Cheryl Harvay Kernander, Moderator
Joanne Karm, Resource Delegate

Workgroup Members:
Kathleen Davis, Harold L. Hudson, Rev. Raymond J. Kovach, Kim Kreitz, Barbara Rickenbacker and David L. Shaw

Vision: The City of Akron has a unique opportunity to set a new standard in early/primary education particularly as it applies to day-care and before and after school care settings. Akron is large enough to address issues common to many urban areas, yet small enough to respond creatively and quickly to challenges.

Goal: The ultimate goal of Akron’s early/primary education programs is to insure that every child achieves a developmentally appropriate level of literacy by the completion of the third grade and is poised to move successfully through their remaining school years. In addition, all children in Akron should have the right and the access to receive quality day care (children ages 0-3) and quality preschool education (children 3-5). To realize these goals Akron must adopt a "total quality" child-care and education approach. To an even greater extent than older children, literacy issues for the 0-9 age group are affected by physical, emotional, societal and family factors.

Recommendations for early/primary child education are grouped around three key points:

1. Prepare the child to learn.
2. Make the resources available to aid the child in learning.
3. Support the child in learning.

Dealing with special needs and standards for developmentally appropriate learning environments.
Inventories should be completed to identify special needs on a continuum from the obvious, such as speech or hearing issues, to the more subtle, such as learning styles.

In the case of hearing/speech skills, assessment earlier than kindergarten is recommended. The workgroup recommended that if a special need such as a hearing problem weren’t identified before kindergarten, that child would face serious literacy challenges. The group felt that assessment by age 3 would be a significant improvement.

Encourage parents to provide some sort of educational setting for preschool children.
Whether through a formal day-care program or informal "play-groups," the socialization and enrichment opportunities provided in-group settings could prepare a child to succeed in school. With a modest effort, the groundwork for literacy can be laid as early as 6 months of age. It was suggested that Children’s Hospital and General Practitioners could be conduits of information in helping parents understand the importance of such early education.

Ohio’s funding challenges are Akron’s funding challenges.
The group recognized that until equitable funding strategies are in place Akron, along with the rest of Ohio, would continue to see discrepancies in the quality of educational opportunities available to our children. In addition to the now well documented financial issues facing our public schools, the group also noted a need for financial resources so more children can attend quality day-care both from ages 0-5 as well as before and after school programs for ages 5-9. The educationally richer day care programs are too expensive for many families. There is a need for financial resources so more children can attend quality day care. One collaboration to model after:

• The Akron Board Of Educations works with their affiliated Head Start programs that provide curriculum support and teacher training. This ensures better preparation for children’s entry into public school. There is a need for similar support to all day care and preschool programs.

Teacher support and compensation.
Teaching/day-care shouldn’t be a fringe job. For example, in England teachers are revered on a level equal to that of physicians.
The group recognized that teachers earnestly want to help the children they work with and that learned child development models are often obsolete for a given school, neighborhood, class or child. Therefore, ongoing child development education is needed including education for dealing with emerging (often societal) issues.

The current funding system is leading to stratification of communities because of differences in available education funding. Funding can determine both the qualities of teachers in a school and the resources available for those teachers to use.

A more equitable funding system must be devised. Consideration should be given to the number and quality of challenges a particular school must address in determining apportionment. Teacher compensation should be influenced by merit, but not without an opportunity to acquire the necessary skills needed to address the ever-changing issues presented in the classroom.

Year-round Schooling.
The group consensus was that year-round schooling provides better continuity for children’s learning, possibly a more balanced schedule for teachers and is a better fit for our society that is no longer agrarian.

Some options the group feels may have merit are:

• "Looping" where a teacher travels with the class from K to 1 to 2 to 3. Even in schools with highly transient populations this could provide a reassuring base and consistency for the percentage of students remaining. Also, perhaps if widely implemented, it may provide a solid base for transient students to "land in."

• Rather than "segregating" children based on ability ("smart" kids with "smart" teachers) a recognition of multiple intelligences, different learning styles and personal achievement is valuable and could support the "looping" concept as well.

Who sets standards?
The group agreed that standards should be set jointly by the community (parents, business leaders, etc.) in conjunction with professional educators at local and state levels.

We noted that education is a loaded political issue and involvement of political leaders should be tempered to the extent office holders are actually involved in the community (are they a parent, business owner, etc.).

While quality standards (and avenues to improve them) exist for K-12 education, standards for preschools and day-care sites address primarily issues of health and safety. The community needs to work with state officials to develop more standards related to program quality and certification of teachers.

Recognize and address that literacy issues in children may also be parental literacy issues.
Parents are a key support for child literacy. Acknowledging that a parent may not be literate, or not literate in English, can help clarify the issues to be overcome in achieving literacy. Once this is clarified other support resources can be identified for the child or, ideally, a literacy program can be offered to parents along with child. In this second option, the program should be sensitive to the stigma attached to illiteracy and the program content veiled by another subject.

Provide before/after school programs—not everyone learns in the same amount of time.
These programs should be enrichment programs, not warehousing kids or just convenient day-care options for parents. Qualities of these programs should include:

• A spectrum of options, from stimulating free-play to reading help or areas of special interest such as languages or science.
• Emphasis on involvement not level of achievement, be careful not to stigmatize students who participate for remediation.
• A sample program has be created by King School’s PTA which organizes a variety of programs for a nominal fee.
• A key issue to resolve: transportation, both for cost and liability.
• Currently, these kinds of programs aren’t offered at the K-3 level, doing so can provide an important opportunity to move more children toward literacy by providing an introduction or extra help as needed.
• These programs don’t have to be school-based (although the school should certainly be involved in their design), they may occur at community, day-care or before/after school care centers.
• One successful structure for these programs, especially reading, may be to tie them to breakfast programs.
• Thought should also be given to possible ways to involve children in literacy goals that tie to other literacy activities. Literacy isn’t only about two-dimensional pictures and words on a page.

Adapt a multi-cultural mindset.
Recognize diversity. Be mindful of ways to be inclusive not only of Hispanic, Asian and other cultures, but also socioeconomic differences.

If we don’t acknowledge difference it will be impossible to address challenges facing different groups. For example, avoid the "taboo mindset" in which a subject is never named because it is distasteful and as a result, never remedied.

Once a challenge is identified, present it to the community. The second challenge may be in articulating to the community why overcoming the issue is important. For example an ESL program for adults may be seen, as an "extra" unless it is shown that there is a significant group of adults with children in school for whom English is a second language.

The best support that can be provided at the early-primary education level to prevent later violence among children/students is parental involvement and support.
In neighborhoods where lack of parental involvement is an issue, and this includes most neighborhoods to some extent, the group recommended the following to help increase parental involvement:

• Publish guidelines for parental involvement and give to parents at beginning of each school year. Use innovative method of communication including pictures so both parents and children understand them. Topics to be covered: attendance, adequate sleep, proper breakfast, clothing and hygiene.

• Provide "social resource person/employee" to problem-solve and advocate for families to use available agencies in meeting guidelines. School employee would not responsible for the ultimate resolution of problems, only to refer them to the proper agency. One possible model: Barberton’s Decker School.

In wrap up discussion, the following observations were made:

Controversies (such as the politicization of school funding) distract our focus from teaching children to read and preparing them to learn.