Lessons learned from Zero to Five Collaborative


  • May 6, 2016
  • /   Shannon Nickinson
  • /   education

Parents meet in the community room at the Bachman Lake Family Center near Dallas, Texas.

Talk about a new lease on life.

On property that used to house a strip club, a funding collaborative has built an 18,000 square foot early education center designed to help families in one of Dallas’ poorest neighborhoods make sure their children are ready for kindergarten.

That’s the journey the Zero to Five Funders Collaborative took with the residents of Bachman Lake to help improve their children’s chances in school.

Jerry Hawkins, program director for Bachman Lake Together, tells the story of how the Family Center came to fruition. Photo credit: Shannon Nickinson

Jerry Hawkins, program director for Bachman Lake Together, tells the story of how the Family Center came to fruition. Photo credit: Shannon Nickinson

“This is a poor community but it’s not a blighted community. There’s no land here,” says project director Jerry Hawkins. “This used to be a strip of bars. This ground used to be a  strip club. The community worked hard to push municipal government to pass ordinances that moved (those businesses) over about a mile. Now you can’t have any strip clubs on this side of Harry Hines, which is a major road.”

The grand opening for the Bachman Lake Together Family Center is May 19. Plans are under way now and it promises to be a day-long event that celebrates the importance of family, reading and early literacy, parent empowerment, and the power of a community to put its money where its mouth is when it talks about making sure “children are the future.”

The Bachman Lake Together Family Center works in the 75220 ZIP code in Dallas.

In that neighborhood there is:

— 90 percent free, reduced lunch rate.

— 1 in 10 residents are under age 3.

— A beautiful community park around Bachman Lake, which includes a 5K trail, is bordered on one side by a six-lane freeway, which makes it virtually inaccessible to pedestrians.

— 39 percent live in poverty.

— 76 percent limited English proficiency.

Seven licensed and regulated childcare centers with 98 slots in a neighborhood of 5,800 kids 0 to 5.

— 35-48 percent school readiness at four neighborhood elementary schools.

I visited Bachman Lake this week and the staff and parents were generous with their time and with their story.

What did I learn?

Narrow the scope and focus on maximum impact. In 2009, the Zero to Five Funders Collaborative was born to ensure that children from low-income neighborhoods are ready for school.

After two years of study and trips to communities including Tulsa, Okla., and Los Angeles, Calif., to see how other communities do it, the Funders Collaborative decided to go all in in one neighborhood in the 75220 ZIP code — Bachman Lake.

The Collaborative committed to a five-year funding plan to deliver place-based services that would serve whole families. They coordinated the work of four service providers in the Bachman Lake neighborhood — AVANCE-Dallas, Catholic Charities of Dallas, The Concilio, and Lumin Education.

That’s how the Bachman Lake Together Family Center, which opened this week, was born.

The center aims to house services that the Bachman Lakes families need all under one roof — in much the same way that the Community School model being built at C.A. Weis Elementary School works.

Regen Fearon is chairman of the board of the Zero to Five Funders Collaborative. The collaborative is a fund of The Dallas Foundation, one of Texas’ oldest philanthropic institutions founded in 1929.

Zero to Five focuses the resources of donors who are interested specifically in the early childhood space and helps them pool their resources for maximum impact — a model not unlike IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area, but on a larger scale.

“The concept was that once Bachman got launched, the group would focus on another neighborhood, but we haven’t pivoted yet,” she says.

Over six years, the Collaborative has spent $11.9 million plus a leverage of more than $2 million in matching funding drawn down from Head Start and a Home Visiting Grant.

In addition, $2.2 million was raised for the purchase and installation of the Family Center. Fearon says they are almost finished raising three years of backbone funding which is $3.1 million. That money will fund only the Project Director, Program Manager, building and related expenses and evaluation costs.

At that time, the partners that provide programming will have to cover their own costs.

Plan for sustainability. The Collaborative has funded the entire effort at Bachman Lake, but that begins to scale back in 2018. But the project director Jerry Hawkins says they have been strategic about the changeover.

A grant for $300,000 over three years from Siemer Foundation has been a first step in this effort. And Hawkins says the programs have been “matched” with funders in the collective who may be willing to provide money for their specific efforts when the switch takes place.

“The best thing Zero to Five did was give us this great starting point. We’re funded until 2018. I have a good launching pad to do this work,” Hawkins said.

Work well with others. When the Funders Collaborative put out requests for proposals to provide services in the new Family Center, collaboration with other agencies was built into the requests. You had to agree to work and play well with others if you were going to into the Family Center.

