- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- The impact of early childhood education, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with the Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Kandace Thomas.

She's executive director of First Eight Memphis.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

Along with Sean Lee who's president of Porter-Leath.

Thank you for being here.

- It's great to be with you.

- And Laura Testino is a reporter with the Daily Memphian.

And we'll talk a lot about pre-K, early childhood education.

The big Head Start grant that was with Porter-Leath for quite some time and spent four years at Memphis Shelby County Schools came back just weeks ago.

And so we'll talk about what that means for you all.

But give me maybe a quick snapshot before we go really deep into this.

And I'll start with you, Sean, of what Porter-Leath does.

And again, it's a 30, almost $32 million Head Start federal contract to serve 3,000 or so children.

What does that money mean and what all do you do beyond that with early childhood education?

And we'll go deeper on all of it.

- It's a big question.

Our organization has been in Memphis since 1850.

So this is our 175th anniversary.

Currently we serve about 44,000 children, birth to five, throughout the community with things like high quality preschool, Books from Birth, where we're mailing books to children, every month, we do foster care, which is our legacy programing.

And so everything is about empowering children and families to have healthy, optimal and independent lives.

- And we'll come back again to a lot of those parts.

Kandace, the role of First Eight and how long has First Eight been around in Memphis?

- First Eight Memphis is six years old now, and our role is really to work to align the early childhood system.

So align early care and education, prenatal to eight to make sure that all children have access to high quality care, that families and our communities are aware of the importance of early childhood and to really build out quality in our community.

- So, well, let's stay with the Head Start thing for a second, because and again, the Memphis-Shelby County Schools got the contract for four years.

There were problems.

Some of it was not comfortable.

I mean, there was there was a kicking by staff members.

There was jerking, hitting.

There was a child who walked, got out of a school, so a bunch of violations of the policies.

We don't have to dwell on that, necessarily, but that $30 million is for about 3,000 students.

- Correct.

- How in the world, you found out in June that you guys put, you know, you put your bid in, you got the contract, you had to start weeks later.

How do you ramp that up?

And is Head Start, let me also say it's federal money, is it beyond having certain conditions and standards?

Is it also a program?

Is it a learning program that you follow or the you take your own approach to satisfy the outcomes that Head Start wants?

- Okay.

So, let's unpack that.

We found out, July the 17th, that we were becoming the grantee.

And so you're right, the window start up was was very short.

I think the federal government wishes it was faster.

I think the district wishes it was faster, and we certainly do.

But we got to work.

We have an amazing team.

We've already got over a thousand children enrolled.

We've hired staff.

And so, we've got 47 partners that are engaged throughout the community.

These are high quality childcare centers.

So, we got to work.

And, the Head Start model is a national model.

There are about 1,600 grantees around the country serving about 830,000 children.

And so in Shelby County, there's 2,920 Head Start and then additional children that we serve in early Head Start.

Those are the babies, birth to three.

And so it's a model, but, each grantee has a way of implementing the model.

For example, we're using a lot of partners, and we engage the system to make sure that we're part of a high quality care throughout the community.

And so, while it has a framework, there are about 1,400 standards that you have to meet to have a quality Head Start program.

But we're very familiar with it.

We've done it since 1999.

And we're excited to get going.

It's only been 35 days now, and so we're off and running.

We're looking forward to more time.

One more question for you, Kandace, and I'll go to Laura.

I was doing quick math.

That's about ten that for the headstart.

That's about 10,000, I think my math is right, ten thousand dollars per student, per child.

That would be in the Head Start program.

- I think it's a little bit more than that.

I think the Head Start allocation, is it more than $11,050?

- Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So $11,050.

I mean, there's a mix of federal money.

There's some state money.

There may be local money, there's philanthropy.

I mean how do you what does it cost I guess is the fundamental question to do this right?

And what are the sources of those funds?

- Thank you.

That's such a good question.

So from a national standpoint, national best practices, high quality early care and education, we should actually be spending 12,500 per child.

So that is regardless of income.

That's just sort of the benchmark standard.

Currently in Memphis and Shelby County, as with every other community across the country, we have different funding streams that fund early childhood education.

So as you said, there's a state funding, voluntary pre-K.

There's a local funding from the Shelby County Commission, as well as local funding from City Council.

And then there's Head Start funds.

So it takes all of this to make early care and education run smoothly in our community.

But really the the benchmark standard is about 12,500 per child.

And, Head Start gets us closest to that.

The other funding streams, we still have a way to go to get to that number.

- Laura.

- While we're on numbers, just some other by the numbers for our viewers here, it sounds like maybe a little over a third enrolled so far since the grant has come in.

Talk with me about the operators, that you guys are working with.

How many?

