Building a School Ready Community United Way Community Leaders Conference May 13, 2014

Thrive in 5’s Genesis Mayoral commitment to preventing the achievement gap by promoting healthy development and school readiness Year-long, community-based strategic planning process involving 65 professionals from multiple sectors and 25 parents, as well as community meetings and working groups Result: Boston’s School Readiness Equation

Mission Boston Children Thrive Ready Educators School Readiness Pipeline To ensure that children of all races, ethnicities, incomes, abilities, and languages have the opportunities and support they need for success in school and beyond. Three Core Strategies

Thrive in 5’s Approach Create sustainable change in organizations, communities and systems by investing in capacity building and developing and supporting effective approaches to achieving positive outcomes for at-risk young children and their families. Ready Educators Build program quality and school partnerships to ensure improved child outcomes Boston Children Thrive Develop a neighborhood based model to enable increased parent engagement and leadership School Readiness Pipeline Create a citywide universal screening system for children birth to school entry Universal School Readiness Build Capacity + Support Effective Approaches = Sustainable Systems/Policy Change 2

Lessons Learned Affecting system-change is challenging and takes time Ensuring continued engagement and buy-in of key partners is critical to success Developing approaches to data- collection and measurement requires thoughtful planning and sufficient resources Engaging business partners still a challenge

Ready Educators Building Quality Classrooms Ready Educators is a citywide effort to help Boston's early care and education programs move to the highest quality, using child outcomes to drive program improvement, and supporting innovative models like Boston K1DS from design to implementation. Programs review child outcome assessment data, then other data on indicators of quality With an intermediary, build a program improvemen t plan based on child- level data, and QRIS Engage with vendors, trainings, grants, etc. that are named in plan Make quality improveme nts

Boston K1DS: K1 Initiative for Diverse Students Demonstration project to evaluate the effectiveness of the Boston Public School’s community-based pre-K/K1 model Replicates 4 key elements of traditional BPS K1 classroom in a community-based preschool program Partnership established between BPS, Thrive in 5, MA Dept. of Early Education and Care, United Way and Barr Foundation to support project 14 CBO K1 classrooms launched in January 2013, primarily in low income neighborhoods of color in Boston Professional development Integrated curriculum (Opening the World of Learning and Building Blocks) and assessment Salary enhancement for classroom teacher Regular one-on-one coaching to transfer knowledge into practice Boston K1DS Classrooms Receive:

School Readiness Pipeline: Healthy Child Development Building a citywide, universal screening system to measure children’s development in their early years. Use data to inform resource allocation and investment and support parents/caregivers. Data is collected using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire from three sources: Parent Screeners Trained parents who offer screening in the community to families not engaged in formal early education programs Play Group Screening With the support of trained staff, parents complete screening during parent-child playgroup sessions Early Education and Care Programs Screening is part of program’s intake and ongoing assessment process

Big Data in Early Childhood Next Phase of the Pipeline: Utilize Big Data and Business Analytics approaches to link ASQ screening data with other data sets and better understand healthy development of Boston’s youngest children ASQ Screenin g Data City and State Gov’t Data Pediatric Health Provider Data Census Data Public Health Data Early Intervention Data K-12 School Data Higher Education Data

Boston Children Thrive engages and empowers parents and builds community capacity to support children’s learning, healthy development and school readiness, starting at birth. Boston Children Thrive: Parent Leadership and Community Capacity Building Neighborhood Events and Field Trips Business and Community Partnerships Parent-Child Play Groups Parent Partners

Leadership Council : w/ membership from: Mayor’s Office/City Departments, Parents/Communities, and Private Sector Leaders United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley Mayor’s Office/ City of Boston Ready Educators Advisory Group Parent Advisory Group Executive Director Director of Community Based Strategies School Readiness Pipeline Coordinator Director of Development & Communications EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE School Readiness Pipeline Learning Collaborative Community- Based Strategies Group Organizational Chart Director Early Childhood Education Strategies

Lessons Learned Pursue novel strategies without being in competition with direct service partners “Sustain the gains” though capacity building for individuals, organizations, and communities Use data to make the hard decisions

Allston/ Brighton South End/ Lower Roxbury Dudley Fields Corner East Boston Roxbury Jamaica Plain Dorchester Mattapan Roslindale Hyde Park West Roxbury Downtown Charlestown South Boston Fenway Allston/Brighton – Family Nurturing Center Dudley – Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative East Boston – East Boston CPC Cluster Fields Corner – Dorchester House Multi Service Center South End/Lower Roxbury – United South End Settlements Boston Children Thrive: Neighborhoods and Partners

Parent Leadership Pathway BOSTON CHILDREN THRIVE PARENTS PARENTS ON SCHOOL READINESS ROUNDTABLE PARENT PARTNERS PARENT LEADERSHIP EXCHANGE Stipended peer-to-peer parent outreach Parents who help plan, implement and evaluate neighborhood activities side-by-side with community organization partners Parents enrolled in BCT and participating in BCT activities and events Neighborhood-based teams of parents who identify, design and implement projects in their community – with ongoing support from peers and a leadership coach – that engage more families at all levels PARENT LED PROJECT

Huong’s Story “… the day one of Welcome Baby Program Home Visitors came to visit and give me some resources and programs supporting families in Dorchester …the door opening…to the whole new world. Since being involved with Fields Corner Children Thrive …, my 2 year-old baby girl has had great chances to develop her social and language skills (that … was … delayed) by going to FCCT events such as Saturday playgroup at Boys and Girls Club, Vietnamese Book Club, Zoo trip… And a half year ago, thanks to FCCT support, I started my first job in US as a Parent Screener and after 3 months, I got an opportunity to become a FCCT Parent Partner also.”

Build relationships with families Support in-depth program evaluation Membership knits neighborhood activities and resources into a cohesive system to support families Data builds community capacity to support school readiness through strategies that resonate with families Families enroll in their neighborhood BCT initiative and receive a BCT membership card Membership encourages families’ participation in activities that support school readiness Community partners scan membership card at events and activities Family demographic data shared with evaluators and partners Data shows BCT’s reach in the community and depth of relationships with individual families Participation data shared with evaluators and partners ImpactOutcome Membership Card System

Reaching the Target Population 3,059 BCT member families to date Of enrolled adults: 81% of color 58% speak a language other than English 61% born outside of the US 51% have a high school diploma or less Of enrolled families: 70% receive one or more forms of public assistance, including WIC, food stamps, etc. Members are actively engaged: 40% of families participated in at least one event over the last year “Before Thrive in 5 I lived in this community but I really didn’t do much of anything with my community. [BCT] has given me a broader sense of connection to my neighbors, my community, to the activities that are there for the children as well as activities that are there in the sense to help parents and the resources that are right next door to you that you didn’t even know were there.” BCT Member Perspective

Lessons Learned Start with the vision of the community Include involvement from stakeholders Lead from a place of service, love and authenticity Parents need credibility to establish trust Leverage trust by doing what you say you are going to do Balance relationships, results and process By connecting families, you are building community Recognize, celebrate and build upon successes

World Café Dialogue: Facilitative Conversations that Matter Small group discussions Three questions 1 host per table Create a “harvest” of ideas and insights from the group

World Café Discussion Questions Based on your own experience and what you have learned in this session…. What are some strategies you have used for "engaging families" and/or "building community"?

World Café Discussion Questions Based on your own experience and what you have learned in this session…. What are some ways you have used data to inform policy and/or practice? To make decisions? To measure outcomes or impact?

World Café Discussion Questions Based on your own experience and what you have learned in this session…. What would you say are the key components of developing and sustaining a successful collective impact effort?

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