Iowa’s Preschool Development Grant (PDG) Birth to Five 2019: $2,190,119

1. Iowa’s Preschool Development Grant (PDG) Birth to Five 2019: $2,190,119

2. Purpose and Expected Outcomes • Accelerate Iowa’s momentum toward a fully coordinated, mixed delivery system of care and education for young children birth through five and their families. • Attention to vulnerable and underserved populations. • Data informed decision making. • Evidence-based decision making. • Strengthen professional development networks. • Incorporate a family-centered approach for connecting with families to ensure they have knowledge of and access to high-quality programs.

4. Iowa’s Birth--5 Mixed Delivery System • Work within existing ECI structures • Public and private representation throughout the ECI infrastructure • Local area boards • local programs • family engagement • Partnership with land-grant university (ISU) to implement a statewide integrated data system • inform a statewide needs assessment • Results-based Accountability • Family Engagement workgroup • Professional development • Equity/Diversity • Governance • Alliance

5. Activity #1: Needs Assessment • Current ECI needs assessment (updated in 2018) used: • available data obtained from national sources and are estimates. • aggregate counts of child characteristics and experiences from single-system data sources • Application Bonus (+5) to measure unduplicated counts • Iowa Needs Assessment Goal: • unduplicated counts • serving most vulnerable • identify populations accessing multiple supports from across the mixed delivery B-5 system • correlations to early services received and child outcomes

6. Activity #2: Strategic Plan • The ECI strategic planning process includes public-private partners across the rage of stakeholder groups. • Three main goals: • Maintain and promote a solid infrastructure to advance the early childhood system. • Ensure equitable access to high quality services for young children and their families. • Build public will for supporting young children and their families. • The needs assessment will strengthen each goal area through the following activities: • incorporate findings from the needs assessment: informed by the integrated data system • identify populations served in our B-5 mixed delivery system • generate unduplicated counts of children across programs • quality of the programs attended (QRS, NAEYC, IQPPS, Head Start, etc.) • gaps in services for our most vulnerable children (poverty and at-risk factors) • program participation relation to elementary school outcomes including literacy, attendance, and behavior

7. Activity #3: Parental Knowledge & Choice • Navigating “what are” quality services and “how” to access them for families is a barrier. • Generate communication strategies to facilitate accurate and purposeful information in culturally and linguistically sensitive ways to increase parent knowledge and choice. • Learn from families about how families experience different systems or the effectiveness of state/local engagement strategies. • Activities to Increase Parent Choice and Knowledge: • Conduct family focus groups • attention to geographically and demographically representative focus groups • capture experiences of families participating in multiple sectors of our mixed delivery system (e.g., family support, IDEA parts C and B, preschool, Head Start) • family experiences in transitions between programs and between early childhood programs and elementary schools • Create ongoing feedback loops with families by using local area board networks

8. Activity #4: Sharing Best Practices • Collaborative lessons learned from national technical assistance opportunities. • state self-assessments • research and evidence-based • other state experiences Goals: • Widely distribute and train providers on the recently revised Iowa Early Learning Standards. • Gather input from providers to identify new and novel ways to strengthen training resources and provider networks. • Training and coaching models • Active Implementation Frameworks • Implement found ways to better coordinate and make accessible the multiple online and in-person training opportunities provided by multiple in-service efforts.

9. Activity #5: Improving Quality • Must complete the needs assessment. • Must have an approved strategic plan which is informed by the needs assessment. • Once the needs assessment and strategic plan is approved we anticipate having four months remaining for activity five. • Targeted activities to build on activities one -- four: • Improve the quality of our B-5 professionals by intentionally supporting their development of career trajectory plans (career pathway). • Development of a coordinated professional development “hub” including online resources and access to B-5 coaches to support training and implementation needs. • support implementation of best-practices statewide

10. Project Timeline & Milestones

11. Sustainability Plan • PDG activities are being developed within an existing leadership structure (ECI) • Involves a wide range of stakeholders and executive leaders • Unified goal and vision: “Every child, beginning at birth, will be healthy and successful.” • Focused on strengthening existing commitments and accelerates work

13. Future Meetings Stakeholders Alliance: • February 12 - am • May 7 - pm • September 10 – am Steering Committee: • March 7 – 9-4 • April 4 – 9-12 • June 6 -- 9-12 • August 1 – 9-4