You said there's 47.

Is that fully staffed?

Do you guys have all of your contracts out for all of your seats available at this point?

- We have all the contracts out.

- Okay.

- We have 44 of the 47 are settled.

So we're getting really close to having everybody signed up.

All of the partners are hiring.

We've gone as fast as possible, in just a short time.

And so, we offered contracts to all the existing Shelby County Head Start partners, that were working with the district so that helped.

These are experienced operators who already had staff in place.

And then, we have a network at Porter-Leath called Next Memphis that we partner with First Eight on.

And so for the last several years, we've been growing our footprint of supporting high quality childcare throughout the community.

So we turned to those operators and said, who's ready for Head Start?

So we had a lot of things in place.

Since we submitted the grant, in January, we spent six months getting people ready.

And so, I think we're off and running, but we've still got work to do.

We got to do some hiring, more enrollment and getting classrooms set up, just getting furniture in place is really important.

So, everything is is coming along nicely, but I wish we had more than seven days in a week.

- Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, I was surprised to learn maybe I shouldn't have been surprised to learn that you can't transfer enrollment.

So you guys are having to re-enroll any student or family that had already been in or enrolled in Head Start before.

That's a a big lift.

And less than a month before school starts.

I want to talk a little bit more.

You know, we're this is a puzzle with a lot of different pieces that have to get put together for this to work in Shelby County.

And one more question for you, Sean, with using, a lot of the quality operators the MSCS had, Talk with us a little bit about how the Porter-Leath approach managing the Head Start grant will be differentiated from a MSCS's approach with those same kind of pieces.

- Yeah.

So what we've done is we've divided our classrooms into what we call pods.

And every pod has sort of a mini compliance team that comes on top of it.

So there's education compliance, there's nutrition compliance, there's facilities.

But it's done very efficiently with staff who are able to serve 20, 30 classrooms apiece.

And so they get to know the families, they get to know the operators.

They're in the classrooms on a daily and weekly basis, looking at the operations and helping the partners, do really well.

So we've already started to staff up those pods and, they're starting to deploy out into the field and starting to coach the operators.

So it's really about a bubble of safety around the classroom.

It's not just the teachers' responsibility.

It's all of our responsibilities to make sure they're supported and to prevent incidents from happening and making sure children are educated.

And we're following those 1,400 standards that we we have to follow.

- Sure.

And this is, you guys have maybe been quiet a little bit about this.

You've certainly managed Head Start before, you've managed early Head Start for a long time.

This is the first time that Porter-Leath has had the Head Start grant completely for Shelby County.

Correct?

- That's correct.

We have been an early Head Start grantee since 1999.

So we have relationships, with the regional office of Head Start.

And we know the standards inside and out.

In 2014 we became a partner with Shelby County Schools.

They became the grantee and we were their partners.

So we've been in this world a long time.

We know how to do it right.

And I think you're going to see really positive things happening over the coming year.

- One question, if we could talk a little bit more about kind of finding those quality operators, finding those quality educators, that's something that for early childhood, especially has been a challenge across the country.

Kandace, as somebody who is helping manage kind of this network of all of these different people.

Give us an overview.

What is the quality of early childhood education in Memphis?

Are we experiencing, any lack of quality?

Do we have enough educators and quality operators and what is that the state of that look like right now?

- Yeah, yeah, it's a mixed bag and it's a complicated question.

So there are some national standards by national early childhood education organizations that actually have articulated that, Memphis and Shelby County, roughly 50% of our early learning spaces are considered high quality.

And we can dispute that because, of course, everyone who runs an early learning space or who is a, private business owner, of course, they think that their programs are strong and they think that they're providing high quality.

So but and according to national, national models and national quality rating systems, we actually need to build our quality, especially here in Memphis and Shelby County, where it's when early care and education is so critical.

So we have a lot of work to do around quality, and we know that folks are doing the best they can, and quality means it costs more and quality means that we need better, more qualified folks who are working in early care and education.

So it's a complicated question.

- What does that look like?

You know, if I'm a parent taking my kid to school, you know, I hear a lot from parents, that relationship is really important, right?

- Critical.

- You want to to just feel supported by somebody.

Am I going to recognize from kind of the academic standard quality versus unquality?

How do you kind of, or not quality, how do you explain that difference to to families who are looking?

- Right I mean, as a family, to me, first and foremost is that you want your baby somewhere where you know they're going to be loved and where they're safe.

So that's most important.

Every family wants that for their baby.

You can think about quality.

There is a lot of nuance to it, right?

So, for instance, if I walked into a child care center and there were infants and toddlers and they were in car seats for more than an hour, I would be concerned about that.

