Exploring Community and Early Learning in Eastern Oregon

by Kali Thorne Ladd | Feb 14, 2023 | Community Engagement, Educators and Workforce, Early School Success, Equity

Eastern Oregon held answers to several questions swirling in the universe of early education. It was hard not to take note and stay focused as we left our Portland urban core, and headed towards rural and frontier communities in the eastern region of the state.

The purpose of our journey was to listen and learn from one of many Oregon communities doing transformative work for young children and families, and adapting approaches that are well researched and proving successful. Connected to this is Children’s Institute’s aim to amplify, develop, strengthen, and transform the emerging early childhood system to create a socially just and equitable Oregon for all children. This is not just words on a page, but rather the pathway that led us here.

Baker Early Learning Center and Children's Institute stand together in front of a mural at the Early Learning Center

Our trip to Eastern Oregon was immersive and led us to several early learning sites in Ontario and Baker City, including Euvalcree, Baker Early Learning Center, and Treasure Valley Relief Nursery, among others. We were also able to connect with the Ontario School District, one of our Early Learning Academy partners working on building robust early learning and care in their district.

We saw the remarkable fortitude and dedication of a community that is creating safe spaces of belonging for children, building workforce training programs and career pathways, and diligently working toward a seamless early childhood network.

There are innumerable stories to share, and we must a shine light on the lessons we took with us. These learnings are salient and timely with a new legislative session underway, and incredible efforts to stabilize and support children and families in the near term.

Learning #1

Sometimes, policies that help our urban centers may hurt our rural partners—a truth that further substantiates that one-size-fits-all approaches don’t work. This is true for both policies and programs. As such, all policies should be evaluated for the adverse impact they have on both communities of color and rural communities, and the intersectionalities in-between.

In communities of color, we acknowledge and say this often. Many systems of structural barriers are not designed for us and as such, the programs that are developed “for us and by us,” tend to be more effective. The same is often true for rural areas. Our systems and policies are often developed by folks outside of these communities and thus, don’t reflect their lived realities. Leaders in the state must increase representation in the decision-making process and consult with our diverse communities to better ensure impact.

Learning #2

Communities are resilient. We need to rewrite the narrative of our rural communities, one that focuses on their assets and resilience; not their trauma and deficits. A soon to be released survey from the Oregon Values and Beliefs Center on early childhood perspectives shows us that these issues are of paramount importance to Oregonians across the state, including our rural and frontier regions.

Learning #3

We don’t get out of the I-5 corridor enough! And by we, I mean those of us in the Portland metro area, Salem, and Eugene. We encountered deep gratitude and reached an awareness that such visits are not as frequent as they need to be. It goes without saying that the I-5 corridor and our urban centers are important—and—we have a duty to think about the realities that face Oregonians living beyond this. The realities that our rural and urban neighbors face parallel each other at times, but lived experience is unique. In the same way that my realities as a Black woman may mirror those of other women, but are also worlds apart.

The opportunity for transformation lies in our ability to be inclusive, which requires us to get out of areas that are most familiar. And because representation matters, it’s not sufficient to just travel. Another question we must ask ourselves is how do we—as statewide organizations—represent rural communities within our organizations and on our staff teams?

Connectedness is a core value of Children’s Institute, and I believe that the concept of “ubuntu” could play a starring role in future public policy work. The meaning of ubuntu is the idea that our humanity is bound to one another; that your success is tied up in mine, and vice versa. This concept is something that I often reflect on, particularly when I recognize the connectedness that we all share. This is what drives us to work together on behalf of all children.

My visit to Ontario and Baker City, at its core, illuminated how we make transformational change for children, families, communities and our state. The more we listen and learn from communities across Oregon, the better off we’ll be.

In community,

Policy Brief: Facilities Investments Would Build Capacity for Oregon’s Early Childhood System

by Greg Supriano | Mar 1, 2022 | Child Care, CI Publications, Parents and Families, SYS

Greater public investment to expand early childhood facilities is crucial to build the capacity of Oregon’s child care and preschool system.

This policy brief highlights:

The critical need for child care
How facilities costs create barriers
The critical role of mixed-delivery models
Impediments to facility growth
Key public funding options

Read and download the policy brief.

