EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION WORK GROUP

Friday May 13, 2005

2:00-3:30pm

NOTES

Next meeting: Friday June 10, 1:00-2:30pm (to be confirmed)

Assignments:

• Urban Strategies Council will create links to the background frameworks and email them to partners.
• Email all programmatic and data changes to USC and we will compile them.
• First Five, City and OUSD will email us with their additions to the program lists.
• The Council will try to arrange a meeting with the major data custodians to figure out how to get access to data.
• The Council will create a data book out of all of this work with the data tables, charts and have it as a working data document.
• Ruben will give the packet to Laurie and ask her to send cultural competency variables.
• Sandy Padilla’s email address: sandyp@urbanstrategies.org

Attendance

Jane Nicholson (OUSD), Sandy Padilla (USC), Kerry Forbord (ORL), Erin Hill (First Five School Readiness), Mara Guccione (USC), Tori Barnes (Lao Family Even Start),Victoria Trostle (Self-Evaluation), Myriam Allouko Fiankan (Self-Evaluation), Priya Jagannathan (Dept. of Human Services), Tracey Black (San Antonio Even Start), Krischen Latch (Senior Field Rep, Wilma Chan’s office), Deb Montesinos (AECF), Dora Tobiaison (California Tomorrow), Jumoke Hodge (California Tomorrow), Ruben Lizardo (California Tomorrow)

Announcements/Updates

• Kerry – program activities have been going well, well-attended
• Erin – funding update: community grants initiative – recommendations submitted to commission on May 26th; announcements for recommendations on the 24th. This will inform things that may take place in the community by groups that aren’t at this table. Need to reapply for school readiness funds from state; target activities in this area; we work county wide and moving into east county where there are few resources.
• Jane - Proposal for 3-year, $4M

Framing Today’s Discussion

• Junious – frame it around the programming and how data will inform the programming: Tool for achieving better outcomes. School readiness is a high priority for the foundation. Locally this is one of the latest groups to get going. AECF has hired consultants to guide the process. Framing has happened after we did our own framing. Junious, Deb, Usana, others went to San Antonio; AECF asked cities to get a handle on how AECF is framing ECE work; figure out where things are locally and how they align, what data needs there are to support the work. We’ll send this summary to AECF and will have a phone conference to discuss the plan. One reason that it is important is that the resources flow after you do the analysis (additional resources).
• Today we wanted to introduce the framework. Program alignment: What are we doing now, what should we consider doing that we are not currently? Data inventory: we’ve organized the frameworks and the data indicators that match with them. Review of broad frameworks. Some of the indicators show up on everyone’s list. What’s the most important data to support our work?
• Erin - First Five has state-wide indicators that they use.

Program Alignment – Ready Families

• Create inventory of what everyone has going on that is focused on SA geography or families who live there to see broadly what is happening. And, see who else should be invited.
• Email changes to USC and we will compile them.
• Erin – Garfield, Hawthorne projects
• Junious – anything else going on through this work group other than what is listed? This was conceptualized by AECF in a formula. Ready families is about making sure (literacy) that families are ready. Are there other things in terms of family readiness to explore for future activities?
• Kerry – Early mental health and sites in the area providing consultation to classrooms with a component of working with families as needed. List this under ready families and ready services. ELOA – Early learning opportunity act. Two of the sites being served are in this neighborhood.
• Tracey - Jewish family services are doing mental health.
• Erin – they are one of our grantees.
• Junious – important to flag them and make decision about it
• Kerry – East Bay Perinatal; contact person hasn’t been replaced; YWCA teen parent program moving to the neighborhoods.
• Erin – public health (home-visiting nurses); Family Child Care Association director: invite them intentionally.
• Kerry – Bananas is mailing out invitations for next pre-school provider meeting so that they can have their own network.
• If folks think of others, please let USC know.

Data – General

• Junious – second to last column says cross-site survey - we have this data. Is there anything missing from the data variables? What are the three most important variables to support our work?
• Krischen – foster care
• Tracey – immigrant family experience
• Junious – may be listed in general demographics. 52% in LSA is foreign born and can add 20-30% to that for undocumented.
• Prita – mental health indicators
• Junious – add this separately.

