Celeste Yager-Kandle, Author at Children's Institute

Earl Boyles’ Neighborhood Center Nurtures Community and Connection

by Celeste Yager-Kandle | Oct 11, 2021 | Early Works, Health and Development, Preschool

In 2010, Earl Boyles became the first site for Children’s Institute’s community-centered Early Works initiative, an approach to early learning and healthy development built on partnerships, innovation, and engaged families. From the beginning, the goal was to provide high-quality early learning opportunities for young children before they started kindergarten, alongside meaningful support for parents and families before and during elementary school.

Early Works also sought to enrich the school community by bringing together existing community resources through the Neighborhood Center, a full-service resource hub for children and their families, which is housed inside of the school.

Prior to Early Works, Earl Boyles was a designated SUN school. SUN, an acronym for Schools Uniting Neighborhoods, is an Multnomah County initiative focused mainly on providing wrap-around support for school-aged children. While SUN partners were a key part of developing the vision for the Neighborhood Center, the Early Works initiative specifically focuses on the needs of young children, birth to three. Working together, the partnership was able to reach a broader base of families with existing resources.

Today, building on the partnerships and services supported by Early Works and the SUN program, the Neighborhood Center works to connect families with services, ensuring that child health, development, and learning are connected to the school beginning at birth. SUN community school manager, Erika Hernandez, explained the Neighborhood Center’s approach to connect families with services, and how Early Works helps in facilitating partnerships.

“We have a very proactive relationship with our preschool and early learning partners. We want to start developing relationships with families before their kids start school, and to make the Neighborhood Center accessible,” explained Hernandez.

“Some of the babies in our play groups have older siblings at the school, too. So, it’s really about knowing the whole family, and without the playgroups or being an Early Works school, we might not see so much of that. This really gives us the chance to know the entire family,” she said.

During the initial implementation of Early Works going back a decade, a community needs assessment was a crucial first step in building a program that would provide families with what they needed, in their own words.

To do this, Children’s Institute partnered with researchers from Portland State University (PSU) to collect data and facilitate listening sessions. The results ultimately paved the way for the birth of the Neighborhood Center in 2015.

Beth Green, director of early childhood and family support research at PSU, was the lead researcher for the first community needs assessment. Green explained, “The Neighborhood Center came out of a recognition that high-quality early preschool helps children develop skills and it’s really necessary, but not sufficient, for ensuring long-term outcomes for kids.” She added, “If you really want to continue to support them academically, and socially-emotionally, you need to make sure their families’ basic needs are getting met.”

Now, the Neighborhood Center is a collective of parents, service providers, community organizations, early learning partners, and policy and advocacy groups, working together to support child development and nurture healthy, stable families. It offers resource connection for families seeking rent and utilities assistance, basic necessities, systems navigation, parent education opportunities, and access to community health workers.

Marina Merrill, director of research and strategy at Children’s Institute, reflected on how the school continues to support early childhood development by supporting families. “At Earl Boyles, we start at birth, knowing that families look to their neighborhood school for a range of support,” she said. “Creating a school as a hub with services beginning at birth helps create strong pathways to support children’s health and well-being. We know that engaging families and supporting their needs is also critical to ensure their children thrive.”

Because of Earl Boyles’ unique partnership with Children’s Institute, and being an Early Works site, the school has built a culture derived from the perspectives of families, and has the ability to respond directly to the community’s needs. And as the community continues to pivot in response to an evolving pandemic landscape, so too, does the Neighborhood Center.

The staff has continued to support children and families through direct services through what they call Care and Connect Team referrals, which include a food pantry, emergency food boxes, and housing and utility assistance.

Earl Boyles principal, Ericka Guynes, spoke to the ongoing impact that the Neighborhood Center has had on the school community, children and their families during the pandemic: “Even though we were not able to be in person, the case management and support continued. We were able to coordinate with our partners to continue to serve our community to support their needs.”

“The Earl Boyles Neighborhood Center has continued to support our community throughout this challenging time,” she said, “and it shows what a community school can look like when everyone pulls together to make sure kids and families thrive.”

Learn More about Early Works

Funding Relief Nurseries is an Investment in Families and Communities

by Celeste Yager-Kandle | Aug 17, 2021 | Home Visiting, Oregon Policy, School Readiness

Oregon Relief Nurseries provide critical support to families with young children ages 0-5. They currently serve about 3,500 young children throughout the state and are an integral part of Oregon’s early childhood system. The Relief Nursery model is nationally-recognized and unique to Oregon, focusing on the specific issues of children from families experiencing multiple stressors, trauma and abuse, or families that are at-risk of having these experiences. These complex challenges put families at an increased risk of becoming involved in the child welfare system. To prevent this, Relief Nurseries provide tools and resources so families can strengthen parent-child bonds, establish healthy patterns, and build protective factors.

