Latest news with #PreschoolforAll
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Multnomah County's Preschool for All program has a preschool problem, audit finds
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Multnomah County's Preschool for All program is at risk of missing one of its main goals: universal access to preschool in the next five years, according to an audit of the program. On Wednesday, the county released its of , which aims to provide free, inclusive and universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds across the county. Voters approved the program through a 2020 ballot measure — creating a 1.5% or 3% tax for high-income earners, to support the county's mission. Now, entering its fourth school year, the program is seeing progress reaching students prioritized by the program, but auditors are raising concerns over a lack of preschools applying for the program, which is hurting the program's chances of achieving universal preschool access by 2030. 'It is positive that Preschool for All is supporting access to preschool for those who have historically had the least access,' said County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk. 'But Preschool for All needs to significantly ramp up its efforts to meet the ambitious goal of universal preschool by 2030.' 'Frustrating': Federal grants canceled for Oregon nonprofit that helps immigrants and refugees One of the main findings in the audit is the program's progress in reaching priority groups of students, including children from low-income and BIPOC families, students in foster care, facing homelessness, and those who speak a language other than English or have disabilities. According to the auditors, a majority of the children who apply and enroll in the program have at least one of the priorities, with a majority of Preschool for All students coming from low-income (74%) or BIPOC families (67%). 'The proportion of enrolled families that indicated on their applications that their children are lower income, BIPOC, and speak languages other than English are all higher than the proportion of those groups in the county overall, according to census data,' the audit noted. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now The audit also found that Preschool for All has supported preschools to better serve children but could be providing more support — including providing better training for preschool providers to serve children from different backgrounds. Currently, providers have optional trainings such as inclusion courses, special education trainings, and trainings on trauma response strategies for early childhood. 'While these trainings are a good start, Preschool for All should continue to develop and offer additional trainings to providers, especially trainings that focus on topics such as understanding personal bias, cultural responsiveness, and working with children with disabilities,' the audit states. 'Cyber-vigilante': Lebanon man charged with online sex crimes after tip from uncooperative social media personality, sheriff says Another main finding from the audit: Preschool for All is at risk of not meeting its goal of achieving universal access to preschool by the year 2030. The growth of Preschool for All depends on getting existing preschools to participate, however, many preschool providers in the county have not applied for the program, according to the audit. 'At the start of the 2024-25 school year, Preschool for All offered around 2,000 seats. The program forecasted that it will need to grow to 11,000 seats by September 2030. Preschool for All estimated that about 7,000 seats will come from converting existing private preschool seats to the program. 4,000 seats will come from newly created seats at new or expanded preschool sites. However, a lack of data on current preschool capacity and the changing private market make it hard to know exactly how many new seats will be needed,' the audit states. Portland'5 Centers for the Arts braces for job cuts as attendance struggles to recover 'While the goal is still to reach universal preschool by 2030, slower growth initially means that fewer eligible children will be able to access free preschool in the meantime. If the program only meets its revised goals, it will have served about 7,500 fewer children by 2030, compared to how many children it could have served if it had kept its original goals. Based on the program's forecast, it could take an additional two years for Preschool for All to have enough seats to serve all children in the priority groups,' the audit said. Preschool for All's model is built on roughly 80% of existing preschool seats being converted to Preschool for All by 2030. Meanwhile, auditors said that around 11% of potential sites are participating. According to the audit, at the start of the 2024-25 school year, there were 122 preschool sites participating in Preschool for All, and based on state licensing data, there are about 840 potential licensed preschool sites that could be participating. Oregon Supreme Court allows class action lawsuit against Tillamook County Creamery Association to proceed Auditors said they spoke to some preschool providers that are not yet participating in the program, saying providers want more assurances about how the program will operate before joining. 'Only limited program and financial information is available to providers before they apply to the program,' the audit said. 'Preschool for All has a provider program guide, which has extensive instructions and requirements for providers. However, it is not on the website and not available to providers before they have applied.' The audit adds, 'While the website lists the current seat reimbursement rate, it is less clear about other funding. It says that providers may be able to receive the following funds: start-up, transportation, infant/toddler stabilization, and inclusion support funds. However, except for start-up funds, it does not describe how much money is available per preschool. It also says that inclusion support funds are subject to approval.' Auditors also heard concerns over whether program funding is enough to cover business expenses and if providers will receive enough supports to serve children with disabilities. While searching for preschool providers, Preschool for All has also denied about a quarter of provider applications — denying 83 applicants in three years, according to the audit. Preschool for All screens providers on several factors including their ability to serve priority students and readiness for the program. As most denied providers do not apply for the program again, auditors suggest Preschool for All should work with denied preschools to help them gain approval down the road. 