Forum Administrator YaBB Administrator Posts: 88	End of Year Planning Grants 2009-2010 11/05/09 at 11:59:06   Please use this thread for End-of–year progress reports for Planning Grants.          Use the "reply" button to post your report to this thread.          Thanks!
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jfree YaBB Newbies Posts: 4

Marathon School District Reply #1 - 05/06/10 at 15:39:40    This year the Marathon District has been focusing on parent contacts and setting up a community council.   Since our mid year report, we have had a family night at our school with 32 families that attended.  At the family night we provided gross motor activities in our gym, fine motor activities and literacy activities in our library.  Our speech/language clinician provided information about language development also.  We focused on parent involvement and also  simple activities parents could do with their child at home.  We also provided the parents with hand outs about developmentally appropriate activities in each area.  The families also enjoyed a healthy meal of sandwiches and a salad bar.  Our EC:EEN teacher, 4K and 5K teachers and speech/language clinician all participated in the family night.  We also had middle school students that helped out with the gross motor activities and the food.      Our community council met in March with 9 participants; 3 teachers, our principal, our school psychologist/parent,  a school board member, 2 day care representatives and a Marathon Co. support person.  Our discussion was, basically, brainstorming ideas about how the school and the community daycares can work together to educate each other, educate our children and how we can educate our parents.  We began by having a discussion with school board members and our district administrator which was done by our 4K staff and our principal.  This month we plan to meet with daycare providers in our community to meet, greet and have a general discussion on what they what like to see happen in regards to school and community.  We are looking forward to further discussions and events!

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breunvi YaBB Newbies Posts: 2

School District of Lodi Reply #2 - 05/18/10 at 13:30:24   The School District of Lodi is continuing to work with the community to develop options for our special education students in a wide variety of settings.  The District is looking at leasing space in four preschool/daycare setting in the community.  We are working with each of these groups and our school attorney to develop contracts that will govern that relationship.  The District also brought the issue of leasing before the electorate at a special board meeting at the beginning of May.  This was a hotly contested issue at the board meeting, but the community voted in favor of allowing the district to lease space by a 62-60 vote.  It is our hope that this will be the last major hurdle that we will have to overcome prior to staring 4K programs in the fall of 2010.     We are continuing to meet with our early childhood council on a monthly basis and have found that we are becoming a very cohesive and focused group.  We are also continuing to develop plans to support some of our speech/language only students in the daycare/preschool settings and are working to develop a playgroup options for our three-year-old early childhood students.   Finally, we are in the process of reviewing applications for the 4K positions in the hope of hiring 2.5 teachers by the end of May.  Our goal is to have one if not both of these teachers dual certified in Early Childhood and Regular Education.

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jbindl YaBB Newbies Posts: 2

Reedsburg Reply #3 - 05/20/10 at 11:59:06   Reedsburg: We have accomplished a lot this school year!  We implemented an early childhood council in our community.  The group has meet three this this school year and is scheduled to meet three times next year.  We have finalized plans for an Early Childhood/Head Start collaboration starting next school year.  The school district will base an early childhood special education teacher at the Reedsburg Head Start building.  This will expand our early childhood placement option for eligible children.  This collaboration will also allow for more dialogue between the school district and Head Start.  We will be sharing resources and professional development opportunities as well, so it is a win win for all parties involved.  In terms of professional development, we had staff participate in the WMELS overview training, the preserving early childhood conference, and child development days training.  We visited a early childhood/Head Start collaboration in Wonewoc-Union Center School District.  We have having school district and Head Start staff participate in Creative Curriculum training next week.  Most recently, the School District of Reedsburg host LINKS training.  We had participants from our school district, Adams-Friendship School District, and from CESA 5.  Also, this school year, we have continued discussions with potential community partners in 4K implementation.  Although no timeline has been set for 4K in Reedsburg, it looks like a community based approach is viable here in Reedsburg.  We are exited about what the future holds for our community and look forward to expanded community based early childhood placement options.

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Ruth_Voight YaBB Newbies Posts: 4

Monticello School District Reply #4 - 06/08/10 at 13:16:22   Monticello School District   Monticello  hosted it's 2nd FAMILY FUN NIGHT on April 20th.  Approximately 50 families with children in 4KG and 5KG attended this event.  The theme for the evening was Pizza.  We had pizza play-doh, a pizza restaurant dramatic play area, pizza crafts and pizza stories and pizza to eat.  The local librarian read stories and local restaurants donated most of the pizza.  Additionally, the local UW Family Extension agent hosted a 45 parent discussion group.   We also had our first Child Development Day at a site other than school.  This event was held at the Community Hall; Birth-to Three, Early Head Start. a daycare provider and the local librarian all resourced this event in conjunction with the school district.  We have begun planning for next year's event.   Our Community Council has met twice this year.  We finalized our vision and anticipate a meeting early in the school year to develop our mission  and to coordinate events for the 2010-2011 school year.

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davisj YaBB Newbies Posts: 2

Potosi Reply #5 - 06/09/10 at 10:57:43   This year we held two Early childhood council meetings. During those meeting it seemed that there was great interest in forming a playgroup to serve the general community and three-year-olds with special education needs.     We had a wide variety of people attend our meetings including, the local librarian, Birth to Three, Head Start, a private school teacher, a daycare representatives, parents, a public school kindergarten teacher, and the school principal.   Our council still needs to develop a mission statement. We may meet this summer to work on that.   We have reapplied for a planning grant next year.   We sent an individual to the Preserving Early Childhood conference.  We offered to send individuals to WMELS training but no one went.  We are hoping for better participation next year.

