Spokane County Library District is a municipal corporation established by voters in 1942. An independent special purpose district, its sole purpose is providing public library services to the unincorporated county and affiliated municipalities. A five-member Board of Trustees appointed by Spokane County Commissioners governs the District. A Board-appointed library director serves as chief administrator. SCLD has 10 branches throughout communities in unincorporated Spokane County and the affiliated cities and towns of Cheney, Deer Park, Fairfield, Medical Lake, Millwood, Spokane Valley, and Airway Heights.
Spokane County Library District's stated mission is "We inspire learning, advance knowledge, and connect communities." and our vision is the "Spokane County Library District is the essential place to explore, learn, and create." In 2013, the SCLD Board of Trustees approved a new Community Impact Plan that identified the following service priority goals and objectives that directly relate to this STEM grant:
Goal: Parents, teachers, and caregivers will have programs and services designed to help them prepare their children to start school.
•By 2015, collaborative efforts with early learning agencies will be increased by 50%
Goal: Children birth to five will have the services and programs they need to enter school ready to learn.
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Organization Total Points
5
Overall points for this section should consider the organization’s capacity to take on the proposed project. There will be an opportunity to consider the other demographic and number of participants in future sections.
SECTION II: PROJECT DESCRIPTION (13 POINTS TOTAL)
Application Question
Grantee Response
Pts. Possible
Pts. Awarded
Reviewer Notes
Describe the need your project will address
The community we will serve with this grant covers a seven-county region (Spokane, Lincoln, Stevens, Pend Oreille, Ferry, Whitman, and Adams) in northeast Washington of 14, 026 square miles. The barriers to STEM education in this region are poverty, geographic rural isolation, lack of access to quality early learning (including extremely large wait lists for existing services), a lack of access to STEM resources and training for childcare providers and a fragmented approach to STEM education across other early learning providers and the K-12 school system. This project will support the need to increase kindergarten readiness skills in math and science as seen from the results of the Washington state kindergarten assessment (WaKIDS). The results indicate that a majority of students in the state are entering kindergarten with math skills that are below expectations. As research has indicated, this achievement gap in the early years often follows the students throughout their educational experience.
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Describe the project for which you are requesting funds, and explain how your project addresses the need described above
Phase 1 planning will begin with a survey that will be shared with potential partners to determine their interest in serving on an advisory group. The advisory group will identify and create a curriculum aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for kindergarteners, Washington State Early Learning and Development Standards, and Common Core State Standards (CCSS). This group will establish a timeline and service delivery matrix outlining the specific STEM units and activities to be developed, identify materials necessary for these activities and the targeted STEM skills. The service delivery matrix will be shared with regional trainers through a Train the Trainer model.
Key training partners include Spokane County Library District (SCLD), Child Care Aware, and NorthEast Washington Educational Service District, (NEWESD 101), who have in-house trainers with a strong history of training early learning providers in the targeted geographic region. Each trainer will receive initial STEM training from NEWESD 101's regional math, science, and early learning coordinators that will include: 1.What is STEM (breaking it all down) and why is it important for the youngest learners. 2. An understanding of the alignment of early math and science (Early Learning and Development Guidelines) with CCSS and NGSS and 3. Encouraging and supporting the cycle of inquiry in young children and their natural curiosity in the areas of math, science and nature by creating "STEM moments." Trained key partners, consulting with regional math and science coordinators will develop the topics and number of units in the curriculum, materials needed for each unit, and instructions for each STEM unit that will include: outlining how young children learn while doing each activity, how early learning teachers can use each STEM unit and suggestions for additional STEM learning activities.
The second phase would provide Department of Early Learning (DEL) approved STEM training (providers receive continuing education credits) and materials to early learning providers throughout the region. The instruction will take place in various locations/times (including online) to meet the diverse needs of the audience. Teachers, providers and librarians will use this training in classrooms and playgroups, and educate parents and caregivers focusing on how they may support science, math and technology skills in young children. Theses trainings will also be offered at various locations/times throughout the year and will allow families to take the units home to practice STEM strategies learned in the trainings. Each unit will be developed so that activities can be easily modified to meet the needs of the diverse communities of early learning professionals and caregivers. The goal is to deepen parents' ability to engage with their children to promote STEM concepts. Periodically, the advisory group will review data collected at trainings including attendance, location, training evaluations (pre and post) to inform them on the progress of STEM concepts, the quality of training content and a change in knowledge base of the early learning professionals.