As a parent, versus or I walk into a space where there are books that are age appropriate, that the adults are talking to young children, talking to infants as well.

And so they're just there's some markers that you may be able to pick up on, when you walk into a child care center.

But it is a very nuanced, it's a nuanced approach.

Most important is you will want your baby to feel loved and you want them to feel safe.

And that's that's the bottom line.

- About halfway through show, who does compliance and oversight of all the child care providers?

I mean, I assume with Head Start that's federal money.

There's a certain amount or maybe a lot of federal oversight.

But for all the, you know, constellation of providers of early childhood care, is there, is it state?

Is it local?

Is it you?

I mean, who does that?

- Yeah, it depends on the funding stream and where they are licensed through.

So again more complications to the puzzle.

So if you are, if you are a child care center or a private provider, you likely are, the oversight is likely the Department of Human Services.

If you are a school district, your oversight is the Department of Education.

With the First Eight and city and county dollars, you have both oversight with the Department of Education or the Department of Human Services as well as First Eight Memphis.

- How much it does, and Laura I think touched on this, but just how much of a player is Memphis-Shelby County Schools going forward in this?

They don't have the Head Start.

I mentioned some of the problems, but they're still a big player in early child care, right?

I mean, that hasn't changed necessarily.

Just this grant has changed.

- The grant has changed.

Their numbers have changed.

But they're a critical piece of the puzzle here.

They still have maybe 3,000 pre-K classrooms, excuse me, pre-K seats around the county.

So they're still a critical player in early childhood education.

- We've done a lot of shows.

About the sort of political situation with MSCS.

And I don't want to put either of you in that place.

That's not your job.

Do you feel like through all that, the that you've had good relationships and good outcomes with Memphis-Shelby County Schools in terms of early childhood education?

- Yeah.

I have been in Memphis for five years, and we've had several superintendents in that time, but we've had the same staff in the early childhood department.

So that has allowed us to build some relationships and to work on, all of these issues together.

For you?

For you all?

You all still worked with MSCS even though you didn't have the Head Start, right?

I mean, you're big enough that you had to have lots of communication with the school system.

- We absolutely have relationships across the board.

We serve on groups focused on the teacher pipeline.

We were on literacy groups together.

And so we've kept a great relationship with the district.

Do you work with the other like the suburban school districts, too?

Is that part of it?

I mean, that's Shelby County.

- That's really for Porter-Leath That's phase two of this.

We'd really like this grant is for the entire county.

And so we know there are, families experiencing poverty in Collierville and Millington and Bartlett.

And we'd love to, as we continue down the road, look for classrooms in those areas to partner with them.

- Same with First Eight?

- Yeah.

First Eight Memphis.

While our name is Memphis, we are a Shelby County early childhood backbone organization.

And, we have some partnerships with Bartlett and Millington.

But we look forward to growing our relationships with the other municipalities in the county.

- One more from me to segue, a dumb but really super important question, which is why is this important?

What are the differences?

Because I can remember for years before First Eight was, I mean, it was an outcome of a lot of conversations about the need for universal pre-K and all the benefits and payoffs.

So go through some of those pay offs for the long term for these kids and these families, and thus the community.

- Well, I know for us, these are, with Head Start families.

They're very low income families, $32,100 or less for a family of four.

And so if you think about a family that's going through that, they're experiencing a lot of challenges, whether it's transportation, housing, and what Head Start does is it wraps their arms around the entire family.

It's not just your typical pre-K program with the classroom teacher.

It's all of these comprehensive services.

We sit down with families and say, our first question when we meet them is, what is your dream for your family?

No matter your income level, you have a dream, and we want to help that family achieve it.

And Head Start provides resource to help them do that.

So not only is the child advancing and getting ready for kindergarten, the family is taking steps to make changes so that they they move their family from a where they are to a life of success.

And so, you really see the outcome, not just with it's two generational and sometimes three.

- Yeah.

Thoughts on that.

- Yeah.

I'll just add to that that in addition to the child and the family, like our community is stronger when we have stronger early care and education.

Our workforce is stronger because parents have a place to where they can take their children and they know their children are loved and cared for.

Employers are happier because we know that we can rely on parents who have high quality care.

So it's a reverberation from the baby and that family to our whole our whole community.

- Yeah.

Oh, go ahead - One thing to remember, it doesn't end at kindergarten.

We want them reading, at a third grade level by the end of third grade.

If they don't, they're four times less likely to graduate high school.

And so it's very important for Memphis to get kids to kindergarten.

And it's important for the district to pick that up and run with it and get these kids reading by by the end of third grade.

And so it really is a partnership from cradle all the way through.

- Yeah.

Laura.

- Sure.

To talk a little bit more about where we kind of are Shelby County having about maybe 50%, as you said, quality seats.

