments
97 offline anywhere science and math activities
New epsiodes exlusive to public television

Measurable Impact on Kids
- making predictions
- Making observations
- Applying problem solving strategies and successfully solving problems

Measurable Impact on Teachers
- Teachers become more involved over time with science
- More confident in teaching science topics
- Better able to create instructional environment supportive of science
- Easier to teach math,
- Easier to ask open ended questions

Educational Outreach
- WGBH worked with series advisers to create resources intended for informal educators and classroom teachers respectively.
- wanted to motivate parents to help them become more comfortable and let them understand they don't need to know everything about a topic in order to teach their youngsters
- This year special focus on Spanish speakers. Latinos very underrepresented in Science careers. Website has a spanish speaking portal.

For Families
- Neighborhood Safari - contains a parents guide and childrens activity pages. 9 Investigations in the Safari, ranging from documentation to how to use natural materials.
- Large library of anything science and math activities - eg. measuring distances with steps. Activities relate to a child's immediate environment.
- Teachers use this activities to help round out teaching principles in the classroom as well.

Explorers guide for Classrooms -
+ Field tested in 52 Head Start classrooms.
+ With 3 thematic units published originally,
+ Embraced by teachers from NHSA, NEA, and NACCRRA.
+ Now expanded to 6 topics.
* Go to peepandthebigwideworld.org/resources

Event Kit for discreet events, useful for PBS Stations.
+ 3 Separate events - shadows, structures and ramps.
+ Informative readers guides
+ Promotional fliers and press release
+ Evaluation form.
* Go to peepandthebigwideworld.org/resources

Station Support at
resourceroom.wgbh.org
+ Station toolkit
+ Web assets
+ NEW costume characters
+ Free tattoos
+ Coming: HTML postcard and e-blast to promote new Peep Explorer's Guide.