Those who can’t read well by the third grade are four times more likely to drop out before graduating from high school. And high school dropouts are eight times more likely to go to jail, according to Smart Beginnings Rappahannock Area.

“The best way to impact a child is to give them great teachers,” Eric Fletcher, a Mary Washington Healthcare senior vice president, told about 75 business leaders attending a Smart Beginnings: Job One event Wednesday at the University of Mary Washington.

Sponsored by Smart Beginnings Rappahannock Area and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, it was designed to show the role quality early learning plays in creating a foundation for workforce success—and a strong Virginia economy.

Fletcher, who is the Smart Beginnings Rappahannock Area chairman, used Huntington Ingalls Industries’ approach to building ships for the Navy in Newport News as an analogy for the impact that providing children with a good academic start can have.

Huntington Ingalls, he said, spends more time on the front end of designing each project than it does on actually building it.

“If they catch a mistake then, it’s less expensive to fix the issues that they find,” Fletcher said. “If they get the first phase right, they’ll have fewer and fewer errors and will need to do less rework.”

Smart Beginnings goal, he said, is to ensure that children are ready for school so that they will be ready for life. Its initiatives include helping to increase the number of preschools and childcare centers participating in the Virginia Star Quality Initiative, which assesses, improves their level of quality.

“VSQI now rates 52 centers in the Rappahannock region,” Fletcher said.

Smart Beginnings also provides education for preschool teachers and funds and oversees Al’s Pals: Kids Making Healthy Choices, a program that uses puppets to teach young children how to resolve conflicts.

Stephen S. Fuller, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, provided attendees with a forecast of workforce trends in Virginia.

Once among the highest ranking states for Gross State Product, or GSP, it now ranks 48th due in large measure to the recession and changes in federal spending, he said. That puts the commonwealth just one spot ahead of Maryland and three spots ahead of Washington, D.C.

The current bright spot in the state is the health and human services industry, which is expected to experience double-digit percentages in growth between 2014 and 2019. That will make it the fastest-growing job sector in the region, he said.

The people who will be needed to fill those jobs are likely to be home health aides, nursing assistants and registered nurses—not physicians.

Meanwhile federal employment—both civilian and military—has fallen as federal procurement outlays dropped $6.8 billion, or 11.6 percent, between fiscal years 2010 and 2014.

“The federal sector,” Fuller said, “just isn’t going to grow.”

He said that the average wage in Virginia is declining, which means that there will be more renters than home buyers. The decline in pay will also impact the kinds of things people will buy, such as cars.

“There is a correlation between this and how we train our workforce,” Fuller said. “We need the right skill sets going forward, and that might be different from what we now know.”

Paul D. Koonce, Dominion Resources executive vice president, spoke about Blueprint Virginia, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s long-range plan for economic development in the commonwealth. It recognizes the need to increase educational achievement to ensure a quality workforce.

“We know that investing in the preschool years has a payoff that keeps on giving for decades,” Koonce said. “Students who have greater success in school do better in life.”

He said that the state spends $78 million a year on students who must repeat a year between kindergarten and the third grade because they weren’t ready for school.

“The cost of not making the investment is staggering,” Koonce said. “If we invest early, we have a better chance of turning this around.”

Cathy Jett: 540.374-5407