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"…A family-friendly community is one in which the school system is of
high quality, has strong academic standards, and has good outcomes as measured
through test scores and graduation rates. It is a community where schools are
safe and accessible to all children and where parents feel welcome and are
involved. And, it is a community that provides lifelong educational
opportunities from birth through the adult years, and includes the presence of
colleges or universities."
-The Makings of a Family-Friendly City and Municipal Government's Role,
National League of Cities
Broadly, the City and its citizens must support its school system. The bottom
line consideration for many families in selecting a place to live is the quality
of the school system - which, often, is contingent on the availability of
funding. The City and its citizens must also support early childhood education
and childcare - so that all Burlington children arrive at kindergarten ready to
learn, families have access to parenting supports and education, and families
can access affordable high quality child care.
WHAT'S ALREADY WORKING:
Burlington schools have made great strides forward in the last decade. The
dropout rate has been cut in half over the past five years from more than 10
percent in 1997 to 5.1 percent. Truancy - the number of students who missed 5 or more days of school
- declined from 2000-01 to 2001-02 by 36
percent.
Almost every Burlington school made significant gains in literacy on the New
Standards Reference Exam last year. Wheeler Elementary School in particular has
made significant progress in the past four years in increasing literacy scores
and achievement as well as changing the school climate.
As of 2000, 83% of Burlington high school students were college bound - as
high a percentage as any other school district in Chittenden County. That same
year, Burlington high school students gave over 10,000 hours of volunteer
service to the community.
Beginning this year, full-day kindergarten is available at all elementary
schools in the City - making Burlington one of the few school districts in the
state where parents do not have to juggle a part-day kindergarten schedule.
Compared to other local municipalities, Burlington has large numbers of
childcare providers. As of March 2002, 150 of the 427 state-regulated programs
in the county were located in Burlington. That includes 43 licensed centers, 56
registered in-home providers and 51 exempt in-home providers.
There is a high level of activity currently underway in the area of
Education, Early Childhood Education and Child Care. Examples of that activity
include:
1. School-Based Health Centers
- Provide health and behavioral health
care at Barnes and Wheeler Elementary Schools.
2. Tooth Tutor Access Program
- Available at four elementary schools
- Involves the University of Vermont School of Nursing, Vermont Department of
Health, Fletcher Allen Health Care and others.
3. Diversity initiatives:
- Hired a district diversity-equity coordinator,
the only such position in Vermont schools.
- Expanded that work to include a
social worker focused on racial and multicultural issues.
- Created a model
harassment policy.
- Adopted a model hazing policy.
- Worked with Champlain
Initiative Committee to End Racism in Our Schools.
- Ongoing staff professional
development includes mandatory all-staff training at the beginning of each
school year; and new staff orientation.
- Support to students includes various
staff functions, multilingual signs, and employment of home-school liaisons.
4. 21st Century Program:
- Funded through a federal grant.
- After school
programming offered at all Burlington schools.
- Serving around 70% of enrolled
students.
- Programs focus on academics-homework support and academic
enrichment as well as arts and some fitness activities such as Tae Kwan Do.
5. The Early Education Initiative
- Part-day program funded by the Vermont
Department of Education.
- Targets children deemed at risk of future school
failure who typically "fall between the cracks" of other education
services.
6. Champlain Valley Head Start
- Run by the Champlain Valley Office of
Economic Opportunity.
- Serves eligible children age three to five years and
their families.
7. Essential Early Education
- Provides services for children with
developmental delays.
- All schools offer Essential Early Education (Part B)
services through part day collaborative classrooms, home visits and consultation
with local child care.
- Eligibility for Part C services (Family Infant Toddler
Project) is determined by a medical diagnosis that might put a child at risk for
developmental delay, or an observable and measurable delay in development.
- Children up to age three most often receive services at home, or in community
settings such as child care and playgroups.
8. Planning & Zoning visits to schools
- P&Z staff visit schools to
help children learn about and get involved in city planning
9. Parent Child Centers
- Community-based nonprofit organizations funded by
the Vermont Agency of Human Services for the purpose of providing prevention and
early intervention services to prospective parents and families with young
children, including those whose children are medically, socially or
educationally at risk.
- Eight core services include home visits;
developmental, inclusive child care; parent education; playgroups; parent
support groups; on site services; community development (leadership, advocacy);
and information/referral.
- There are two Parent-Child Centers in Burlington:
the Family Room at the H.O. Wheeler School and the Lund Family Center on Glen
Road.
- The Lund Family Center includes a residential facility for parenting
teens, transitional housing for teen parents, playgroups, peer support groups,
child care, home visiting, parent education workshops, fathers program,
after-school programs and the Community Calendar.