'Puma Fetty' dealt fentanyl to officers investigating woman's overdose Auditors also noted that the Preschool for All program has several requirements, so some schools have to adapt in order to join. These requirements include 10-hour program days (or six if on a school year schedule), specific teacher wages and benefits, a second staffer during program hours, along with requirements for certain insurance levels and schools must offer lunch. While some schools found the changes to be beneficial — such as providers serving more diverse classrooms — auditors noted some challenges providers face, including needing to build kitchen facilities or hire more staff to cover longer hours. While Preschool for All is at risk of not meeting its 2032 goal, the program has two strategies to expand. This includes a facilities fund for schools to renovate along with investments to increase teaching staff. 'The new capacity needed is hard to estimate in part because the market is changing. State licensing data shows that the number of providers decreased during the pandemic but began increasing again in 2023,' the audit notes. 'The change was most dramatic for home-based providers. The number of center-based preschools has been more stable. However, because center-based preschools serve more children than home-based preschools, small changes in the number of center-based preschools can have a greater effect. At least some growth came from Preschool for All providers expanding to new locations.' Overall, the audit offers 16 recommendations for the county's Department of Human Services, which oversees Preschool for All. By May 1, 2025, auditors recommend the program develop and implement a process to verify the accuracy of families' application answers when it comes to identifying priority students. At minimum, auditors say this includes verifying income with documentation since it's the highest-weighted and is straightforward to document. Other recommendations should be implemented by April 1, 2026. These recommendations includin maintaining a list of available preschool seats on the Preschool for All website for parents looking to enroll their children, adding more teacher trainings and specifying facility funding guidelines for providers. In response to the audit, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson said, in part, 'The Preschool and Early Learning Division (PEL) is committed to building a strong andsustainable program that meets the needs of families and providers. Many of the improvementshighlighted in this report are already underway. We appreciate your partnership in this effortand look forward to sharing our progress in the future.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Preschool For All opens new facility in NE Portland
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Jered Bogli's son is in a Multnomah County preschool for all program and is grateful for how it's helped his family. 'The impact has made in our lives as a family I don't think I can accurately state here,' Bogli said. 'It was amazing to watch him flourish with the way that care has been coordinated between the county and the center, and from just that alone, he's grown so much from that.' On Monday he joined county preschool leaders gathered at the newly opened that was purchased and upgraded with some of the preschool tax money. Rachel Langford, the program manager for , said the new preschool had 'closed its doors to families and with funding and technical support supplied by the PFA Facilities Fund through Build Up Oregon, Dee (Hayward) was able to acquire this building and make needed improvements so that it could reopen and serve children and families through preschool.' is funded by an income tax between 1.5% and 3% on high income earners to pay teachers and improve and expand facilities. There are currently 2000 kids in the program at more than 100 locations. very quickly as 1300 families have already applied for 3800 spots open. MultCo Board of Commissioners delay Preschool for All tax hike But concerns have been raised by some in the business community that families who can afford preschool should be paying — especially when it comes to extended before- and aftercare hours. Leslee Barnes, the director, said they are 'really operating this initiative based on the preschool for all plan. And what we heard from that plan is that not only did we need to support those families with the least access, but it was that we need to design a whole system of care that included everyone. And that's why this is universal, much like the school districts are universal and are free to the public.' Children with the least access to preschool for reasons such as family income or children of color are prioritized when it comes to deciding who gets the limited number of spots, Barnes said. There is a work group of economists and business leaders that will take a closer look at how preschool for all is funded in the future — especially if the economy takes a dip along with tax dollars. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Sterling pre-K centers preparing 'littlest learners' for the road ahead
Mar. 1—STERLING — Sterling's pre-kindergarten centers at Jefferson and Franklin elementary schools are setting up their "littlest learners" for success by teaching them the importance of what it means to be a student. Jefferson Elementary Principal Heather Wittenauer said Friday that the pre-kindergarten centers help make the transition to full-day kindergarten easier by teaching students preliminary skills needed to be a good student, including patience, sharing, problem-solving, social interaction and following a structured routine. "It's those basic things that we take for granted because we assume that they're being taught at home, but maybe they're not," Wittenauer said. "You might have an only child at home who doesn't have to share, or they come from a family with lots of kids, and then suddenly they're on their own." Franklin Elementary Principal Brooke Dir said that socialization is a critical component of a student's future success. She said her pre-kindergarten center serves some students with exceptional needs, providing additional specialized staff, such as physical and occupational therapists, to support each child's individualized education plan requirements. "Some kids have siblings they're used to letting speak for them," Dir said. "Then, all of a sudden they're in a classroom where they need to express their needs. So, we work on how they can express those needs and wants." Challand Middle School math teacher Jase Hippen shared a similar story about his son at Sterling's board meeting Wednesday evening. He said his son started at Franklin Elementary's pre-kindergarten center as a mostly nonverbal student who used an iPad to help him communicate. "He went from leaving for school the first day, and the terror that he went through, and losing his mind being away from mom and dad and not being able to speak," Hippen said. "He's made so many leaps and bounds since then. He's a singing monster. I can't describe to you how different he was six months ago." Both centers house four classroom units, office spaces, bathrooms and an inside activity area for kids to play during unfavorable weather. Each classroom has a teacher and teacher's aide. They also regularly receive visits from local high school and college students studying to work in education, as well as volunteers from the Foster Grandparents Program. Wittenauer said there was a strong need for pre-K services in the area, with a waiting list of almost 80 kids before the centers were constructed. Both centers offer morning and afternoon sessions that run for two and a half hours, and they have almost reached their capacity since opening late last summer. Superintendent Tad Everett said the total cost for both pre-kindergarten centers was about $4 million. Wittenauer said Jefferson's center was funded through the Preschool for All grant, and Franklin's center was funded through the district.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Big Ten Early Learning Alliance Shines a Light on Early Childhood Data Solutions