Preschool for All Ensures High-Quality Early Learning for Children in Multnomah County

by Rafael Otto | Dec 21, 2021 | Preschool, Child Care

Join us Sundays at 4:30pm for new episodes of The Early Link Podcast. Listen live at 99.1 FM in the heart of Portland – or online anywhere at PRP.fm

On this episode, host Rafael Otto speaks with Leslee Barnes, the director of the Preschool and Early Learning Division at Multnomah County. In that role, she is overseeing the Preschool for All initiative, a program approved by voters in November 2020 that will provide tuition-free, universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds in Multnomah County. The program is being funded by a personal income tax on high income earners and has received significant attention regionally and nationally as a progressive, upstream investment in children and families.

Guest:

A fourth-generation Oregonian who grew up in Northeast Portland, Leslee Barnes has deep roots. She attended Irvington Elementary, Harriet Tubman Middle School and then Grant High School. She went on to earn her bachelor’s degree from Warner Pacific University.

While Barnes would go on to build a career in early childhood education, her first job was as a nuclear chemical biological specialist for the United States Army. That was also when her first child was born, and her son was only 8 weeks old when she had to return to work.

In 1999, she founded Village Childcare LLC, a community-based organization that provides early learning and child care services in the Portland metro area. As a provider herself, she learned that child care is more than a service — it’s a business, and both parents and providers have unique needs.

Over the course of her 20-year career, she’s drawn on her experience as a provider to support other educators and entrepreneurs. Barnes’ leadership and work has also focused on racial justice and equity, including as the founding board chair of Black Child Development PDX.

Most recently, as a Spark improvement specialist for the State of Oregon, she helped early childhood programs launch a statewide program that raises the quality of child care. The program connects families to early learning and child care providers and offers coaching, professional development, and resources to providers.

As a participant in the Preschool for All Task Force process, she also shaped the initiative that residents approved in November 2020. The coalition of parents, education experts, nonprofit directors, elected officials, and business leaders met from September 2018 through July 2019. Under the leadership of Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson, they created a vision for universal preschool in Multnomah County.

Summary:

Since Preschool for All passed last November, the podcast begins by discussing its history and Barnes’ connection to the initiative as a whole. The conversation then moves to what was learned throughout the legislation process, and the different degrees of involvement that helped ensure its passage. Following that, Barnes comments on how this initiative will impact future generations in a multitude of ways — from the children in the classrooms, to the communities themselves, and even educators in the workforce.

Barnes then notes the overall goals of Preschool for All and what is needed to realize the scope of the initiative, including developing the workforce and access to physical teaching facilities. Next, the conversation pivots to the Build Back Better plan, its anticipated passage, and its impact on the Oregon education system. Closing out, Barnes gives us a view of the future and how universal preschool will positively affect not only the state, but the country as well.

Additional Resources:

Multnomah County Preschool for All: Pathway to Success

Preschool for All Implementation Plan

Preschool for All Reports and Key Documents

Early Learning Multnomah (ELM)

Children's Institute · Preschool for All Ensures High-Quality Early Learning for Children in Multnomah County

Transcript

[00:00:00] Rafael Otto: This is the Early Link Podcast. I’m Rafael Otto. Thank you for listening. You can always catch us on 99.1 FM in the Portland Metro on Sundays at 4:30 PM, or tune in at your convenience, wherever you find your podcasts, including iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon Music. I’m speaking with Leslee Barnes today, the director of the Preschool and Early Learning Division at Multnomah County.

In that role, she is overseeing the Preschool for All Initiative, a program approved by voters in November of 2020. That will provide tuition free, universal preschool for three- and four- year-olds in Multnomah County. The program is being funded by a personal income tax on high income earners, and has received significant attention regionally and nationally as a progressive upstream investment in children and families.

Leslee, it’s great to have you here today.

[00:00:49] Leslee Barnes: Thanks for having me here this morning. I’m glad to be with you today.

[00:00:52] Rafael Otto: I know Preschool for All passed last November, you took on the leadership role for the county in April of this year. Talk about how you came to be connected to the effort to pass preschool for all. Let’s start there.

[00:01:06] Leslee Barnes: Sure. You know, my work in early learning spans almost 25 years and I was connected to the effort through my work at the CC & R’s. I was supporting family child care providers specifically around what was called Quality Rating and Improvement at the time. And I’ve done similar work in the community. And from the perspective of supporting providers, working at my own child care facility, working at other national chains and just a lot of the advocacy work I’d done on behalf of providers, they reached out to me and said, “Hey, would you like to be a part of one of our work groups to study, like, what are the things that we really need to think about when we’re thinking about high quality early learning for young children in Multnomah County?” So of course, you know, I raised my hand and jumped right in because it’s something that’s been lacking for a long time. And over the span of my career, I’ve really seen how our early learning system has really not supported families or providers.

