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| | 1. | | Review and approval of the minutes of the June 26th meeting.
Minutes note: Meeting convened: 2:05 P.M.
Mr. Miller moved seconded by Mr. Randall for approval of the minutes. There were no objections.
Members excused: Vicki Martin, Paula Kiely, Bridget Clementi (who was listening only via speaker phone) and Geri Lyday | | | |
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| | 2. | | Presentations by SHARP Literacy, Milwaukee Succeeds and the Bruce Guadalupe Community School on efforts to prepare children and caregivers for school.
Minutes note: Ms. Marisa Wall Riepenhoff, VIce President of Education, from Sharp Literacy (SL) said it was founded 21 years ago by a museum docent and uses arts integration literacy in social studies and science. They are in 32 city of Milwaukee schools and served 8,000 students and are now beginning working with kindergarten students, rather than solely first to fifth grades. The approach to learning is bringing arts into schools and students into the community. They hire real authors to work with k4-k5 students to create books. The emphasis is on writing and academic vocabulary. They focus on language development and engagement and also ask for feedback from their teachers and how to apply what they did to their classroom teaching. Vroom was started by Jeff Bezos of Amazon and is aimed at letting parents know they don't need any special tools or money to integrate education with their children and the activities are related to the child's age. They will be starting with 3-year-olds in two years.
Dr. Izard asked if SL has been working with less-engaged parents; the response was they are working with existing carnival of literacy nights at schools, but those also tend to be engaged parents. It's very challenging to get parents off of cell phones and involved. Ald. Johnson suggested maybe having cell phones push the Vroom app. All SL programs are offered free of charge and it's up to the school which classes participate.
Tim Coughlin gave the presentation for Milwaukee Suceeds and its Kindergarten Readiness Program. They offer programs from kindergarten until career. They have achieved over $450,000 in grants in the past 2 years to focus on kindergarten readiness and sharing data. Organizations do want information to flow between each other and they have multiple contracts to do so. Over the next 12-18 months the goal is to prove that they can make this work as part of the Race to the Top program. Another goal is to define what "quality childcare" is; currently only 13% are "high quality" (4-5 star ratings, with the lower-quality ones being in the 53206, 53210 and 53215 zip codes). The child care programs wanted to learn from each other in terms of what does or does not work; the current plan is to move 3-star programs to 4-star programs, which would result in a greater subsidy to those child care establishments. Youngstar is changing the rating program in 2019 to look at the overall environmental quality of the child care establishment, so this program is also aimed at that impending change. Mr. Coughlin said they're also promoting vaccinations of 24-month-olds and broad education of all health professionals relating to the importance and safety of vaccinations. They also want health establishments to share information as well as "compete" against each other in terms of goals met as well as have the establishment use American Society for Quality (ASQ) standards. Another emphasis is on screening and referrals for birth to three children and as more screenings are done, the costs will increase. There is a direct benefit for begining intervention earlier rather than later when the children enter school.
Alia Huerta, Bruce Guadalupe School, Preschool Administrator, said the program serves 348 students, 96% of whom are Hispanic and 77% receive free or reduced lunch. Students receive English language support and parents are encouraged to be involved. Class Dojo is used to communicate between parents and teachers. For meet-and-greet at the beginning of the year, 96% of parents participate; if no parent shows up, the school contacts the parent. School staff ensures that all the parents are met and there is a "parent involvement contract" (30 hours of volunteering for one child and 40 for two children enrolled in the school). There is also a school uniform and it has to be worn. The school is k3-8th grade and assists children getting into high schools. A family member must suppport/volunteer for the child; it does not need to be a parent. If no-one can come, then a staff member will stand in for that family and pictures will be taken with the staff member. The K4 classes are larger as students are enrolled that were not enrolled in K3.
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| | 3, | | Report by the subgroup on its draft recommendations and discussion by the entire body.
Minutes note: Ms. Davis said the subgroup met yesterday and they took the brainstorm list from a previous meeting and used that as a framework to decide on what the body should focus on and strategies (long and short-term to work on). Each member will write a section for each strategy. The goal is to have the draft ready for late August to present to the entire body in September with a week's time for the entire body to review the recommendations.
Meeting adjourned: 3:07 P.M.
Linda M. Elmer
Staff Assistant
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