Susan Donovan, Wanda Lincoln, Michael Kint, Charles Dziuban, Patti Jo Church-Houle and Shannon Bowman. [Photo: Kaila Jones]

As any teacher or educational advocate can attest, the importance of early childhood development cannot be overemphasized. To highlight its significance, Childcare Resources hosted a screening of the documentary “No Small Matter” last Monday evening at the Vero Beach Museum of Art.

Research is now confirming that during the first five years of a child’s life, the brain develops the social, emotional and academic skills that can ultimately shape that individual’s entire life. The filmmakers ask that we start recognizing early childhood for what it is: “A grown up issue. A game changer. No small matter.”

New brain scanning technology is verifying that babies are born learning, and that “children learn more and earlier than anyone ever expected. What’s going on up there is rocket science. In fact, the first three years of life are like a ‘big bang’ for the brain.”

Early learning, say the film’s co-directors, Danny Alpert, Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel, is “the most rational, no-nonsense, high-return investment that we can make.” The film stresses that childcare is not babysitting; it’s brain building.

And yet, high-quality early childcare is unaffordable for an ever-growing number of working families, whose childcare decisions are typically driven by cost and location, as opposed to quality. Adding to the problem, preschool teachers and childcare workers are paid wages that fall into the bottom 3 percent to 5 percent of the national wage scale.

The film begs the question, “How much are we paying as a society because we are NOT putting those investments in up front?”

“When early learning started, it was really subsidized childcare to support the workforce, and it really wasn’t viewed as education,” said Rep. Erin Grall, a former Childcare Resources board member who spoke before the film. She added that not too long ago, someone asked her, “Well isn’t that just diapers and drool?”

Grall asked the educators to pose questions and answers from a legislative policy perspective and encouraged them to advocate changes with lawmakers.

A panel discussion followed the documentary, with its co-director Danny Alpert via Skype, and on the Leonhardt stage, Patti Jo Church-Houle, Rosen Preschool executive director; Charles Dziuban, director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at UCF; and Michael Kint, United Way of IRC CEO; moderated by educational advocate and philanthropist Wanda Lincoln.

Childcare Resources has been investing in early childhood education for 25 years, subsidizing the cost of local children through its own school and four privately-owned, NAEYC-accredited childcare centers. The nonprofit also offers workshops to enable other educators to obtain credentials as Florida Child Care professionals or directors.

For more information, visit ChildcareResourcesIR.org or nosmallmatter.com.