Data – Ready Families

• Erin – language of families – best source is school district. Under item 26 – ready schools. We won’t exclude any variables, this just helps us focus
• Kerry – safe passages has data on variable #5

Program Alignment - Ready Schools

• Process going on to begin to think strategically about OFCY & First Five strategic planning processes and to scan what the big policy issues are that might be the focus of activities for this work group.
• 2nd – parent leadership training; leadership that happens with parents will help them to identify issues that will affect their children in their transition to school.
• Are there other activities?
• Erin – small schools work (Manzanita) to become school readiness sites. TA & training for staff as well as parents; working on a county-wide training for culture and language issues for all school staff.
• Tracey – family dynamics, culture and communications, and diversity leadership.
• Junious – broad issue around certification: research shows quality of teacher is critical to performance of child. Teacher quality issue.
• Kerry – redesignation rate for limited English; very few get redesignated as proficient in English.
• Erin – something with language capacity of teachers; interesting to see who can speak to the parents.
• Junious – add culture (for truly effective communication)

Data – Ready Schools

• Erin – amount of title 5 funds going into the schools. Seems like they have so much left over; working with San Lorenzo Unified, they can contract out with non-profit to do services before the sites come.
• Tracey – #10 – special education status? By child by third grade

Program Alignment - Ready Communities

• Kerry – Add even start and head start’s work in the neighborhood. Erin will email later rather than list off now.
• Priya – will have info for ready families as well.
• Junious – First Five, City and OUSD will email us with their additions to the program lists.
• Junious – add parent leadership training to ready communities. To what extent do parents have skills and understand issues to work on this. Training will put people in position to do this.
• Tracey – neighborhood services around safety?
• Junious – 23rd Avenue work group and working with the NCPC around safety. And, others beside collaborative doing it. Armed robbery; teenage prostitution.

Data – Ready Communities

• Erin – add asthma rates to this.
• Junious – send rates once we have them through environmental indicators project.
• Tracey – add adult education
• Erin – data for moving forward: what businesses/services would be willing to work with us? Invite both merchants associations (LSA, Eastlake)
• Information on different curriculums and assessments being used?
• Junious – start a repository for these (three right now) as a place to see who is doing what.
• Erin – most successful groups are those who have the providers leading it.

Program Alignment - Ready Services: Health

• Health and Safety work group – had a member of ORL start attending HWG meetings; starting to work together. List child care services at HWG events as a “ready services” activity.
• Erin – First Five could attend – get in touch with Erin about attending HWG meetings.

Data – Ready Services: Health

• Priya – insurance for the whole family – data on family health. ER utilization? Alameda Health Consortium has a project looking at that.
• Erin – split 20: EPSDT for mental health and dental access.

Program Alignment - Ready services: Early Childhood

• Priya – put provider network under this as well
• Tracey – add infant mental health to program list.
• Dora – add info on those providing infant care; head start has programs for intervention (bantec-year long diversity training) that we should include in the program list.
• Priya – cultural training piece with schools should also go with the ECE providers.

Data - Ready services: Early Childhood

• Erin – families that are not at the poverty level who don’t qualify for the services; show gap between demand for services and subsidized. Will think about it more; demonstrate working poor families that aren’t at the level to qualify. Bananas probably have some of this happening.
• Kerry – OUSD programs have restrictions too.
• Kerry – access to healthy food – plug this into ready communities.
• Junious – this whole area is a priority for us to read the landscape and show what is there and what is not there.

Next Steps

• Junious- the uses: figure out important data, collect it on a recurring basis, use it in an assessment sense, inform the current programming. Look at the process of settling on literacy as a focus. This will help to support how the group will make some decisions. From here: we’ll synthesize this and get it back out to folks. We’ll take this and send it to AECF and the next step is to have the consultative session with AECF and consultants. That will be open but we’d like as many people as possible sit in on this (and feel free to push back on the foundation). We’ll get back and let you know result of consultative session and any resulting opportunities.
• We’ll try to arrange a meeting with the major data custodians to figure out how to get access to data.
• We’ll create a data book out of all of this work with the data tables, charts and have it as a working data document.
• Ruben – will give to Laurie and ask her to send cultural competency variables. Send packet to Ruben
• Send out Sandy’s email to group.