Informed by data on outcomes from the providers, the division of labor in terms of who would focus on which services was easier to arrive at.

The center has 13 offices, a multipurpose room, seven classrooms, three adult classrooms, and community garden space. New partners are joining the party and hope to offer after-school and summer programming.

In classrooms in the Bachman Lake Family Center, common objects are labeled in English and Spanish.

In classrooms in the Bachman Lake Family Center, common objects are labeled in English and Spanish.

Dallas is a Strive Together community, too. That is the consulting company hired by Gulf Power, Navy Federal Credit Union, Sacred Heart and Baptist Healthcare systems to advise the Achieve Escambia effort.

Commit Dallas has a broader focus that just the Bachman Lake neighborhood, but the groups share data and contacts where their goals overlap.

For example, one of Commit’s project was to see the creation of a common enrollment period for preschool in Dallas County’s multiple school districts. This year, nine districts made registration week April 4-9. Mass, coordinated promotion of that in local media, and through businesses, civic groups, churches and other channels, as well as information about the importance of preschool, spread the word.

Among those cooperating districts was the district that serves Bachman Lake.

Give parents the power. The focus of the Family Center is to be a one-stop shop for parents and families. Lumin Education, which does parent education classes and home visits, help teach moms to be good first teachers. Lessons include early brain development in children, social, physical, and emotional milestones to look for, health, wellness, and nutrition, and referral to services their children may need if an issue is found in a screening visit.

The curriculum for the parent education classes is Parents as Teachers, which was founded in Missouri in 1981 as a pilot program to improve kindergarten readiness. It now offers training materials for trainers, curriculum pieces for other agencies and communities.

There are classes and services at the Family Center too, including adult English language classes, skills assessment, leadership training, practical skills coaching, things that are crucial to help immigrant families with Spanish as their first language build connections in their new home.

The Together We Learn program (the dual-generation English language program) has served 68 children and 50 parents in a year.

Show me the data. Another piece the Collective has able to add to the Bachman Lake project is a contract with Southern Methodist University to collect data on partner programming to assess strengths and areas of improvement.

Research by SMU shows that children of parents in the partner programs are better prepared for school than their peers.

They determine that by a contract SMU has with the Dallas Independent School District. SMU collects data on the children from Bachman Lake as they move through programming, then they collect data from the school district on how ready for kindergarten those children were.

BLT_families_under_big_tree

Build toward collective action. The Collective Action Network at Bachman Lake has been training parents to advocate for themselves and their children. It’s also been teaching them that they have a voice in what programs are offered at the center — and that it is OK to use that voice.

Moms are forming action committees and sharing their knowledge. Some lead health workshops in the community, one aspect of which will be a community garden that will planted at the Family Center. Funded through an Aetna grant, they have reached 100 women so far through workshops that include grocery tours where they learn to make healthy choices on a budget. Some of them are just gathering their neighbors at their homes, or at work, wherever they can reach folks.

Don’t underestimate the power of helping one family at a time. Martha Rodriguez is program manager for Bachman Lake Together. She says one of the most important things that programs at the Family Center do is tap into “the potential in the room.”

“We ask them, what do you envision for yourself, for your family, you know, what made you come to this country in the first place,” Rodriquez said. “Initially it was like no one had ever really asked us that. The assumption is if you don’t speak the language, you aren’t educated. But that’s not the case. There are chemical engineers here. (Women with) business administration degrees in Mexico. We have doctors, nurses. But because you don’t speak the language, people make assumptions.”

The mental strain that causes, of not knowing anyone, of not being able to carry out your profession can be hard to bear.

What these women get at Bachman Lake Together are services, and referrals, and lessons in English and lessons on how to build literacy into everyday things they do with their children.

It is also a small piece of connection that gives them the confidence to advocate for themselves, their children, and their community.

Patricia has four children, three boys and Elizabeth, her beautiful toddler girl.

BLT_visit_elizabeth
 

The boys all had speech delays. All got the help they needed through programs from Bachman Lake Together so that now that they are in school, their test results are at or above the state average, she says.  

Most valuable was the way Patricia says she learned during her home visits to make everyday things educational, “how to play with her so she learns. Sometimes it’s not even a toy, but to give them a container and put different things inside, like a little brush and we start to teach her, ‘Elizabeth, can you find the brush?’ She likes to play but she also starts to learn with things I have at home.”

“She’s had English classes so she’s learned to function with both languages. That’s why I tell my friends, you don’t have to come for all the classes, but you can come for one. You can find one into your schedule."

 
Your items have been added to the shopping cart. The shopping cart modal has opened and here you can review items in your cart before going to checkout