“The most important tip for any major organizational change… is to start by creating a sense of urgency among affected people while reducing complacency and negative feelings like anxiety and anger” (Kotter, 2013). Following this advice, I sought to choose phrases in my why statement that resonate with all stakeholders and that generate a sense of urgency. One such phrase is: “strengthens these experiences rather than taking time away from them”. The phrase communicates a sense of loss and a desire to reclaim something valuable. Most people can relate to having something valuable being crowded out by something that feels less important.  Jeni Cross says, “people are loss-averse: Telling people what they're losing is more motivating than telling them what they'll gain” (TEDx, 2013).  Teachers get frustrated with wasted and lost time particularly when formal assessment is the culprit. Administrators’ ears perk up when they hear that instructional time is being lost since this detracts from student performance and shows up on benchmarks and standardized testing. And parents certainly don’t want to hear that there’s lost time since their children already spend the majority of the day in the school setting. 

Another element that can create a sense of urgency is when stakeholders realize that this is an equity issue. The phrase “every child deserves…” hits multiple layers particularly in early childhood education. Our school district serves primarily underprivileged kids, and on top of that, state funded Pre-K is only available for economically disadvantaged students. Decades of research shows that the best Pre-K programs are characterized by hands-on learning, strong student-teacher interactions, and learning through play (Campbell et al., 2002; Schweinhart et al., 2005). These models were originally proven to work with underprivileged students, but over time the public schools have pushed academics to lower and lower grade levels in an effort to boost achievement (Morgan, 2025, p.101). This effort has crowded out the elements that make early childhood programs so effective in the first place (Lipsey et al., 2018). Kindergarten has almost no play at all; it’s purely academic. Meanwhile Pre-K has come under the same pressure to conform to similar changes in practice. 

The research bears out that this is a devastating miscalculation (Lipsey et al., 2018). In the meantime, private schools and daycares that serve the more affluent community boast developmentally appropriate practices that protect early childhood such as play-based learning, learning through discovery, and hands-on learning; these are lauded as hallmarks of their programs. Somehow the programs that were originally designed for underprivileged students have become accessible primarily to affluent children because public schools have forfeited one of the best interventions available to them. This is an issue that takes time to educate people about, but when stakeholders see the disparities the sense of urgency will rise.