“Our vision is that all children in Oregon thrive in safe, nurturing and stable families,” explained Cara Copeland, executive director of the Oregon Association of Relief Nurseries (OARN). “The Relief Nursery model has over forty years of success in strengthening families and keeping children safe from maltreatment and unnecessary foster care.”

Unfortunately, low wages for direct service staff have put these programs in a precarious situation, putting Oregon children and families at-risk of losing needed services. One of the biggest hurdles facing Relief Nurseries today is a glaring pay gap, when compared to other salaries in the early childhood sector. While Oregon has made some progress by raising wages for early childhood direct service staff in other early childhood programs, such as Early Head Start and Oregon Pre-Kindergarten, wages for Relief Nursery staff fall short. This results in recruiting challenges, high staff turnover, a reduction in services, and disrupts relationships with families and children.

According to OARN, the average Relief Nursery teacher/home visitor would need a 19 percent wage increase to meet the Early Learning Council minimum salaries for early childhood educators.

During the 2021 legislative session, one of the Early Childhood Coalition’s (ECC) legislative priorities was to expand early childhood investments. This included providing wage parity for Relief Nurseries, with OARN as lead advocate. OARN and the ECC requested $4.8 million from the Oregon Legislature to increase Relief Nursery wages and maintain levels of service. Ultimately, Oregon’s Relief Nurseries received partial funding.

“We received $2 million of our request and will continue to fight for those dollars,” said Copeland. “The consequence of not having these funds is fewer families served and staff being recruited out of our programs to partner services. The turnover and transition of staff have negative consequences on children and families currently receiving services as well because they often drop out of services when a beloved home visitor or teacher leaves.”

Relief Nursery staff are critical in shaping the future for children, families, and communities. With the early years being such an important time for brain development, Relief Nurseries are essential for thousands of young children in Oregon.

Central Oregon Spotlight: MountainStar Relief Nursery

MountainStar Relief Nursery is just one of 38 Relief Nurseries in Oregon, serving young children and families in Bend, Madras, Prineville, Redmond, and La Pine. Families in MountainStar’s programs join voluntarily, often connecting to the program by word of mouth, but they may also be referred by doctors, social workers, and partner agencies.

Kara Tachikawa, executive director of MountainStar, attended the ECC’s advocacy kick-off event in May. She subsequently met with lawmakers during the 2021 legislative session, providing testimony in support of raising wages for Relief Nursery teachers, home visitors and support staff.

This summer, CI staff visited MountainStar at the East Bend Campus and toured the building, which actually houses multiple organizations that also serve children, youth, and families. We learned that this co-location provides convenience, allowing families to access more services in one place, and promotes collaboration and partnership between like-minded nonprofit agencies. Healthy Families of the High Desert, the Central Oregon branch of Healthy Families Oregon, is one such program that shares space in the building and partners with MountainStar to reach more families.

While there, we learned that in September 2020, MountainStar opened three Preschool Promise classrooms in Bend, Madras, and Prineville to provide more high-quality, publicly funded preschool for low to moderate-income families. Their goal is to provide early intervention so children are safe and healthy, build parental resilience, and strengthen families through integrated early childhood education and therapeutic support services.

Healthy Families of the High Desert

Healthy Families of the High Desert is a program through Healthy Families Oregon. It is a voluntary home visiting program that provides support and education to families expecting or parenting newborns. The program offers weekly home visits for families that need and want some extra help, and partners with MountainStar to reach more families with young children.

An image of the building that houses MountainStar Relief Nursery

A photo of a classroom at MountainStar Relief Nursery

Looking Ahead

Since the Oregon Legislature concluded in June, Relief Nursery programs are now moving towards implementation. At MountainStar, Kara Tachikawa remarked that she is hopeful about successfully navigating the season of change, as the program is expecting staffing changes, solidifying programs, and looking to expand services over the next three years.

As for the near future, she said, “We’re excited to move back into our regular services for therapeutic classrooms and to return to in-home visiting with families. We know that these connections provide the basis for positive social-emotional development for the children, and the support that families need to make it through the challenging, precious, irreplaceable time of raising young children.”

Additional Resources

Using a Social Determinants of Early Learning Framework to Eliminate Educational Disparities

by Celeste Yager-Kandle | Aug 9, 2021 | Research and Evaluation, News, What We're Reading, Early School Success

In a recent publication from the Foundation for Child Development, Iheoma Iruka, PhD authored a chapter on the social determinants of early learning as a framework for eliminating educational disparities. In her writing, she discusses the entrenched nature of the achievement gap as “one of the greatest social problems in the US.”

