ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 highlights the program’s popularity at the local level and shows the program’s success in creating an innovative curriculum that clearly benefited young children and their families. The chapter argues that schools thrived at the local level because they enjoyed strong community support. The chapter examines the depth and breadth of the program as shown by statistical evidence. It then explores how the program cultivated community outreach through parent education and concludes by looking at how WPA nursery schools provided a space for community activism in both rural and urban areas. Local communities, especially parents, were motivated by the desire to help small children and participated in letter-writing campaigns to save the schools, pushed for public kindergartens when federal appropriations for the WPA program were cut, and transformed some WPA nursery schools into parent cooperative preschools after federal funding ceased altogether. Notwithstanding congressional attacks, national director Grace Langdon must have thought universal preschool just around the corner. On the eve of World War II, the future looked bright for program permanency.