How does that impact how close we are to getting, you know, to what I assume is the ultimate goal of 100% universal pre-K enrollment?

Talk to me about kind of the challenges that are really evident there for maybe education pipeline for teachers and, just sort of the other obstacles that that we might have.

- Yeah.

So, like I said, roughly 50% of our early learning spaces are considered high quality.

So that is, measured by child outcomes or what children are experiencing and what they're learning.

It's also measured by, teacher background and teacher quality.

So we have a couple of major challenges that we're trying to address.

As you said, teacher quality is one, not only quality but also a pipeline of folks who want to work with young children.

We have a early childhood teacher pipeline working group where a lot of the major players are coming together to think through how is it that we can improve the pipeline?

How can we recruit, retain and continue to train and build quality?

We also have a child care cost challenge, right?

So it may cost a family more than $1,000 a month to care for their baby.

And so the universal pre-K effort, which we call pre-K for all, is really right.

We just accomplished our very first step in pre-K for all.

We passed the joint ordinance, which is huge for Memphis and Shelby County.

And now what we're trying to do is align all of the players and every year increase the amount of classrooms that are involved in our pre-K for all effort.

But that also means that we have trained teachers, that we have high quality centers, because in order to be a part of this effort, there are certain measures that centers and organizations have to abide by.

- And let me interrupt just for, the joint ordinances, City Council, County Commission, about how much money is it for the program?

- So City Council and County Commission has been co-funding early learning since 2019.

So the, in total, over the past six years, they've invested more than $60 million in early learning and pre-K.

This year, specifically, they're investing $20 million in early learning.

Our hope is that over the next five years, given, you know, revenue constraints.

But our hope is that we can ask the city and county to continue to increase their allocation for early learning so we can get to the actual pre-K for all number.

- Back to Laura.

- With the education pipeline, educator pipeline, school district K-12 certainly experiences vacancies.

And has to kind of find ways to, you know, bring in other people to long term substitutes or otherwise to help fill those numbers.

Is that, are vacancies and teaching positions something that you guys deal with and what are the ways that you respond to them?

- I know we face it every day.

What we look for is a well qualified teacher.

We don't necessarily want to compete with LEAs and school districts around certified teachers.

So we would love a, bachelor's-level teacher that maybe hasn't been certified or even an associate's degree teacher.

We're turning over looking for apprentices.

We've started the first early childhood apprenticeship program in Shelby County.

Really, the second in the entire state to try to attract high school students that want to transition.

And, we help them get their associate's degree and kind of move them forward.

So we're looking for high quality, well qualified teachers that aren't necessarily certified.

And, they're just tough to come by.

What we're trying to do is raise income, the rates of pay or providing great benefits.

And so all of the childcare community recognizes that in order to attract people to this field, we have to pay a living wage or better.

And, I think we're starting to see that the momentum continues to build.

And, because of partners like First Eight that recognize that and fund the classroom as well, that's really helping partners be able to pay what they need to pay to attract better people to the field.

- And that Head Start, as I understand, made it.

had a mandate and rule change to increase funding for teachers.

That didn't necessarily translate to more funding for you guys to meet that requirement.

Is that right?

- At this point, it's a request.

It's a goal to pay closer to what the local school district does.

And, hopefully over time, funding.

We'll, we'll see that happen.

But, what we're paying partners and what we're receiving is enough to really, pay great wages.

Now it's just a matter of finding great people to match with that.

- Kandace as you kind of look at all of these different pieces and match them together, what are you doing, and, Sean, you can jump on in on this too, having 47 operators How are you guys getting each other's operators to to talk with each other?

What is kind of some of the network practices that you guys have to help?

You know, something's going really well in one classroom to make that, you know, feed across all of these different, thousands of other classrooms managed by, you know, dozens of other people across the county?

- Well, formally so formally First Eight Memphis has a couple of committees and working groups that we invite partners to join us in.

So we have what's called a leadership council, which is really a table of folks who are interested and committed and working in early care and education and a variety of roles, including partners who run childcare centers or operate childcare centers.

And so those partners can join our leadership council.

They can specifically join our pre-K working group.

And that is all folks who are working in pre-K specifically, including family engagement personnel, which provides a lot of the wraparound support that Sean was speaking of.

There's also, instructional coaches in classrooms.

So we convene those folks.

Depending on the group, it may be monthly or it may be quarterly to really come together to share best practices, to talk about what's not working, what is working.

And so formally we do that and then informally everyone is talking to one another.

- We would love to talk more, but we're out of time.

There's so much more that I would love to talk to you all, but that was great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Laura, and thank you all for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, The Daily Memphian, YouTube.

You can also download the full show as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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