The lack of opportunities for many children of color, known as the opportunity gap, may in turn lead to the achievement gap. Dr. Iruka describes the achievement gap in the US as being characterized by white children and children from higher income households performing better in certain subject areas such as reading, math, and science than Black, Hispanic, and Native American children, and children from low-income households. By kindergarten, many of these children are months, and sometimes years, behind children from white families and higher incomes. However, children who participate in high-quality early learning programs may still experience the achievement gap, meaning that early learning alone will not eliminate it. What’s more, is that despite an increase in early learning opportunities academic and social gaps by income and race/ethnicity persist.

Because of this, Dr. Iruka’s focus in this chapter is on the root causes, social policies, and other factors that perpetuate inequities and maintain disparities in early learning. She recommends that adapting the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) framework to early learning will help to eliminate disparities and inequities. Healthy People 2030 defines SDoH as, “the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.” This includes economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context.

Before the age of five, a child’s brain is in a stage of complex neural, social, and emotional development, making one million new neural connections every second. Early childhood experiences shape brain architecture, meaning the earliest stages of development are a critical time to eliminate disparities.

Applying a Social Determinants of Early Learning (SDoEL) framework would examine the root causes that limit resources, supports, and impact outcomes for children in early education settings — especially for racially and economically marginalized students and families. In Dr. Iruka’s words, “the concept behind SDoEL is that socioeconomic and political contexts lead to individuals’ socioeconomic position, which then impacts their resources and living conditions, greatly reducing some children’s opportunities to thrive.” SDoEL would offer a “big-picture” approach to early childhood education, by examining how larger systems and public policies impact smaller systems (microsystems), such as classrooms and families.

“SDoEL is really relevant to what we do at Children’s Institute because there is such a strong focus on looking upstream at some of the earliest experiences, contexts, access to care, and support that kids and their families have,” explains Elena Rivera, CI’s senior health policy and program advisor. “We are focused on kids prenatal to age eight, systems transformation, and policy change because that’s where we need to focus our attention to really change the outcomes for kids, families, and communities.

Ultimately, this requires early childhood researchers to study early care and education through an equity lens that includes diverse perspectives. It also calls for a deeper understanding of how certain laws and policies create an opportunity gap, where certain groups of people are unable to access the resources to help them thrive. This includes a lack of access to high-quality early care and education, living in economically stable households and communities, and having enriching home and classroom learning environments.

Dr. Iruka’s research has been instrumental in training educators across the country on anti-bias education, including in Oregon. In June, CI’s Early School Success team hosted an Early Learning Academy. The event was keynoted by Dr. Iruka and Dr. Tonia Durden, co-authors of the book, Don’t Look Away: Embracing Anti-Bias Classrooms. The Academy used Dr. Iruka and Dr. Durden’s approach as a framework to support educational transitions for teachers, students, families, and school communities. During the presentation, they shared a wealth of information about the historical and systemic factors that have shaped how schools interact with racially and economically marginalized students and families and highlighted ways that educators can shift classroom and school culture so parents and students can fully engage, and every student can reach their potential.

Oregon’s emerging early learning system needs to play a role in addressing disparities early on in a child’s life, by getting upstream and working to actually address and eliminate the inequities we are seeing in early childhood settings. Adapting the SDoH framework to early learning is a way to address the factors that impact students’ outcomes and their well-being, in the long run.

Additional Resources

Getting it Right: Using Implementation Research to Improve Outcomes

Podcast: Foregrounding Racial Equity in Early Childhood

Dr. Walter Gilliam on Preschool Expulsion and Bias

Oregon’s Legislature Invests in Young Children and Families

by Celeste Yager-Kandle | Jul 2, 2021 | News, Oregon Policy, Preschool

Oregon lawmakers concluded the 2021 legislative session shortly after 5:30 p.m. on June 26, 2021 — a day ahead of the constitutionally mandated deadline. In the final days of a challenging and unusual five-month virtual legislative process, Oregon’s Early Childhood Coalition (ECC) pressed on, as advocates and ECC partners continued to urge legislators to center racial equity, and pass early childhood policies to eliminate disparities for young children and their families.

With votes of 21-8 in the Senate and 42-14 in the house, the legislature passed an Oregon Department of Education (ODE) Grant in Aid budget that increases funding for many of the priorities listed on the ECC’s 2021 legislative agenda, including Preschool Promise, Oregon PreKindergarten 0-3, the Early Childhood Equity Fund, a Tribal Early Learning Hub, and expanding access to parenting education.

We are celebrating several policy wins after this session laid the foundation to advance racial equity in early childhood, expand early childhood investments, strengthen the child care system, and invest in families and communities. While we are heading in the right direction, there is more we must do to reach our goal where Oregon is the best place to be pregnant, raise children, and be a kid.

Oregon’s Commitment to Kids and Families

The following list includes the bills that passed this legislative session, that were supported by the Early Childhood Coalition:

HB 2166 — Directs the Early Learning Division to develop a program to prevent suspension and expulsion in early childhood programs.

