Illinois P-20 Council and Illinois Early Learning Council

Illinois P-20 Council and Illinois Early Learning Council

Kindergarten Transition Advisory Committee

Tuesday, September 26, 2017, 12-2 PM

Erikson Institute, 451 N. LaSalle Dr., Chicago

Dial-In: 218-339-7817Access code: 1584769

Minutes

Attendees: Emily Bastedo (Governor’s Office), Cynthia Tate (GOECD), Cristina Pacione-Zayas (Erikson), Ben Boer (Advance Illinois), Elliot Regenstein (Ounce), Mary Beth Corrigan (DCFS), Angie Brito (Blaine Elementary), Roger Eddy (IASB), Kelly Post (District 65), Ashley Long (B-3 Continuity Project), Dan Harris (INCCRRA), Joyce Weiner (Ounce), Melissa Figueira (Advance), Jonathan Doster (Ounce), Kathleen Willis (Rep. 77th District), Avery Bourne (Rep. 95th District), Donna Emmons (IHSA), Kris Pennington (USD #5), Kevin Rubenstein (IAASE), Jason Helfer (ISBE), Sam Aigner-Treworgy (City of Chicago), Bryan Stokes (IAFC), Rebecca Vonderlack Navarro (LPF), Stephanie Bernoteit (IBHE), Safiyah Jackson (McCormick), Erika Mendez (LPF), Diego Giraldo (CPS), Leslie Harder (Maplewood Elementary/IFT), Colleen McLaughlin (JALC), Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant (Sen. 49th District)

1. Welcome and Introductions
2. Opening Remarks
3. Co-Chair Election
4. Ethics and OMA Requirements
5. Committee Norms

Emily Bastedo called the committee to order, read the charges of the committee, and thanked the committee for joining. Emily nominated Cynthia Tate and Cristina Pacione-Zayas as committee co-chairs and asked for a motion to elect. Dan Harris made the motion, Elliot Regenstein seconded, and the motion passed unanimously.

Emily Bastedo reminded committee members to complete the required ethics and OMA training and acknowledgement to serve on the committee.

Co-Chair Cynthia Tate called attention to and explained the proposed rules of engagement.

1. Committee Goals
2. Joint Resolution Goals

Cynthia Tate summarized House Joint Resolution 24. She asked whether anything from the joint resolution was unclear or may require clarification or discussion.

Representative Willis asked whether we’d be addressing full day kindergarten or if it was beyond the scope of this committee, especially regarding dual language learners. Dr. Tate said that the committee does have a specific charge for DLLs and that this group is a priority.

Ben Boer said that insofar as full day kindergarten may help with transitions, it should be part of the conversation to understand the differences and problems when transitioning from half or full day programs.

Co-Chair Cristina Pacione-Zayas asked Rep. Willis to talk more about what she’d heard on full day kindergarten and folks wanting full day kindergarten or the differences in transitions. Rep. Willis said she would like to see expansion of full day kindergarten, and that districts who have it have seen positive results. She said that we should look at how to fund it and make it the norm.

Cristina Pacione-Zayas said that we should consider the language of the resolution, and that there is room to consider full day kindergarten with regards to the transition.

Elliot Regenstein said that ISBE has good data on where there is full day kindergarten, and that it might be interesting to compare this to districts’ financial profiles as there is an almost perfect inverse correlation between property wealth and full day kindergarten availability. Jason Helfer said that he could provide this information.

Roger Eddy said that when discussing these suggestions, it should be in the form of best practice, and that there are many districts that would like to have full day kindergarten but can’t due to space. A focus on best practice will help districts make decisions about what’s best for kids, and research could be a part of the incentives section that we develop.

Mary Beth Corrigan asked if a move to full day kindergarten would limit the number of slots available. Roger Eddy said that those things are all considered locally. Districts consider priorities and space. Incentives can help with this.

Kevin Rubenstein said that per goal #5, it may be within the scope of the committee to look at the transition of a child with special needs from age three into the school system and out of the health or early intervention system and the best practices in that transition. Colleen McLaughlin agreed and wants to consider the definition of continuity of care.

Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that the focus should be on best practices and the administrative rules that may be prevent best practices and may be in conflict across ECE and kindergarten school district and community policies. For example, as CPS tried to roll out full day kindergarten, it was tough to mirror the kindergarten schedules in universal preschool using specials teachers to provide a break for teachers.