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jranney YaBB Newbies Posts: 2

Melrose-Mindoro School District Reply #6 - 06/13/10 at 11:26:09   The Melrose-Mindoro School District has organized a community council which has met four times during the past school year.  Our council members include child care providers, Head Start personnel, community members, parents, regular education and ECSE teachers.  Our first goal was to generate a list of resources available to parents of young children in our school district.  One of our child care providers also developed a brochure of child care resources.  These were available to our parents at our Child Development Day on March 11th, 2010 and also in our community libraries.  Our second goal was to develop a questionnaire for parents, to find out what types of programs/activities they currently use with their young children, where they use them, and what other activities they would like to see offered in the future.  The concensus appears to be that the few that are offered are not very well known to the general population.  A third goal was to have a variety of materials available for the community to use, focusing on child development, behavioral strategies, special needs, and preschool learning activities.  Because of the location of our district, it is difficult for child care providers and parents to utilize resources outside of our community.  An "Open House" was held during our final meeting to acquaint providers with these new materials.   Our PreK and ECSE teachers have attended several training opportunities at CESA #4, including Early Childhood Forums focusing on a variety of topics within the field of early education, Creative Curriculum, and Itinerant Services.  One group member has also had a chance to observe "Play Shoppes" in surrounding communities that are being offered through the La Crosse Family Resources.  We are hopeful that the information gained will help us in planning collaborative services in our own communities.

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jgreen YaBB Newbies Posts: 2

Delavan-Darien School District Reply #7 - 06/15/10 at 10:26:13   Delavan-Darien School District ended the year with the establishment of a mission statement, a vision, 3 goals, and an action plan for each goal to be carried out during the 2010-2011 school year.  The Preschool Community Collaboration Council has committed to plan 2 professional development events for local childcare providers and district staff working with preschool-aged children; create a clearinghouse of community resources to assist families with preschool-aged children; and maintain the monthly meetings of all partners for planning and sharing activities and resources throughout the year.     Community partners have expressed a strong interest in establishing collaborative 4K classrooms throughout the community, but the district leadership has chosen not to pursue that.  In fact, community-based programs have approached the district prior to this year to offer to establish collaborative programs, and they have been rejected.     The hope by a number of people is that continued requests and interest shown in establishing these partnerships will encourage different decisions to be made in the future.     In general, this year allowed local childcare providers to come together and begin to have face-to-face conversations.

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debragranger YaBB Newbies Posts: 2

Tomah Area School District Reply #8 - 06/17/10 at 09:34:37   The Collaborative Community Council met in the Tomah Area School District for the first time on Mon. May 10th.  We had a good representation from many agencies in the community.  We plan to meet again the beginning of August.  At this time the council will begin work on determining resources that are available to the families of young children as well as how the agencies can effectively communicate with each other.  The council plans to meet quarterly for the 2010-11 school year.     Deb Granger 4K Teacher/Coordinator Tomah Area Timber PUPS (Partners United 4 Pre-School) Tomah Area School District 608-374-5622

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Judy YaBB Newbies Posts: 2

Stanley-Boyd School District Reply #9 - 06/30/10 at 12:06:01   The Stanley-Boyd School District has established a wonderful collaboration with Head Start on a monthly basis.  Our meetings have led to identifying our strengths and weaknesses.  From these meetings we identified a need for para-professional training on how to assist with Creative Curriculum observations.  Mary Joslin came in and facilitated this training in March.  Our Head Start and School staff also discussed ways to be true to the creative curriculum model while also incorporating the curricular tools utilized by the Elementary to assist with transitions into Kindergarten.  Stanley-Boyd is going to a PLC model for staff Development in the fall and the Head Start staff was able to join us one day when we participated in a workshop presented by Susan Sparks from Solution Tree.  Our hope is that when we have weekly grade level meetings in the fall the 4K Head Start staff person will be able to join us at least once per month.     In December our ECSE, 4K and Head Start staff attended a Creatice Curriculum Training.  The Elem principal attended the Admin. Mtg.  After we returned from the meeting we discussed ways to better utilize the wealth of information that can be obtained from the observations.  Next year this data will guide our discussions during our PLC time.     In January our bi-monthly Playgroups in collaboration with River Source Family Center began and continued through the end of May.  Attendance remained fairly consistant with around 10 children.   We had a high of 20 and a low of 7.  When you add the adults that attended with their children our play room was a busy place.  The parents that attended really appreciated the opportunity to come somewhere and be able to talk to other parents about what they are going through or have questions answered.  One touching comment came from a young, recently widowed mother.  She came  with her 2 year old daugher and 3 month old son.  I observed another father sitting and rocking her son - she said, here he has some time to be held by a man.  He never met his dad.  We have already discussed to desire to keep this happening in the fall.   Our Feb. WMELS training was held.  We had 16 in attendance.  While we would have liked to have had more we did have a great variety of participants from varying settings.  All agreed it was well worth the time.  Hopefully we can continue to build on the connections we made during this workshop.     In April we were able to send our ECSE, 4K, Head Start and SP & Lng. staff to the UW Stout Conference.  It was not only educational but a great bonding experience for this Team.     In June I tried to make connections with local administrators and pre-school related agencies as a sort of "Leadership" Mtg.  A day and time was selected for this "lunch" meeting but due to lack of participation it was canceled.  Hopefully we will try this again in the fall when people are not as busy.     Finally we used some funds to begin an adult reference library in our Early learning Center, purchased some parent brochures, and a Second Step kit for our ECSE/4K staff to build on consistancy in practice between Head Start and the school district.     Next year we paln to continue the practices we've began as well as grow with addt'l training and community- based collaborations.     Judy Gulcysnki - Elementary Principal

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