Providing this scaffolding for STEM education will address the needs of our diverse region regardless of geographic location, economic status or ethnic background.
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How many children will be served by this project?
6,000
3*
How many parents will be served by this project?
10,000
How many childcare professional will be served by this project?
*Consideration for score should be based on the total number of participants—children, parents and child care. Projects may support one or all three audiences.
SECTION III: IMPLEMENTATION (35 TOTAL POINTS)
Application Question
Grantee Response
Pts. Possible
Pts. Awarded
Reviewer Notes
Please describe any specified STEM and Early Learning skills that the current staff, families, board, organization, and/or community might bring to this project.
SCLD - State certified trainers providing instruction to childcare providers through DEL in math, science and nature.
NEWESD 101- Experienced in training Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) and Head Start teachers in STEM. Knowledge of CCSS, NGSS, and Creative Curriculum Teaching Strategies Gold - used for WaKIDS - will help create curriculum and materials.
Spokane STEM Network - Provides background knowledge in STEM and a vital link to other community efforts regarding STEM education.
Early Learning Public Library Partnership (ELPLP) - Public libraries committed to early learning and facilitated by Thrive by Five Washington. Affiliated libraries incorporate STEM into early learning programs and childcare trainings.
Community Minded Enterprises/Child Care Aware of Eastern Washington is the Early Achievers lead in this region. Provides DEL approved training in core competencies to all early learning programs in Northeast Washington.
United Way - Excelerate Success Kindergarten Readiness -- Collective impact approach to prepare children for kindergarten. United Way works on a variety of early learning initiatives and is a key player in the Inland Northwest Early Learning Alliance (INWELA).
INWELA - A coalition of early learning professionals knowledgeable in child development and the needs of the early learning community.
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Are you intending to hire new staff to implement this project? If so, please describe the position and hiring timeline.
No, we are not intending to hire new staff.
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Describe new partners (e.g. parent groups, libraries, housing authorities, community organizations) that your organization would like to build in order to create a successful project?
Spokane STEM-the regional STEM network that has developed its business plan. By including STEM activities for children birth-to five, it can broaden its portfolio of STEM activities from the present audience in high schools.
SCLD and Libraries in the region. SCLD is the ideal lead for this grant to pull in representations from the libraries located in this region. SCLD offers 25 weekly Play and Learn groups throughout Spokane County.
Plus the following:
CC of Spokane-Parent Pre-school Cooperatives
Private pre-school hosted at area churches. For example the Diocese of Spokane hosts a private pre school at each of its parishes
Fairchild AFB early learning programs
Spokane Low income Housing Consortium whose member agencies serve the entire affordable housing offered in the Spokane region.
Members of the Palouse Coalition
Rural Resources
Area LHJ’s and WIC programs
Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery
Agencies serving diverse cultural groups- American Indian Center, Spokane, Kalispell and Colville Tribes, Salish School, Refugee Connections, Martin Luther King Center, Bethel AME Church, Richard Allen Center
ESD school districts, Spokane Public Schools
Early Achiever centers and family child care
BluePrints for Learning
Community Colleges of Spokane Early Learning Dept.
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What are the challenges that you anticipate in planning and implementing this proposed project?
One of the biggest challenges will be in coordinating meetings of the advisory group throughout the planning phase. It will be important for us to use a variety of means to communicate and connect with the advisory/planning group including conference calling and video conferencing as well as in person meetings. Another challenge will be offering the trainings at times and places that are convenient for the trainers, providers, and teachers. Offering the online training should help with this quite a bit but may not meet the needs of all depending on their computer access.
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Are there any organizational priorities that may affect the outcome of this project? If so, please explain.
The SCLD is uniquely suited to serve as the lead organization for this project as it will build on our current STEM activities. The district provides free STEM training for child care providers including math and early literacy and science and early Literacy. It includes STEM activities with every Play and Learn Storytime. In addition, SCLD offers family math and science kits that can be checked out to support STEM learning for children. These kits will serve as a model for the advisory/planning group as they design STEM units that incorporate the NGSS, the Washington State Early Learning and Development Guidelines, and CCSS. Working with this advisory/planning group also is an opportunity for the district to develop new early learning partners, one of our Community Impact Plan objectives (to increase collaborative efforts with early learning agencies by 50% by 2015). Working with three more agencies will help us reach our goal. In addition to meeting our internal organizational goal, working with more early learning agencies benefits all partners and our community by increasing access to resources and maximizing impact.