Elliot Regenstein said that this group could identify the capacities necessary to execute the transition successfully, starting with needed capacities. The committee could analyze where regulations and funding incentives are impeding this and think about specific changes that need to be made at the state level to create a better playing field in which districts and others can operate. First, the committee should identify essential capacities, then think about how to help people get there.

Roger Eddy said that school districts look for guidance, and IASB provides them with what they consider to be the intent of the rule and policy. He suggested that the committee could take a closer look at partnering so that model policies reflect best practices.

• Definition of Terms

Cristina Pacione-Zayas moved to defining terms. Terms to define included family engagement, transition, readiness, assessment, continuity of care, social-emotional learning, early childhood/early learning, and home language.

Stephanie Bernoteit said that “transition” is about conversations and engagement between and among families and educators in kindergarten classrooms and with educators who work with children and families in other settings. Transitions need to embrace the whole child.

Dan Harris said that “family engagement” is a broad term that could include parents coming in to read to kids, case managers working with families to ensure connection to services, etc. Families may be used to one kind of family engagement in early childhood but may see a different kind in the K-12 system. Ben Boer said that family engagement is a continuum of services that try to bring the family into the process of student support but also provide the family with services that would allow them to be successful. Dan said that we want to develop families that can be the best advocates for their kids. Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro said that there is tremendous fear in immigrant families due to the current climate, and we may need special considerations.

Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that “readiness” means being prepared socially, cognitively, emotionally, and developmentally to succeed and to meet the challenges of a developmentally appropriate and academically rigorous kindergarten experience. Safiyah Jackson said that readiness should not just focus on the child, but on school readiness. She said there was a report done on work in Indiana looking at components of ready schools that might inform our discussion.

Angie Brito said that “assessment” is the process of collecting and using data to make decisions. She said that there are many assessments done in early childhood and early elementary, but not often a connection between types of assessments used. The committee should consider how to align the purpose of assessments rather than the assessments themselves.

Mary Beth Corrigan said that “continuity of care” requires investigation into what the term means for each system. Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that this was a challenge when rolling out continuity of care for B-3 programs. Care means different things to different people. Instead, the city has shifted to continuity of relationship to ensure maintaining the integrity of a relationship because of its protective factor. Elliot Regenstein wondered if a context where setting changes it might be better saying continuity in general. Mary Beth Corrigan said that sharing information may be important, and Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that continuity of care may have a funding component. Roger Eddy asked for clarity on what care means as it may be different for every child, especially considering special needs children. Ben Boer said that it might mean continuity of systems, and that continuity of care may be artificially narrow. Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that we’re looking to build a context in which continuity can happen. Bryan Stokes said that whatever system a child is in, we want to know that they feel continuity.

Bryan Stokes said that “social emotional learning” is defined through statewide social emotional learning standards.

Ben Boer said that “early childhood/early learning” requires looking at goal #5, which references a continuum in which early childhood could mean birth to age eight. In goal #6, there is reference to early learning and improvement processes focused on early learning prior to kindergarten, which is birth through preschool. Goal #4 references early childhood programs. Roger Eddy said that this may expand the 0-3 transition to many school districts that may not have a 0-3 program. Ben Boer said that the committee will be in situations where schools don’t have resources to implement, and the committee is delineating best practices for when students aren’t reaching benchmarks. Roger Eddy said that this committee may want to recommend additional funding to ensure district capacity. Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that there are 0-3 resources that districts can use, including CCAP, and that this may also involve working with child care agencies where kids are going anyway to figure out how to include their teachers in PD in ways that can improve situations.

Cristina Pacione-Zayas said that “home language” is important because the committee may want to promote best practices for ELs that value home language as a bridge to English acquisition, because home language is an asset.

Safiyah Jackson asked why the “non-prescriptive, non-burdensome” requirement in goal #2 is explicitly named for districts and not for early learning programs; further, that a lot of language assumes a child is coming from a program and going to a program. Elliot Regenstein said that this was not assumed when writing the joint resolution, and that through the transition students are coming from a host of places. He said that the committee should provide guidance to districts on how to navigate that complex world and to think about how to help the end user (the school district) to develop strong relationships among all disparate settings and to connect to district receiving kids.

1. Committee Schedule
2. Draft and approve monthly meeting topics

Cynthia Tate suggested a series of topics to cover over time. She asked Elliot Regenstein to give background on how the thinking was developed to organize the topics.