- The Family Room, run by the
Visiting Nurse Association of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties, hosts free
community-based early learning services including playgroups, pre-school, family
play, fathers group, mothers group, parenting education classes, Mother Goose
early literacy programs, a variety of workshops suggested by parents, parent
leadership opportunities, family suppers, and gardening and cooking projects.
10. Children's Upstream Services (CUPS)
- Supports community-based mental
health services for young children who are experiencing a severe emotional
disturbance and their families.
- Three staff (2.5 FTE) at the county Child
Care Resource agency work with child care providers to address their concerns
about children whose behavior is challenging to them.
- Substitutes are
available so childcare providers can attend IEP meetings and have a chance to
consult with other professionals.
- Four early childhood mental health
practitioners (2.5 FTE) at the Baird Center for Children and Families work
directly with families in their homes, in playgroups, childcare programs, and
wherever the family and child interact.
- The team also runs a parent support
group for the families whose children are receiving services from Baird.
11. Dr. Dynasaur
- Vermont's public health insurance program provides
coverage for pregnant women and children birth to age 18, up to 300% of poverty.
- The Covering Kids Project, funded through the Robert Wood Johnson foundation,
is a statewide three-year project working to identify and enroll children who
are eligible for, but not yet enrolled in, Dr. Dynasaur.
- All K-12 children
are sent enrollment information from the school District twice a year.
12. Healthy Babies, Kids and Families
- A collaboration among the Vermont
Department of Health, the Parent Child Centers and home health agencies offers
parenting and health education to pregnant women and families with children up
to age five who have Medicaid insurance.
13. Healthy Child Care Vermont
- A collaboration between the Vermont
Department of Health and the Child Care Services Division of the Department of
SRS, funded in part with federal Maternal Child Health and Child Care
Development Funds, which provides a health consultation team to assist child
care providers with issues of health, safety and inclusion in child care.
14. Children with Special Health Needs
- The Department of Health provides
evaluations and direct specialty medical services for young children with
special needs and children with chronic conditions through clinics and
consultation.
15. Fathers Groups
- Fathers and Children Together support group, for
custodial and non custodial dads with young children, meets weekly at the Family
Room in Burlington.
- Boot Camp for New Dads, a nationally validated program
for expectant fathers and fathers of infants, was launched two years ago. The
graduates of Boot Camp often move on to Fathers and Children Together.
16.
Welcome Baby Bags
- Offered to all families with newborns to welcome and
celebrate the birth of each new citizen, and also to help families become
connected to community resources and supports.
- Coordinated by the Early
Childhood CONNECTION as part of a statewide Success by Six effort.
- Families
are offered a free bag of information about parenting, health and community
resources, as well as gifts, a board book for the baby, a sibling book, and
coupons from local businesses.
- Bags are dropped off or delivered by trained
community volunteers, nurses or program staff to the family's door.
- The
information and books in the bags are also available in Vietnamese and
Serbo-Croatian (for Bosnian families).
- A special bereavement bag was created
for families whose newborn had died, or who had a stillborn.
17. Community Culture Night
- A weekly program of supper, play and learning
activities for families learning English (ESOL) at the Family Room and serves
refugee and immigrant families from all over the world. They work with an ESOL
teacher, share stories of transition, and share with the larger community ethnic
foods, family traditions, music, and stories.
18. Chittenden County Community Calendar
- Distributes information quarterly
to over 1500 individuals and groups about parenting workshops, support groups
and recreational activities in Chittenden County.
- Currently compiled and
distributed by the Lund Family Center.
- A few examples of current activities
in Burlington include evening workshops on Positive Discipline That Works, When
Kids Fight, and Helping Children Cope with Separation and Divorce; drop-in
playgroups for children birth to 6 at the Family Room; Homeschoolers' Story Time
at the Fletcher Free Library; and youth basketball at the YMCA.
19. Child Care Fund
- A component fund of the Vermont Community Foundation,
the Child Care Fund brinsg together business leaders, state government officials
and advocates for early care and education, in order to build a long-term,
sustainable base of financial and moral support to strengthen and improve child
care for Vermont's children.
- The Fund makes strategic statewide grants to
improve the quality of child care and coordinates a public and business
education campaign called "Child Care Counts."
20. Nurturing Parent Program
- A national model parent skills training
program for children and their parents sponsored by Prevent Child Abuse Vermont.
21. Grandparents as Parents Program
- Part of a national program to support
grandparents who are now parenting their own grandchildren.
- Grandparents meet
weekly with a mental health counselor, with child care provided.
There are a variety of activities for children, parents and providers focused
specifically on literacy, including:
22. America Reads program
- An AmeriCorps*VISTA program that works with
schools, colleges and family literacy organizations to help ensure that all
children read well and independently by grade three.
