Group works toward early ed success
Apr. 14—Meeting virtually for the first time in about two months, the Early Childhood Action Network covered a variety of topics including prekindergarten and literacy efforts.
ECAN is an offshoot of the Education Partnership of the Permian Basin and it has been divided up into work teams such childcare/early childhood, healthcare/medical, social services and school districts, said Adrian Vega, who led the gathering and is executive director of the Education Partnership.
Vega said the purpose of meeting was to discuss findings of the work teams, but also think through the logical next steps.
The goal of the group is to point all the "arrows in the same direction" to ensure that kindergarten readiness rates in the region improve under the umbrella of the POWER Initiative.
POWER stands for the power of words and early reading. The mission is to provide the community with tools and resources to help promote language development and early literacy in children starting at birth.
The overarching idea, he said, is to ensure that all children, or as many children as possible in the Permian Basin, are kindergarten ready when they start school.
Vega noted that Medical Center Hospital, Odessa Regional Medical Center and Midland Memorial Hospital are participating in the distribution of the POWER bags. The bags include with information about brain development, language development, reading and interacting with children and are given to all new moms, Vega said.
ECISD in partnership with the Odessa YMCA under state Senate Bill 1882 will start offering prekindergarten for 3 year olds in the fall.
Director of Early Childhood Education Beatris Mata
said her team noted that the ECISD Bookworms literacy program, in addition to offering books, is now embedding the added component of artwork.
"This is really exciting because now we have literacy connections that we are sharing with our families that can really enhance family engagement throughout our community," Mata said.
Mata said the Education Foundation is working hard to sustain that program so strengthen kindergarten readiness.
Mata said there are Bookworm vending machines at 13 ECISD campuses, including the Boys and Girls Club in West Odessa.
"This has been a ... great initiative that we have seen firsthand with our students in Ector County. Students are able to earn rewards through things that they do throughout the day," Mata said.
Little Free libraries are stationed at every campus in the district. Students can get a book and community members can donate to the boxes, which look like little houses on posts.
The pre-k 3 program, which starts next fall, will be located at the Odessa YMCA at 1111 Pagewood Ave. The pre-k roundup continues through the rest of this week.
"We are providing assistance to help our families navigate the application process at different locations throughout ECISD. First 5 (at University of Texas Permian Basin) has volunteered each day at every event that we have scheduled to ... help with this process. We couldn't pull off events like this without our volunteers and without our partnerships. ...," Mata said.
Low enrollment in prekindergarten is something that's an issue in the Permian Basin and throughout the country, Mata said.
Superintendent Scott Muri has said that the district is missing most of its students from this age group.
"We want to make sure we're communicating with our parents to let them know that we are offering these pre-k opportunities throughout all of our various entities," Mata said.
The first step with enrollment when parents apply is they check to see if they are eligible for free pre-k.
If families meet those criteria, Mata said, they are able to enroll them. It guarantees them spot for pre-k 3 and 4.
If they do not qualify, the district will see what its capacity is and then start opening it up to our ineligible families on June 1. There will be tuition for families that did not qualify for free pre-k.
She acknowledged that ECISD will have 350 teacher vacancies at the end of the year. That includes 179 in secondary and 182 in elementary.
