Crisis is an opportunity, United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF) board director Fern Renville said.
The agency had a crisis a few months ago, when Daybreak Star center lost its federal funding for its Head Start preschool.
“Losing Head Start was a blow,” she said. “It was really, really hard to lay off 30 staff members and knowing that all of the families won’t be able to bring their kids to Head Start.”
It’s an era, Renville said, where federal cost-cutting is pushing educators and nonprofits to more creative solutions and strategic alliances to be successful. So that’s what Daybreak Star is doing.
After 27 years at the center, Head Start’s closing left Daybreak Star at a “critical juncture for restarting itself,” Renville said. The grant was the agency’s “bread and butter”: It used the funding to pay the center’s overhead.
“There is no bringing back this particular grant,” Renville said of Head Start. “Now, we’re trying to figure out how we can go forward without that grant and think about how we can serve our community in a new way.”
Renville said the main focus is keeping kids under its roof. There’s a huge need for early childhood education in the community, she said, particularly because of the link between early childhood education and academic achievement. Only 40 percent of Native high-schoolers graduated on time in Seattle — Seattle Public Schools’ largest achievement gap.
The Seattle Native community represents only 1 percent of the city’s population and they’re geographically dispersed, Renville said: “They don’t have a place to come together to build a community for education for our kids, and Daybreak Star has been a place for that.”
The previous Head Start program served 150 local children with priority placement going to 55 Native children. That program had some Native-focused curriculum woven into it, Renville said. Now, they want to create a program that is “Native from the ground-up, with Native cultures and values.”
The program staff, administrators and teachers would all be Native.
Daybreak Star is looking at multiple approaches to address the need left when the Head Start program was defunded.
Turning to ‘Mother Earth’
Daybreak Star is currently trying to get funding for a new on-site childcare center that would include components from their current research project Ina Maka (“Mother Earth”).
Lynnette Jordan, director of UIATF’s Children and Family Services, said Ina Maka is an in-home family program. The program was funded by a 5-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families for the Tribal Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Visiting program. If their Ina Maka program is successful, they’d like to turn it into an on-site curriculum. The program is for Native people, both those federally recognized and those who identify as Native but do not meet enrollment requirements.
The point of the program is to help parents understand that they’re their children’s first educators. The program aims to help parents achieve positive outcomes and recognize development milestones and provide tools to help their kids. It brings books and helps parents create play activities that are fun but still educational.
Ina Maka also provides parents with the tools to make sure their children are getting proper medical and dental care.
There is also a Native component to the program, Jordan said.
“We’ll be talking about our tribal traditions,” Jordan said, such as storytelling and tribal history.
One of Daybreak Star’s plans is to take Ina Maka’s curriculum and turn it into an on-site preschool, Jordan said. There would be half- and full-day options.
“This would sort of fill that gap [from Head Start], and I know that families would be very interested and very excited,” Jordan said.
The Ina Maka home care program hopes to start in-home services this fall, providing aid to 80 families throughout King County. But it’ll need to get final approval on its funding from the grant through the Administration for Children and Families before organizers can begin the paperwork and get things rolling.
“That’s the goal we have,” Jordan said. “How we’ll get there, we’re not sure yet.”
If the grant comes through for the Ina Maka program, it will begin planning this fall, Renville said.
If this program were to take off, they would have a lot more control over the design and curriculum, Renvillle said: “What takes shape could conceivably be much more appropriate for our community.”
Far from closing
UIATF’s survival is community-driven, Renville said. She said the community involvement with the new early education program is “on a level we haven’t seen.”
In the meantime, Daybreak Star is looking into other options, including a co-op preschool and potential partnerships with the Schools of Education at the University of Washington and Seattle University. They’re also hoping to develop a Native curriculum for Seattle Public Schools students.
“We really want kids back under our roof this year. There’s a huge need for it,” Renville said. “I know something good is going to replace Head Start; I have faith in that.”
Renville wants people to know that Daybreak Star isn’t closing and it’s not in immediate danger, either.
“We’re going to have to be really careful and smart, but our doors are not closing,” she said. “We will create something new out of this — we absolutely will.”
To comment on this story, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
[[In-content Ad]]