- Sixteen VISTAs are
currently working in Chittenden County on literacy projects, including bilingual
reading programs, library story times, and playgroup literacy activities.
23. Burlington Reads
- A new initiative launched this year placing a dozen
national service members in Burlington schools for a year of service.
- Members
are focusing their efforts on improving early and family literacy, increasing
parent involvement in schools, and on the special needs of immigrant and refugee
families within the City's school system.
24. Vermont Adult Learning
- Offers ESOL classes in the community, adult
degree programs and other literacy supports to families across the county.
25. Story Hours
- There are 28 free story hours a week for children under
age 5 in bookstores and libraries in the County.
- In Burlington - at the
Fletcher Free Library - families have to be turned away.
26. Vermont Center for the Book
- Offers a series of five early literacy
programs called Mother Goose for families of young children
- Has recently
piloted professional development programs for child care program staff.
27. Stern Center for Language and Learning
- Offers BUILDING BLOCKS training
for child care providers.
- Each provider receives six consultation visits
after the course.
WHAT COULD BE ADDED:
In addition, the City should:
1. Implement the Safe Schools/Healthy Students (PASS) program
- Funded
through a new federal grant
- Improved security
- Increased substance abuse
and violence training for students and their parents
- Increased mental health
services
- Increased early childhood services (include home visiting)
- Increased after-school and alternative programming for at-risk students
- Expanded truancy prevention programs.
2. Build a state-of-the-art high school.
3. Improve the physical plants at the elementary and middle schools.
4. Implement the Training for All Teachers program
- $1.2 million grant to
provide enhanced professional development for classroom teachers in working with
students whose first language is not English.
5. Continue to implement the Early Care and Learning Initiative
- Funded
through Act 60. § Part of a state plan to begin assuring universal access to
high quality early childhood programs that promote school readiness and success
and support families of all Vermont children ages birth to six.
- Accredited
childcare programs with licensed teachers are enrolling children for purposes of
generating the General State Support Grant - currently, around $2,500 per
preschool child.
- School system takes 30% of the money generated for
administration of the program, childcare programs take 70%.
5. Further develop an Early Education/Child Care Policy
- Work with the
state and with local early education group (including schools, providers, Child
Care Fund and UVM) to sustain and expand Act 60 early education funding.
- Support national accreditation of non-profit early care and education programs
through mentoring and Child Care Fund subsidies.
- Work with UVM and other
local institutions of higher education on licensing of teachers, including
"roving" master teachers for smaller programs.
- Explore
opportunities to develop group health insurance policies for childcare
providers.
- Develop a Burlington network of high quality early care and
education programs to work with the schools to strengthen the connections
between kindergarten and early education/childcare programs and to integrate the
Vermont Framework curriculum standards for pre-kindergarten.
- Participate in
development of Trinity/UVM model early care and education program (serving as
state-wide resource).
- Develop a capital lending program for Child Care
Centers, with a focus on energy efficiency and rehabilitation.
- Explore
creating a Children's Trust Fund (possibly financed through a credit card
program) to subsidize early education/childcare.
6. Work with the business and nonprofit communities and with community groups
to develop expanded and coordinated parenting skills programs, including
workplace-based and neighborhood-based programs.
7. Increase the role of schools as community-driven community centers.
- Consider ways to expand the use of school facilities for other community
activities, and to design additions that lend themselves to multiple uses.
8. Encourage community services to locate in close proximity to schools.
- Help the VNA locate space for and build its new Family Center.
9. Increase support for the Parent Teacher Organizations
- Expand
opportunities for PTO input into use of schools as community centers
- Get the
PTO's involved in the study circle discussions on racism.
10. Increase parental involvement in children's education, which research
indicates is the key indicator of a child's success academically and later in
life.
11. Increase efforts to make the public schools feel welcoming and safe for
all students.
12. Maintain class sizes at primary grades, which research shows is a key way
to improve student outcomes,
13. Expand mentoring programs.
- Replicate DREAM program (which currently
matches UVM students with elementary school children in Winooski housing
projects) in Burlington.
- Continue to expand participation by City employees
in mentoring programs.
14. Expand the Sustainability Curriculum.
- Through an integrated
curriculum, help students explore topics such as neighborhood and habitat
restoration, multicultural heritage, environmental protection and energy
conservation
- Extend learning experiences from the classroom out into the
school's building, grounds and neighborhoods - and beyond
- Involve students in
the initiatives of businesses, city government and non-fits - and vice versa
- Improve the decision-making and civic s skills of children through participatory
problem-based learning
Page last updated November 15,
2002
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