Multnomah County’s School as P–3 Hub Model

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday II)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Developing comprehensive 0-8 systems: aligning ECD and primary school education and care

Proposal

Multnomah County, OR is implementing an innovative P–3 pilot program in which elementary schools serve as hubs for family childcare providers and for families with young children ages 0-5. Countries interested in supporting early learning and care by utilizing primary schools as hubs may be able to adapt components of Multnomah counties model to meet their needs.
The Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Service System, a partnership between the county and 6 local education authorities, designed Multnomah County’s P–3 pilot. The county is the managing partner for the SUN system. SUN supports 86 “community schools” across the country, schools that provide wraparound health and social service supports to their students and families. The P–3 pilot extends these supports to children ages 0-5 and their families.

The SUN Service Agency developed the P–3 pilot to meet the learning and care needs of young children who are not enrolled in preschool. The goal of the program is to reach these children and families earlier, support early learning and development, and connect families to health and social services. SUN’s pilot places a P–3 coordinator at each pilot school. The P–3 coordinator conducts extensive outreach to families with young children, often working through cultural groups, and engages them in school activities, especially weekly play-and-learn groups. As P–3 coordinators build relationships with families, they connect them to community health and social services. The P–3 coordinators also support family childcare providers in improving the quality of the learning and care experiences they provide for children. Further, the pilot program collaborates with local education authorities to strengthen the academic and social-emotional supports provided to children in the early grades of primary school.

As it has implemented its P–3 pilot during the past 2 years, SUN has developed knowledge regarding how to structure the P–3 coordinator role, engage families in play-and-learn groups, connect families with young children to health and social services, and work with local education authorities on P–3 alignment. Learning based on this practical implementation experience may be of interest to countries interested in adapting components of Multnomah County’s P–3 model.

SUN collects programmatic data on family engagement and thus far engagement indicators are indicating significant participation gains. SUN is investigating how it can best expand its evaluation activities. This presentation will also provide recommendations based on the challenges the pilot has faced in its first two years, and reflections on how it could have better addressed these challenges in the design process, include placing greater emphasis on local education authority involvement in the early phases of development and focusing more on improving teaching and learning in the early grades of primary school.

Author

• Brooke Chilton-Timmons, Multnomah County SUN Service System