'Isn't it kind of crazy that we are still asking the same questions that we asked 15 years ago?' marvels Dawn Thomas, who leads the Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map (IECAM), an ever-expanding demographic and service-related data resource for policymakers. As a professor at the University of Illinois, Thomas focuses on how communities, districts and the state can improve early care and education services through better data and IECAM is part of that effort. Duplicative counting is one of the issues that have long bedeviled Thomas and her fellow researchers. Let's say a particular 4-year-old boy simultaneously participates in the Child Care Assistance Program and Preschool for All. Is he being counted once or twice in the IECAM database? In evaluating the efficacy of these state programs, Illinois's newly formed Department of Early Childhood, among other public and private bodies, needs to know the answer when determining the impact of each program. Illinois is not alone in grappling with data on programs and services for families with young children. The newly formed Big Ten Early Learning Alliance (Big Ten ELA) was designed to address issues that span research and policy, like the challenges facing the IECAM team. Led by Ohio State University professor Laura Justice (who also heads the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy) and Rutgers University professor W. Steven Barnett (who founded and co-directs the National Institute for Early Education Research), the alliance is open to researchers from Big Ten universities, which comprises 18 higher education institutions across 14 states. Members collaborate on research that addresses important early childhood issues and work together to champion and disseminate solutions to the field. The states involved collectively have nearly 5.8 million residents aged 5 and under, according to State of Early Childhood Education in Big Ten States, a recent brief published by Big Ten ELA — and the alliance is dedicated to improving their early learning experiences and lifetime outcomes. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter 'For these nearly six million children, it is crucial that their states provide high-quality early childhood education to ensure that these children experience optimal environments and interactions in the earliest years of life,' Justice and Barnett wrote in the brief. 'States are increasingly taking the lead in enacting policies that affect early childhood,' Justice says. 'One of our goals in establishing this alliance is to ensure that science underlies these decisions by state policymakers. We also want to leverage the expertise in early childhood at our Big Ten universities. Bringing researchers together through this alliance will ease collaboration and allow us to advance our understanding of crucial issues in early childhood by engaging our diverse research perspectives.' Why is data critical to service delivery, and why did the Big Ten ELA's first webinar zero in on data solutions? 'Part of the rationale for many investments in early childhood programs,' Justice and Barnett explain in their report, 'is to capitalize on the potential return on investment of preschool participation, such that for every dollar put into the system, dividends are returned in the future.' If the data can't be trusted, policymakers might balk at the price tag. Improving early care and education depends on a sophisticated understanding of demographics, services received, program enrollment and learning outcomes. While IECAM has been tracking aggregate data for early childhood programs and demographic data for young children and their families since about 2006, the Illinois Longitudinal Data System (ILDS), a project of Northern Illinois University (NIU), tracks which early childhood services the state's children are receiving over time and the outcomes of receiving them. The longitudinal data is designed to answer questions about which programs can be credited for increasing wages and income mobility. NIU's Benjamin Boer, senior director of data for ILDS, notes that the complexity of data poses challenges and opportunities. 'I don't think people understand all the different programming that goes on,' he says. 'There are prenatal programs, early childhood programs, home visiting, Medicaid-funded screenings for special needs and so on.' Boer hopes to establish correlations between participation in these various programs and third grade assessment data. (If you're keeping score at home, NIU is not part of the Big Ten, but Boer appeared on the Alliance's webinar, and their collaboration with University of Illinois makes them honorary members.) Recently, the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative partnered with ILDS to study the flow of children through the education system. The Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies — which comprises the state's quality rating and improvement system along with education training and referral functions — is also using the data resource. 'Other states may want to use data for accountability — justifying the expense — but our goal is ensuring that children get the services that they need,' Boer says. Sarah Clark, senior director of strategy and development at ILDS, refers to the longitudinal project as 'a space where researchers can collaborate and build upon each other's work. And that's critical because it's not just from university researcher to university researcher, but also back to state agencies, who have such limited capacities.' As Big Ten ELA continues to promote best practices on data systems, a more recent webinar in December examined two landmark studies on the effects of early childhood education — the Perry Preschool Project, which began in the 1960s and followed students through age 40, and the Chicago Longitudinal Study, which has been ongoing since 1986. According to Barnett, both studies 'show the full potential of longitudinal data systems to inform science and policy on early childhood education.' Thomas sees promise in the 'open dialogue going on between advocates, researchers, and other stakeholders who are invested in knowing more about young children and about the early childhood landscape.' Ultimately, this work will lead to what she envisions as 'a public portal that will be used for a lot of our integrated data.' 'We've been talking about these data issues for years,' Thomas acknowledges, 'but I really feel like this is the closest Illinois has been in decades. And now we actually can see… maybe not the end of the tunnel, but I can see that little light.'