SB 236 — Led by Black Child Development PDX, this bill will ban suspension and expulsion in early care and education programs by 2026.

HB 2055 — Will create a Tribal Early Learning Hub across Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes.

SB 5513 — ODE Grant in Aid budget that will invest in some early childhood programs

HB 3073 — Makes needed improvements to Oregon’s largest child care subsidy program and establishes a new state agency focused on Early Childhood.

SB 5529 — Funds Family to Family networks, which provide tools for parents to become healthier family units, stronger advocates for their children, and active in their communities.

SB 5505 — Funds the development of affordable housing for families.

HB 2835 — Provides benefits navigators at colleges and universities, where students who are also parents experience disproportionate rates of food insecurity.

HB 5006 — “Christmas Tree” bill includes funding for some early childhood investments including $4 million to ECC partner, Latino Network.

Reduce/eliminate suspension and expulsion in early care and education programs

Preschool has the highest suspension and expulsion rates of any age, and Black children, Native children, and children with disabilities are disproportionately impacted. In response, the Governor’s office put forward legislation that directs the Early Learning Division to develop a system for early care and education programs that are: culturally-responsive, developmentally appropriate, and prevent expulsion or suspension. The bill passed the House floor with a vote of 37-18 and the Senate floor with a vote of 19-8.

Another bill, SB 236, led by Black Child Development PDX, sought to ban suspension and expulsion in early childhood programs entirely by 2026. The policy will also support Oregon’s early childhood educators through robust coaching and professional development, before the ban goes into effect. The House passed this legislation with a vote of 36-22, and the Senate passed with a vote of 16-13. Together, these bills will work to create a more equitable and racially just early childhood system.

Create a Tribal Early Learning Hub

A policy to establish a Tribal Early Learning Hub passed the Senate floor and will ensure that tribal communities across Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes are included in deciding how to grow access to high-quality, culturally-specific early learning opportunities. This will be funded with $850,000 in the ODE Grant in Aid budget.

Reform Oregon’s Child Care Subsidy System

House Bill 3073 will shift Oregon’s child care subsidy program, Employment Related Day Care (ERDC), into a child care assistance program that better serves low-income families, their children, and creates more financial stability for child care business owners and educators 一 especially Black, Native, women of color and other women 一 who perform this essential work.

It will also establish a new state agency focused on early childhood care, The Department of Early Learning and Care, to streamline Oregon’s child care system. It will allow the state to be more strategic in its use of funds to rebuild the early child care and education sector from the devastating effects of the pandemic; make programs work better for children, families, and providers; and create a critical opportunity to advance equity. Chief sponsors of this policy included Rep. Karin Power and Rep. Jack Zika, who attended the ECC’s Advocacy Days kickoff event in early May, along with Senators Taylor, Jama, and Knopp; and Representatives Alonso Leon, Hayden, Levy, Neron, and G. Smith.

American Rescue Plan Act Boosts Early Childhood Projects

Using federal recovery dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), individual legislators received funds to dedicate to projects of their choosing across the state. Senators received $4 million and representatives received $2 million, respectively. A number of these investments went to early childhood or ECC partner efforts, through the end of session “Christmas Tree” bill, HB 5006.

Our Work isn’t Over

Although we are celebrating forward momentum on many of our priorities, our work is not done. We must make an ongoing commitment to invest in early childhood and support continued progress for wage parity, relief nurseries, providers operating out of rentals, and other policies that were only partially funded, or did not pass.

“In this session, we built more power and secured a greater investment to improve early care, education, and supports for Oregon’s young children, families, and communities across the state,” said Dana Hepper, director of policy and advocacy at Children’s Institute. “But there is still more work to do, to create an early childhood system that works for all of Oregon’s children and families, and develop a legislative process that centers the voices of those most impacted by legislative actions in the decision-making process.”

A Glimpse of How Yoncalla’s Youngest Learners Spend Their Day

by Celeste Yager-Kandle | Jun 4, 2021 | Early Works, News, Preschool

We visited the Early Learning Center at Yoncalla Elementary on a warm, May morning to see how some of Yoncalla’s youngest learners spend their day.

Located about 2.5 hours south of Portland, Yoncalla is a close-knit, rural community in Douglas County that sprawls away from the freeway for miles into the countryside. Yoncalla Elementary hosts grades PreK-6 and is one of two sites in Oregon that is part of the Early Works initiative—a partnership between the Ford Family Foundation, Yoncalla School District, and Children’s Institute.

In the entryway of the preschool, a large chalkboard displaying “Welcome to our Preschool Family!” in bold chalk letters, serves as a warm greeting.

Megan Barber reads the Eric Carle classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar to her preschool class. Just like thousands of children over multiple generations touched by Carle’s words and distinctive illustration, they were rapt!