Union Ready Start
2024 - 2025 BlueprintThe Union Parish Community Network is committed to building a strong local system of early childhood services. Union Parish Community Network is excited to help provide quality education to Union Parish children from birth to five years of age. We believe that early childhood education is critical to a child’s development, especially the years before they reach kindergarten. Our goal at Union Parish Community Network is to provide each child with the best education possible so he/she can enter kindergarten well prepared.
Union Parish is a network of publicly funded early childhood programs serving infants, toddlers and pre-k age children. Union Parish provides high quality early childhood instruction and care that promotes educational experiences for children to enter kindergarten on time and on level. Funds are braided to ensure the most access within each location. Using federal, state, and local funding, we provide quality care opportunities for children in Union Parish.
The Union Parish Community Network and its community partners are committed to ensuring all children receive access to high-quality education. The Network serves four Type III Early Learning Centers, two Head Start centers, three Family Child Care Centers that are academically approved for state funding, one public school and one charter school. We currently serve approximately 233 at-risk students. Our public school serves 65 at-risk students, the charter school serves 20, early learning centers and childcare centers serve 88, and Head Start serves 60 students.
The Union Parish Community Network will expand its work to prepare the community for optimum outcomes so that more children will have access to quality early learning opportunities, and families will have the information they need to make the best decision for their children. The local community desires to leverage new dollars from foundations, corporations, and local, state, and federal government to support early childhood education in Union Parish.
As of the 2023-2024 ECE Site and Network Performance Profile, 174 children were enrolled in publicly funded seats at seven sites. The overall score is 5.20, a Proficient Performance Overall Rating. The Emotional Support Performance Rating is Excellent (6.1), the Classroom Organization Performance Rating is High Proficient (5.94), the Emotional and Behavioral Support is High Proficient (5.61), the Instructional Support is Approaching Proficient (4.14) and Curriculum Quality is 100%.
Union Parish Community Network strives towards bringing together partners to continuously improve the quality of and access to early childhood opportunities in the local communities in Union Parish. Local data and context drive us to:
- Develop intentional plans.
- Secure and weave together resources.
- Implement creative solutions.
To that end, Union Parish Community Network Lead submits the following Blueprint for early childhood education.
Union Ready Start Goals
Goal 1
Increase community awareness of early childhood programs to raise community support and increase the number of childcare centers in our district.
Goal 2
Increase birth to age three access to quality early childhood care and education
Goal 3
Increase Performance Rating in Instructional Support and Engagement Support Learning by 5 points.
Strategic Plan
Please select the green circles in each section to learn more about each goal.
Goal 1:
- Implement a campaign to inform the community of the Union Ready Start Network, opportunities available for Union Parish families, the vision/mission of the community network, and information for supporting the programs for children birth to age five.
- Provide direct contact with businesses, government agencies, religious organizations, and health centers that families frequently visit.
- Update the current website with new initiatives, Blueprint, and Union Ready Start Advisory Board.
- Promote early childhood sites and programs through social media campaigns, flyers, and brochures.
- Offer informational meetings throughout Union Parish to inform parents and the community of available programs, funding and child development resources that the network offers.
- Community partnerships with learning centers, community and business leaders, elected officials
- The Union Parish Community Network website.
- A campaign to communicate the network’s vision, mission, and purpose, thereby building new relationships and empowering hope for a better future for young children birth to age five.
- Develop a campaign to kick off the 2025 Ready Start Network initiatives by the second quarter of 2025.
- Introduction of a campaign to community stakeholders, potential board members, and Union Parish School District partners by the second quarter of 2025.
- Schedule roll out of campaign by the second quarter of 2025.
- Ready Start Network bylaws that reflect the network’s purpose, structure, organization and general membership will be submitted for board approval by May 2025.
- The Ready Start Advisory Board will assist in creating a community marketing campaign to heighten the awareness of the Ready Start Network by April 2025.
Goal 2:
- Analyze currently shared and leveraged funding to maximize resources within programs and across the community.
- Continue to utilize grant opportunities from state resources and options to increase seat allocations for birth to age three at-risk children through the Ready Start Network Program.
- Louisiana State Department Performance Profile
- Current Child Count data
- Braided grants to support birth to three-year span
- Continuing collaborative efforts with Network and community partners to assist in locating new sites to serve populated economically disadvantaged communities.
- Recruitment of future early learning centers and efforts for birth to three years of age to increase enrollment.
- ASQ screener
- The number of infants to age three seats for early care and education will increase. The measuring tool will be October 1, 2025, and February 1, 2026, child count report.
- The quality of early care and education experiences for children birth to age three will improve, as seen through the Louisiana Performance Profile Report results.’
- Screening of at-risk children as referenced by parent surveys and childcare providers.
Goal 3:
- Implement Tier 1 Curriculum in all our classrooms with fidelity.
- Provide intentional, job-embedded, classroom-based coaching for teachers scoring below proficient on the instructional support domain and Engaged Support for the Learning domain.
- Louisiana State Department Performance Profile
- Current Child Count data
- Braided grants to support birth to three-year span
- Continuing collaborative efforts with Network and community partners to assist in locating new sites to serve populated economically disadvantaged communities.
- Recruitment efforts for birth to three years of age to increase enrollment.
- Provide professional development training to retaining staff.
- Develop a Marketing Campaign to recruit teachers.
- Professional Development training for newly recruited teachers
- Increased CLASS score in Instructional Support and Engagement Support Learning.