Torrington Early Childhood Collaborative Steering Committee Meeting Minutes
Meeting Held 11/19/10
Called to Order by Donna Labbe at 9:05a.m.
In Attendance: Michelle Anderson, Doreen Deary, Heather Dinneen, Elaine Hanscom, Cheryl Kloczko, Donna Labbe, Karla Woodworth
Introductions/Welcome to Heather Dinneen, newly hired TECC Administrative Support Consultant
Minutes for the October meeting are not available at this time.
Discussed:
TECC Positon Openings- Need an ongoing TECC Co-chair/Parent voice & Sustainability Work Group Co-chair, Karla Woodworth has agreed to co-chair the Parent Work Group
Alliance Update-
TECC is a member of the CT Early Childhood Alliance. There is a 12/8/10 bus trip to the Capitol planned that we are going to publicize.
Grants-
Regional Grant This is a $2500 TECC grant for multicultural projects. There was an idea proposed to bring Latino Moms together with English speaking Moms to improve language skills. Family Resource Center (FRC) can brainstorm with us on this idea. La Via Latina would like us to use resources to address issues on a higher level in the community, to facilitate community conversations about ethnic divisions in town. Donna will check with the Boston group that did Facilitative Leadership training for the William Casper Graustein Memorial Fund (WCGMF), and the League of Women Voters may be a resource for us.
Event Start Grant $110K Received by Torrington Public Schools (TPS) for 2 years, program to run at Forbes School for English Language Learners to improve literacy skills and engagement with their children in the school system. Program runs 5 days a week and supports include busing, lunches, childcare, preschool slots, and home visits. General Equivalency Diplomas (GEDs) for parents are a goal.
CT Parent Information and Resource Center (PIRC) School-Family-Community Partnership Grant This grant is a 3 year grant received by TPS to build permanent partnerships and provide training to parents and educators in how to engage partnerships. This year the focus will be on Torrington Middle School, with an action team created to form a parent engagement plan. One of the questions they will ask is, “How welcoming is your school?” Parent workshop will be held on December 2nd at Vogel-Wetmore School to raise awareness of the grant received and to learn how parents would like to be engaged. Over the next two years, the focus will move to the elementary schools and the high school.
ARRA Grant $$ for TPS to run Parent Academy classes needs to be spent by the end of the school year.
Committee Updates-
Parent: FRC can partner with us to do parent classes. They are planning to run Conscious Discipline in the Spring and are looking to do Financial Literacy classes.
Sustainability: Consultant Bennett is offering his services to have TECC as a pilot community using Results Based Accountability software to report data out to the community. A webinar is available on the Report Scorecard Software. A TECC Operations & Policy manual needs to be created for future grant applications. Proposed parent stipend to do this work will be included in budget report. Our consultant, Helen Figueroa, is finishing asset mapping and creating a template for a parent resource guide.
Child Growth and Development: Will hold 12/10/10 safety training for those going out on home visits in the community. Gathering Birth-Graduation basket ideas for the Superintendent of Schools.
Education: Kindergarten Readiness Fair to be held at Torringford School on March 12, 2011. Surveys to help with the creation of a consistent registration process among schools were reviewed and approximately 320 out of the 350 received were positive about the whole process. We received $1000 from the Corrinne G Levin Education Fund to purchase 250 Kindergarten Readiness Guides published by Education Connection.
Current Budget-
Midterm Report due to the WCGMF on 12-15-10.
$10,961 in funding from the State Department of Education needs to be spent by June 2011. Line item proposals will be sent to all TECC by email for approval.
Next meeting scheduled for December 17th.
Meeting adjourned at 11:05a.m.
Submitted by Elaine Hanscom
| 
