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Ready to Learn program helps students break barriers

Doug Flanagan/reporter@qvpr.com
May 27, 2010

Monument Elementary School principal Don Francis stands with students who were recognized Tuesday for attending the Readiness to Learn Morning Program. The 14 students who attended the program 50 or more times from January to May received a certificate, an ice cream cone certificate from McDonald’s and a doughnut party.There were also 15 students who attended 25 times or more who received a certificate and ice cream cone certificate from McDonald’s. Pictured above, back row, left to right: Cyndal Neuenschwander, Octavio Bustos, Francis and Guillermo Vega. Front row, left to right: Kendall Horning, Maria Ramirez, Carlos Melendrez, Alexis Medrano and Sarrie Lopez.

The Quincy School District was awarded a Readiness to Learn grant last summer and was able to do a lot of good things with the program over the course of this school year.

The grant was awarded in a two-year cycle, but thanks to statewide budget cuts, Quincy’s program was in danger of being eliminated.

To Maristella Webley and the group of community citizens who had built the program over the past year, that wasn’t acceptable.

Webley led a group of people to Olympia earlier in the year to lobby to keep the program alive in Quincy. Their efforts worked, as the grant has been fully renewed for the next school year.

“We talked to the state education committee about what the program had meant to Quincy. It was a fun opportunity,” said Webley, who was hired as the program’s coordinator last October. “We talked about all of the possibilities the grant could give us, and how we didn’t want to lose the momentum that we had built over the last year. It was a cool experience, and when we found out that the grant had been renewed, we were ecstatic. It was well worth the trip.”

The Readiness to Learn Program, administered by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, is part of the Education Reform Act enacted by the 1993 Legislature. Its primary purpose is to reduce barriers to learning and link education with human service providers in an effort to assist in the removal of nonacademic barriers and ensure that all children are able to attend school prepared to learn.

The intent of the program is to reduce barriers to learning through the formation of school, community and family partnerships to ensure students and their families have access to resources and services necessary to help them achieve at their highest learning potential. The goal is that all children and youth are able to attend school ready to learn. To that end, the program serves as a catalyst to improve academic performance and reduce the achievement gap.

A committee was formed consisting of Quincy educators and community members to oversee the district’s RTL program. Members of the group drafted a letter, directed to Sen. Janéa Holmquist, Rep. Judy Warnick and Rep. Bill Hinkle, that implored the state government to not cut funding for the program.

The letter was signed by Quincy High School teacher Norma Petersen and retired educator Dave Rossing.

“As a 30-year school administrator at both elementary and secondary levels and as a teacher of 40 years at the high school level, we both know how important the Readiness to Learn program is for the students in our community,” Rossing and Petersen wrote in the letter. “We know how important it is for parents to have the necessary skills and tools to assist their children in making good choices and promoting the value of a good education.”

The program focuses on early dropout and intervention, and supports and improves parental involvement.

“We know how important resources are to the educational success of our children,” Rossing and Petersen wrote. “Quincy is a community with significant population of low income families; 79 percent of our students receive free and reduced lunches. As an agricultural community, both parents are working long hours to make ends meet. Many of our children are second language learners. The Readiness to Learn funds in our community are focused on helping with referral services for parents and families in crisis to available community and regional resources. The Readiness to Learn program in our community provides tutorial experiences both before and after school. It provides parents with information and skills to assist their children in making good choices. It also assists children in traditional self-contained classroom settings to specialized class scheduling. Research tells us that students without appropriate resources are more susceptible to dropping out. The program directly addresses this issue.”

At a school board meeting earlier in the year, district superintendent Burton Dickerson said the program has been well received around the state where it has been implemented so far.

“It meets the needs of students when barriers are standing in their way to succeed in school,” he said. “It provides academic support and also helps students get beyond a variety of things that might stand in their way of being ready to learn.”

After Webley was hired last fall, two teams, consisting of community members and educators, were formed to put together an action plan for the school year.

The plan included a variety of activities designed, in the words of Webley, to “adjust the achievement gap and provide early intervention to reduce the dropout rate.”

Programs implemented included: before-school homework tutoring at Monument Elementary School; love and logic parent classes; self-care teacher education at Monument; complex trauma training; healthy lifestyle training for Latino families; and compassionate schools training.

In addition, a “Kinder Camp” will be held at Mountain View Elementary from June 14-18.

“The first year went really well,” Webley said. “We’ve been able to do a wide variety of things to get the whole community involved. We’ve been forming partnerships with the schools, the parents and the community, and we’re bringing it all together.”

Kaye Baumgartner has been involved with the program due to her affiliation with Partnership for Youth, a local group that aims to promote the healthy development of children.

“This is huge,” Baumgartner said. “Things are happening all over the place, and things are starting to come together. The district really needed the Readiness to Learn program, but Quincy had to be ready, too. We’ve been wanting to do this for years, but the timing wasn’t right. Now we’re ready to come together. Youth is always a huge focus in a small community like this, but (the efforts) haven’t always been pulled together very well. This is like a dream.”

One of the key components of the program, according to Webley, is its ability to immerse parents in their child’s learning.

“The parent leadership component is very important,” Webley said. “This gives parents and people in the community a voice in the schools. They can use it as a resource, and they are already benefitting in a lot of areas.”

Baumgartner added, “Parents don’t realize how much of an extra boost they can give their children. This program gives them those tools that they need. The networking that the parents have been able to do (thanks to the program) has allowed them to really support each other. A lot of wonderful things have happened out of that.”

The program focuses on removing obstacles that children face when attempting to learn.

“It deals with nonacademic barriers that children face, such as abuse, violence, drugs and alcohol, poverty, the loss of a parent,” Webley said. “Those factors can affect brain development and have been linked to learning. This program focuses on forging positive relationships, which can make a big difference in building a child’s resiliency to overcome the adversity that they face.”

A lot of the credit for the program’s success so far should go to Webley, according to Baumgartner.

“She is a blessing,” Baumgartner said. “I can’t believe how good of a job she’s done so far. She’s been amazing.”

Webley said the grant’s format gives the individual districts the flexibility they need in order to maximize the use they get out of it.

“There’s not a curriculum or a set structure,” she said. “It’s open to what the community’s needs are.”

For next year, Webley would like to see the program expand further. This year, Monument was used as the program’s “pilot school,” but Webley said the program could expand further into other schools in the district. Next year, she said, Mountain View Elementary will be used as a pilot school for a compassionate schools training program, which focuses on giving instructors the skills they need in order to support students whose learning is adversely affected by trauma.

“We found that there’s such a thirst in Quincy to be able to help students succeed,” Webley said.

“There’s great needs in this community. People just wanted something like this. We’re all in agreement with the mission to help improve the students’ abilities to be successful.”