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KEYS |
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KEYS is a group of community members who focus on prevention efforts for children 5-10 years of age.
Minutes of the KEYS Meeting Minutes of Keys Meeting February 23, 2004 The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the following: 1. Pool the information that people had gathered on types of kindergarten readiness programs that exist throughout the county. 2. To share the questionnaire that went out to all kindergarten teachers, principals and counselors within the county, and to solicit feed back on it. 3. To share the Olympic Peninsula Association for the Education of Young Children 12th annual conference information and to gather information that could be disseminated to the child care providers and pre-school teachers and parents at that conference. 4. To talk about the Bremerton School District Program and any other programs that people were familiar with. 5. To set realistic goals for getting collaboration between pre-school teachers and child care providers with the kindergarten teachers that will service the same kids. 6. To discuss ways to procure funding. Those in attendance of the KEYS February meeting held at Olympic Memorial Hospital were Elna Kawal, Marilyn Sage, Bill Jevne, Ellen Fetchiet, Dan Estvold, Carol Kruckeberg, and Bonnie Moses. Elna Kawal began the discussion with an overview of the Bremerton School District’s “Preschool Community Connection – Developing Readers and Preventing Learning Disabilities” program. The Bremerton School District found that after administering the DIBELS Test (Dynamic Inventory of Basic Early Literacy Skills), only 4% of the entering kindergartners knew their letters. Even fewer kids had any sound fluency. After a year of looking at early childhood research combined with the information from the DIBELS tests, a program for pre-school teachers, day care providers, and others caring for and working with young children was devised by the district. Bill stated that the Five Acre pre-school is 5 hours long and that they offer all day kindergarten. They have a Montessori pre-school that has 24 kids with 3 teachers. Their kindergarten class has only 12 kids per teacher. There was discussion about which kids need the most help in coming to kindergarten ready to learn. Carol stated that the kids that don’t have some type of a pre-school experience have the greatest disadvantage. They usually have the poorest socialization skills, which makes it harder for them to learn academic skills. It was felt; lack of money was not necessarily the reason for kids not going to pre-school. For example, those children that are from the poorest families can apply for Head Start programs. Carol said that there are two kinds of kids that show up in kindergarten without a pre-school experience; those that have been closely nurtured at home and those that have been running helter skelter. Bill questioned how we could go about finding those kids that have not had a pre-school experience. Dan reported that research shows that kids lose 60% of what they learn over the summer. There was discussion at our last meeting about trying to find some funding to have a summer school experience for kids before they enter kindergarten. It was felt that the KEYS membership would like to pursue this as a project. Ellen said that the Port Angeles School District screens all kids coming into kindergarten. Karen Flute does all the screenings. Other names of people in the PA district to talk to are Kathy Wesley and Linda Watanitz kindergarten teachers at Hamilton. Koya Erickson is the full day kindergarten person at Jefferson. Ellen will find out what screening instrument they use. Dan and Carol reported that Greywolf had 56 kids register in the spring and 32 registered in the fall. We need to find kids that are not registered in the spring to participate in any program that we can do. Some of the parents registered late because 20% of the GW kids are in the Helen Haller District. Carol said that she usually has about 2 or 3 kids in each class that come to kindergarten lacking social and kindergarten readiness skills. Ellen gave an article on discipline to Dan. Some thoughts from Dan: 1. Parents could put together a portfolio to help the teacher learn more about their child. 2. 2. School staff could take a picture of the child at registration so that the teacher could learn the names of the kids faster. A nice touch would be to also make a copy for the family at the child’s first day at school. The child could make a paper frame in which to put the picture. Conclusions: 1. What we want to do is to find some type of summer camp experience for those kids entering kindergarten so that they can come in and spend a week at school to get familiar with their new school, and for the district to connect with their parents. 2. We would like to be able to disseminate information to the parents regarding expectations, both social and academic, for kids and parents to working on. 3. To help make sure there is an early screening program for all kids. This is a good positive way for school districts to reach out to parents. For schools to “Hook” in with families is the key for a child’s success in school. 4. Marilyn – stress and everyone agreed that pre-school teachers could be an invaluable part of the developmental team. Dan and Carol agree that having the teachers hearing from the pre-school teacher to impart what they have learned from working with the child for the last three years would be a benefit to all. Carol and Dan said they would be willing to pilot such a program with Marilyn. Marilyn thought that OPAEYC could help put some meeting together with kindergarten teachers and pre-school teachers and child care providers. She also talked about the Parenting Line (Nancy Martin is the contact person) which might be another source to sponsor workshops for this kind of collaboration. It was decided that since Prevention Works! is having their annual meeting the 4th Monday and that the school in off for spring break that we would postpone our meeting until the 2nd week in April. That meeting canceled do to school board meeting, and PW Meeting on the 12th. Next meeting to be determined. Minutes submitted by Elna Kawal |
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