Elliot Regenstein said that this work was based on work already done in Illinois between the high school and college transition. There are different ways in which children transition, and it is necessary to have a group to say what the pieces are and how to do this well. It’s important to consider that children have diverse needs, and those needs are often met by a wide range of adult service providers. The committee should work to align these for children and families so that there is a continuity of relationship horizontally across age as children move into the public system. Further, as they move into the pubic system, how can we design preschool programs so that they are aligned with kindergarten programs. What practices and capacities make this transition work well? It’s important to hear from skilled practitioners, teachers, principals, superintendents, board members, ECE setting directors, SPED providers, etc. so that we can synthesize their perspectives and turn this into a framework.

Cynthia Tate said that the goal was to provide members with recommended readings prior to meeting and then having a panel at the meeting to hear from many folks involved in the transition. The remainder of the meeting would be spent in discussion to come to shared understanding of best practices.

Ben Boer said that in this work there is a network of relationships, and things work better when we’re accountable to each other in those relationships, not to the state. Understanding these relationships can help to create a self-supporting system. Panels should be diverse but in relationship to one another across different systems.

Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that she agreed but also that the state plays a critical role in aligning incentives because all systems may not be shooting toward the same goal. The committee should think about how to build and incentivize relationships over competition.

Cynthia Tate directed the meeting’s attention to the suggested schedule and topics. Topics were arranged starting with the child and from the child’s point of view as development progresses. Then topics move to the adults in the transition, then to the larger system exchange in family and community engagement and assessments and data.

Bryan Stokes recommended intentionally considering ELs. Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that the committee could embed that conversation into topical conversations, because rules around how to identify ELs across systems aren’t aligned.

Cristina Pacione-Zayas asked if one meeting focused on transitions would be enough. Sam Aigner-Treworgy asked if it may be difficult to think about the transition in one meeting rather than across topics. Cynthia Tate said that the original topics proposed had to do with transitions to school districts from within the district vs. from community providers, and perhaps we will need to split them in two. Recommend pushing this back to make these two sessions.

Sam Aigner-Treworgy said that the committee could consider transitions within a formalized care setting vs. those who might not be. Elliot Regenstein added that there are different gradients, and that the committee could consider school districts that run large preschool programs vs. the transition between kindergarten and large community preschool programs. These groups have large infrastructure. There is a third group that includes home based child care or smaller groupings, and this presents a different challenge compared to maintaining relationships between large providers. We should hear about this in some panels.

Safiyah Jackson asked what was meant to take place during the first two meetings. Cynthia Tate said that those are the functional domains of the KIDS assessment, and that the committee should have a grounding in the developmental areas in which children transition. There may be a different lens that includes the developmental domains and tasks of the child.

Ben Boer said that the developmental approach may be a good way to determine what the committee is trying to achieve, and then the committee could circle back to a systems approach to determine strategies necessary to ensure the developmental needs are met.

Sam said it might help to also focus on professional development and learning, tools, curriculum and assessment, and how these are aligning toward the transition. She said there is a study from one of the Carolinas with a snapshot tool that helps to visualize how time is spent in preschool and kindergarten and how different it is. Safiyah Jackson recommended that the domain conversations be framed around common talking points or things like professional development or data sharing.

1. Research and Information Gathering
2. Consider possible meeting presenters, topics, and questions for consideration

Cristina Pacione-Zayas asked what standard questions should be asked of the panelists. She recommended that members send possible questions and panelists to Bethany Patten, prioritizing the October meeting.

Dan Harris said that when we consider transitions, there are families who have transitioned through several programs between birth and kindergarten, and that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to looking at transitions from early childhood into kindergarten but rather could use other transitions for a source of best practices.

Safiyah Jackson asked about a budget to bring in panelists from other states, and Cynthia Tate said that there is not. Safiyah Jackson recommended a person in Michigan who is running a peer learning community with the Michigan Department of Education and preschool and kindergarten teachers, and that she used a tool to facilitate conversation.

1. Adjourn
2. Our next meeting will take place on Tuesday, October 24 from 1-3pm in Springfield. A location, call-in information, and agenda will be sent out shortly.

Cristina Pacione-Zayas reminded members of the time and location of the next meeting, and reminded members to complete the ethics and OMA training. Cynthia Tate asked for a motion to adjourn, Sam Aigner-Treworgy made the motion, Ben Boer seconded, and the motion passed unanimously.

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