Purpose:
The Purpose of the Coalition is to engage in the coordination and promotion of early childhood education activities and complementary services, to serve as a community voice in the formulation of early childhood goals and objectives and to identify such other services and activities as deemed necessary by the Members.
Outcomes:
The Early Childhood Steering Committee has identifed the following Outcomes using the Results-Based Accountability (RBA) framework.
- Babies are born healthy
- Children are healthy, safe & nurtured
- Children are ready for kindergarten
Indicators:
The Early Childhood Steering Committee has identifed the following Primary Indicators using the Results-Based Accountability (RBA) framework.
- % of babies born who weigh less than 5.5 lbs
- % of pregnant women receiving prenatal care
- # or % of children 0-4 meeting social, emotional, cognitive, language & physical developmental milestones (ASQ) (DDA*)
- % of children who are ready for kindergarten (DDA*)
Proxy: % of kindergarten students meeting DIBEL benchmark - first sound fluency
- % of 4 year olds attending Pre-K (DDA*)
(* DDA: Data Development Agenda)
* Visit the Santa Fe Data Hub to track how we are doing on these indicators with the interactive Early Childhood Indicators Dashboard here in the Santa Fe Data Hub.
Description:
The Early Childhood Steering Committee was initially convened by the United Way of Santa Fe County as an informal roundtable of early childhood stakeholders in Santa Fe approximately two years ago. The Committee has been meeting once a month to share, discuss and collaborate on strategic and programmatic early childhood priorities of participating institutions.
The members share the following goals and agenda:
- Ensuring that all children in Santa Fe County are socially, emotionally, and academically ready for their first day of kindergarten;
- Promoting coordination and maximization of early learning resources to benefit the children in Santa Fe County;
- Providing the regional delivery of comprehensive, coordinated and complementary services for young children, from birth through five, and for their families, to enable more children entering kindergarten ready to learn;
- Promoting high-quality early learning and care programs through high standards with skilled practitioners who are fairly compensated and who receive effective professional development; and
- Developing a broad community-wide awareness and commitment to provide high-quality early childhood education to all children in Santa Fe County.
Progress Made / News:
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The Committee has recently completed the creation of a Memorandum of Understanding to formalize and guide its activities in the future.
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One of the most significant outcomes of the Committee includes the recent partnership agreement between the United Way of Santa Fe County (UWSFC) and the Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS) to create the Santa Fe Early Learning Center at Agua Fria and the Santa Fe Early Learning Center at Kaune. The Centers will serve Santa Fe’s most vulnerable children and their families in a full-day, full-year facility. The Centers will also serve as a hub for Santa Fe County – and the state – to demonstrate how to maximize the impact of services and programs in early childhood through the provision of the best practices supported by the best research.
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The Committee engaged in a Result-based Accountability (RBA) planning process to define its ends, concrete outcome indicators, “turn the curve” strategies, and action plan.
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Currently the ECSC is focused on creating a county-wide shared data collection system through the work of the Healthy Babies Data Team and the Kindergarten Readiness Data Team.
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The work of the ECSC this coming year – through the two Data Teams identified above – will support the following Implementation Priorities: of the Santa Fe Collective Action Plan
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4.2 Develop a coordinated data collection and reporting system for prenatal care including potential common intake form / questions at hospitals / centers.
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4.3 Develop a coordinated prenatal outreach plan to reach 100% of families who have a child born in Santa Fe County. Review intake form & reporting data and share learning across programs to identify priority target outreach and actions needed
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6.4 Collect and analyze Early Childhood / PreK programs to K-3 student transitional outcomes data; use findings to improve early childhood education with feedback and professional development; develop system for on-going data collection / analysis.
In brief, the work of the Healthy Babies Data Team will be to thoroughly survey the existing intake and discharge data available to partner organizations (and other clinics in Santa Fe County) and formulate a set of common questions and data points that could provide us greater insight into the risk factors in the population for adverse birth outcomes. The Team will work toward the creation and adoption of a common form and/or set of questions so that we can use the data collected to improve both our outreach efforts and our support programs to address these at-risk factors.
The Kindergarten Readiness Data Team will focus on the creation and adoption of a better measuring tool to predict kindergarten readiness. The only objective tool widely in use currently is the DIBELS, which all participants agree is too narrowly focused on simple phonic recognition and does not capture the strengths, knowledge, and characteristics a child needs to develop to succeed in school. The Team will work with the state – which is conducting a pilot of a new, more robust tool – and then make recommendations for using the tool to provide us with feedback on how our current, and future, early education programs are succeeding or failing to adequately prepare our children for success.
Key Documents: Click here to see the RBA Action Plans. Children Ready for Kindergarten
Partners:
- United Way of Santa Fe County
- Santa Fe Public Schools
- Presbyterian Medical Services
- CHRISTUS St. Vincent Regional Medical Center
- Santa Fe Community College
- Santa Fe Community Foundation
Partners in the Health Babies Data Team are:
- Kyra Ochoa, SF County Community Services Department, Chair
- Kathy Etre, Christus St Vincent Regional Medical Center
- Katherine Freeman, Brian Dineen, Tekla Johnson, United Way of SF County
- Joohee Rand, Santa Fe community Foundation
- Kelly Gallagher, NM Department of Health
- Kimberly Garner, La Familia Medical Center
- Daniel Slavin, SVH Support
- Ana Morelos, Las Cumbres Community Services
- Linnea Moreno, Las Cumbres Community Services
Partners in the Kindergarten Readiness Data Team are:
- Jennifer Sallee, SF Community College, Chair
- Tekla Johnson, UWSFC
- Brian Dineen, UWSFC
- Larry Martinez, Presbyterian Medical Services
- Erica Stubbs, Presbyterian Medica Services
- Joohee Rand, SF Community Foundation
- SFPS, TBD
Contact Information:
United Way of Santa Fe County, Katherine Freeman, KatherineF@uwsfc.org
Santa Fe Community Foundation, Jerry Jones, JJones@santafecf.org
Santa Fe Public Schools,Joel Boyd, jboyd@sfps.info
Presbyterian Medical Services, Larry Martinez, Larry_Martinez@pmsnet.org
CHRISTUS St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, Kristin Carmichael, Kristin.Carmichael@stvin.org
Santa Fe Community College, Randy Grissom, randy.grissom@sfcc.edu
