POTTSTOWN — School officials are hopeful that the award of a $175,000 planning grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will blossom into a multi-year grant of more than $1 million aimed at further bolstering early education efforts in the district.

Pottstown already has a state-wide reputation for its expansive early education efforts and the planning grant is aimed at developing strategies to get parents more engaged in the process, according to a release issued by the school district.

Those strategies will be developed with the help of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Project for Civic Engagement, which will be involved in coordinating community outreach and dialog.

“We are excited to have a national foundation like W.K. Kellogg interested in our community and providing funding to support positive change,” Pottstown Schools Superintendent Jeff Sparagana said in the release.

“This grant will allow us to identify needs and develop strategies that will ultimately lead to programs that will encourage greater participation and partnership, and provide our most precious resource, our youth, with the best opportunities for future success,” he said.

The grant came about partly as a result of Sparagana’s attendance at a conference about a year ago, and his discussion with the Kellogg officials about efforts under way in Pottstown, he told the school board last month.

To qualify, Pottstown also hosted a visit by Kellogg personnel who visited to see for themselves what Pottstown is doing in the early education field.

“We are particularly pleased by the fact that even though Pennsylvania is not a priority area of funding for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, we were able to develop a compelling case, which led to the planning grant,” said Mary Rieck, coordinator for Pottstown’s PEAK early education program.

The new effort will begin with a seven month-long period during which the community will be asked to provide input on the most effective ways to encourage parental involvement in early education.

Toward that end, the district and Penn have created an advisory group of formal and informal community leaders who will assist in outreach and provide advice on how to connect with families.

That will result in the training of community members to serve as facilitators for forums that will be held throughout the community.

Information gathered from these forums will be analyzed and used to help develop strategies to increase family engagement.

At the end of this planning period, the school district will then submit an application to the Kellogg foundation for a multi-year “implementation grant” to implement the strategies that were developed as a result of the forums.

That multi-year grant “could result in over a million-dollar investment in early childhood education and engagement,” according to the release.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation annually awards over $300 million in grants.

Founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal pioneer, Will Keith Kellogg, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States, according to the release.

“Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, the foundation works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life,” according to information provided by the foundation.

It is based in Battle Creek, Mich., and works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes.

Special emphasis is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. In the U.S., the foundation places a priority on efforts in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans; and internationally, in Mexico and Haiti.

Pottstown’s early education efforts are well known to the world of philanthropic foundations.

Locally, the Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation was among the first funders of the PEAK program, which stands for Pottstown Early Action for Kindergarten Readiness and coordinates efforts among high-value pre-K centers and the district to ensure children in their care arrive in Pottstown schools ready for kindergarten.

Last year, the Robert P. McCormick Foundation used Pottstown as an example in its report on Aligning Best Practices with Educational Systems to Improve Learning Outcomes.

And last year, The Mercury reported that a Virginia filmmaker who had made a short documentary about PEAK’s efforts in 2009, hopes to make a full-length film which follows some of the students who were in the documentary through their entire educational career.

News of the Kellogg Foundation’s support comes less than a month after the issuance of a report by Public Citizens for Children and Youth which found that less than a third of children from low-and-moderate income families in Montgomery County have access to high quality early education.

The report, “Early Care and Education in Montgomery County,” cited cuts to and an overall lack of state funding for early learning, making it difficult for programs to offer high-quality care.

However, that is exactly the sort of obstacle PEAK is dedicated to overcoming.

According to PEAK’s most recent annual report, 61 percent of the children in the PEAK’s Pre-K Counts program are on-track when they enter kindergarten as opposed to 35 percent on track among the children who did not benefit from the program.

By first grade, that percentage jumps to 61 percent and to 76 percent on-track by second grade, for those who began with Pre-K Counts.

PEAK also works ti improve the quality of its program by helping improve the quality of the teachers among its partners.

In 2007, for example, only 54 percent of those working in the early education centers which are part of the PEAK partnership had an certificate in child development. By 2014, 94 percent had a child development degree.

Pre-K Counts provides 123 free slots for 3- and 4-year-old children from low-income backgrounds in Pottstown and has been rated “exemplary” by the state for both its efforts to improve student performance and to improve the qualifications of the teachers who participate.

There has also been some success already in improving parent engagement, with things like the popular Family Reading Nights.

In 2010, the program clocked 79 parents participants, a number which jumped to 118 by 2012.

The Mercury News – March 24, 2014 – Read article online