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St. Mary Parish Community Action Agency welcomed Sandy Holloway, Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education representative, and Jessica Baghian, Assistant Superintendent of the Louisiana Department of Education on Friday.
Holloway and Baghian attended a tour led by Almetra Franklin, Head Start Administrator where they were able to observe new strategies put in place a year ago with the Louisiana Preschool Development Grant: Birth through Five for the Ready Start Early Childhood Community Networks program.
The sites visited were Pam’s Personal Touch of Franklin and Julia B. Maitland School in Morgan City.
These two locations belong to the Ready Start Network and scored well on the early childhood CLASS observation tool. Pam’s Personal Touch received a high proficiency score on the Performance Profile Rating and Julia B. Maitland School is the only school in the parish who received a rating of Excellence through the Performance Profile.
On Jan. 23, 2019, the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education allocated $700,000 total to seven communities to pilot new strategies and increase access to publicly funded early childhood care and education. According to the Louisiana Department of Education website, St. Mary Parish Community Action Agency, which is the sponsor of the St. Mary Head Start Program, was among the recipients receiving $100,000.
According to Franklin “the whole basis of the Ready Start Network is to make sure that the schools and childcare centers, Head Start, anybody that provides early childhood services will connect together to ensure that the children have a single system.”
“Before, childcare was just babysitting,” Franklin said. “But today it is all about learning. It is called school readiness, getting them ready for the next level.”
Research shows that ninety percent of brain development happens before the age of five. In addition, two out of three Louisiana families have both parents working.
In Louisiana, 35 percent of children are not ready for kindergarten, only 46 percent can read on grade level by 3rd grade; and our state is 49th in education overall.
According to the St. Mary Parish Ready Start Network Blueprint, investing in early childhood strengthens our state’s overall education system and ensures kids have the foundation they need to learn and succeed on the first day of school.
“The thing that I think is so beautiful about the work that Almetra and the team here in St. Mary have led is that they have brought together all the different providers who are in the early childhood space,” Baghian said.
“Historically, if you would have talked to providers in the early childhood space even ten years ago, Head Start operated entirely separate from childcare, which operated entirely separate from school-based Pre-K.
Now in St. Mary and many other parishes across the state they are coming together in what we are calling a community network with Almetra leading the charge here, and because we use this CLASS tool that is focused on teacher-child interactions, which we know from the best research in the world helps us prepare kids, they have a common language to learn together, grow together, share information and knowledge and skills in coaching so that children in St. Mary Head Start, but also children at Pam’s and children in the St. Mary schools, are getting the best possible experience for the parish overall,” Beghian continued.
“That takes hard work to bring together partners who haven’t typically collaborated together, they have done a terrific job of that and as a result the children of St. Mary Parish are better off,” Beghian said.
Holloway and Baghian were able to see the children interact with their teachers and their peers. Baghian was also able to speak with those implementing the new strategies and she asked Pamela Jones, director of Pam’s Personal Touch how CLASS training and observation tools were working for them as well as any suggestions for ways the board of education or the state could provide more help or support.
Jones replied that the CLASS trainings were working well and the professional development are very useful. Her only request was that the boards try not to change much from this point. “These kids are kids of habit, and if we keep changing their curriculum they get out of their rhythm and that will detour them from their further learning.”
Holloway and Baghian were joined by Dr. Teresa Bagwell, Superintendent of St. Mary Parish Schools, and Suzanne Bergeron, Director of Human Resources for St. Mary Parish Schools, upon arrival at the second location of their tour, Julia B. Maitland.
At Maitland, Holloway and Baghian were able to observe pre-k students in two different classroom settings and how they interacted with their teachers, centers, and peers as well as witness classroom routines that were established and being utilized.
“What we are seeing upon entering these pre-k classrooms is a sort of like playfulness that can be very, very misleading,” Baghian said.
“To get an excellent rating, which both of these classrooms have done, is internationally benchmarked difficult and extremely hard in representing.
There is such intentionality that goes into having 20 four-year-olds that just know how to actively navigate a space that has so many choices for them. It is child-driven, it is at their level, it is age appropriate and you can hear the chatter is so language-rich in here, which is what brain science shows is the most going to help children be ready for the next grade,” Baghian continued.
“It is always funny, especially when you go into excellent pre-k’s, because it can feel sort of playful and easy but actually for the four-year-olds to have a thousand adults in the room right now and be wholly unaffected by it and to be doing the things they would be doing if we weren’t here which is lots of chatter and playfulness and self-regulation is something truly exceptional and requires such a skill on the teachers leading the classrooms that St. Mary should be very proud,” Baghian concluded.