So I knew I was the perfect person really to be there. Because I’ve got a lot of perspective on that -from a family- as a parent as well. So I brought all that to the table doing that work.

[00:02:11] Rafael Otto: Talk a little bit about the passage of Preschool For All. There was such a sort of ground swell of effort that went into the passage. Lots of parent and family engagement and voice as part of that process. Talk about what that was like.

[00:02:24] Leslee Barnes: I think that’s really groundbreaking, because a lot of times we see systems come in place and they don’t really ask the consumer, what do you really need? And what does this really look like? So to have families there to have the support of community, folks like myself, all the people that really work in the space from schools to private sector childcare, public sector, you know. All those partners had started to be at the table and really think about all the parts. And I feel like we have been siloed for a long time, and it gave us the opportunity to be in the room at the same time; to have a champion at the county in commissioner Vega Pederson. It really was this magical moment where we said, “You know, well, let’s do this right. And let’s not compromise. And let’s really think about equity at the heart of this.” I think that was also very unique in our efforts in really designing this to be successful.

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

by Celeste Yager-Kandle | Aug 9, 2021 | News, Research and Evaluation, 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

A Peek Inside Orchards Head Start

by Helen Shum | Apr 18, 2019 | Educators and Workforce, Preschool, Teacher Voice

Ask 3-year-old Gianna what her favorite thing about school is and she answers with her entire body. She springs up out of her chair—cheese sandwich still in hand—and punctuates her answer with two raised arms.

“Play!” she shouts.

What’s your second favorite?

“Clean up!” she answers with the same infectious enthusiasm.

She offers a third favorite without prompting. “Running away from monsters and big marshmallows!”

This is Gianna’s first year at Orchard’s Head Start and she is clearly having a blast.

A boy named Cooper is crisscrossing the room with a serious look on his face. He carries an old school telephone message notepad in hand—the kind with the bright pink pages and the heading, “While you were out.” Cooper scribbles purposefully on the page, tears it off and delivers the bad news:

“You got a ticket,” he says with stern authority. “For being loud!”

Gianna notices and does her best to catch Cooper’s attention as he makes his way towards her part of the room.

“I want a ticket!” she implores. “I’m being loud!”

Cooper issues two tickets to the grown up sitting beside her, ignoring Gianna’s voluntary confession. Unfazed, Gianna looks to the accused and offers to autograph the ticket. “I know how to write my name,” she says proudly.

At lunch time, the children pour their own milk and show off cucumber sandwiches they have created out of the simple ingredients laid out family-style at their tables. Afterwards, they put away their own dishes.

A little girl reminds her tablemates, “If you’re done, then you have to wait.”

Those who have never stepped into a Head Start or preschool classroom might be surprised to know that nearly all of the activities Gianna, Cooper, and their classmates enjoy at Head Start are part of an intentionally planned, high-quality, early learning experience.

Photos From the Orchards Head Start Classroom

As Teri Seaton, a Head Start teacher with Educational Opportunities for Children based in Vancouver, explained, today’s early educators are expected to have knowledge and understanding of early brain development, to work with children who may need accommodations due to disabilities, and to address the impacts of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) among other challenging family and home environments.

“People too often associate early learning with babysitting and it’s so much more than that,” said Seaton. “It’s something that takes professional development, education, good training and intention, and planning to do well. That’s a piece that gets lost sometimes.”

At Orchards, the children have great freedom to engage in self-directed learning. They are offered many opportunities to be self-sufficient and are supported in acquiring the social and emotional skills that will help them be successful in kindergarten and beyond. Alongside early literacy and numeracy skills, children in high-quality early learning settings are also developing fine and gross motor skills, practicing patience and turn-taking, and building positive relationships with teachers and peers.

As Gianna demonstrates with her energetic endorsement of both “play” and “clean up” there is very little distinction between work and play. The children of Orchards know how to integrate both and the result is a learning environment that is a joy to witness and be a part of.

Many thanks to the students, parents, and dedicated staff at Orchards Head Start and Educational Opportunities for Children and Families in Vancouver, Washington for inviting us to be a part of their day.

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