S moke S ignals
APRIL 1, 2019
9
Tribal Head Start program scores top review
By Danielle Frost
Smoke Signals staff writer
Investing in its members’ edu-
cation is something the Tribe has
been committed to since Resto-
ration, and this includes its young-
est learners.
That commitment has paid off
with the Tribe receiving top scores
on a recent federal comprehensive
review of its Early Head Start pre-
school program.
Early Childhood Program Man-
ager Angie Blackwell says it is
especially notable because of the
program’s expansion in the past
three years and a relatively new
management team. Blackwell has
served as manager for three years.
Two of the four program coordina-
tors have been in their positions
for one year.
“It’s really a whole team effort
here,” she says. “We have excellent
teachers who are well-educated and
deserve to be paid well. In general,
this field has a lot of turnover, but
not here because the Tribe recog-
nizes this and invests a lot into this
program so I can afford to pay the
teachers (fairly). We have teachers
who have been here for years.”
The review was conducted by
the Administration for Children
& Families Office of Head Start.
Four review-
ers were on
site for a
week while
they evalu-
ated six dif-
ferent areas
of the Tribe’s
program —
Angie Blackwell
program
management and quality im-
provement, quality education and
child development services, quality
health services, quality family and
community engagement services,
fiscal infrastructure, and monitor-
ing eligibility, recruitment, enroll-
ment and attendance.
“It’s very comprehensive,” Black-
well says. “They send out a team,
and meet with management, the
parent policy council, Tribal Coun-
cil, do classroom observations and
meet with staff, both as a group and
individually. We have to provide ev-
idence that each component of the
program is being met. Head Start
is very heavily regulated.”
The program’s last federal re-
view in 2014 also netted a perfect
score. Standards were revamped
in 2017, which meant staff had to
adjust to and understand the new
requirements.
“We have a team who puts in
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the hours and are committed to
high quality services,” Blackwell
says. “It took a lot of late nights to
understand the new standards and
prepare for the review.”
The Head Start program serves
both Tribal and Grand Ronde res-
idents, as well as Tribal residents
in Willamina and Sheridan. There
are 112 children enrolled in the
program, and 42 of these are home-
based services only. The rest are
onsite five days a week.
There are 30 regular, full-time
staff and five to seven on-call sub-
stitutes for the five preschool class-
es.
“It’s a very comprehensive pro-
gram,” Blackwell says. “We include
the whole family and work with a
lot of health issues. Health is a big
challenge for some families.”
General Manager David Ful-
lerton says it’s highly unusual to
receive a perfect program review.
“There is a lot of preparation that
goes into those and it really speaks
to the level of services offered,” he
says. “It goes from the dedication
and work by the staff and leader-
ship, to the high level of expectation
established by Tribal Council for
those programs.”
In a nine-page executive summa-
ry written by the federal reviewers,
it noted the “innovative service de-
livery” of the program’s oral health
and nutrition components.
The summary highlights the
pre-school’s “Making It Work” cur-
riculum to support cultural health
strategies, where children in both
center- and home-based programs
are given a chance to eat traditional
foods each month.
“As a holistic approach, the grant-
ee offered traditional foods to chil-
dren and families with a focus
on the food’s nutritional value,
cultural values and the traditional
lifeways connected to food cultivat-
ing, harvesting, processing, storing
and sharing. The staff, parents and
community have invested time and
have fully engaged themselves in
the curriculum and building in-
terdepartmental capacity to iden-
tify and serve community health
needs.”
Regarding the oral health pro-
gram, reviewers stated, “In 2012,
children in Grand Ronde Head
Start Preschool had a dental decay
rate of 25 percent. Through success-
ful programming, they have seen
the decay rate of students drop to
10 percent in 2018. At the Grand
Ronde Dental Clinic, access to den-
tal services improved for children
ages 0 to 5 by 450 percent between
2013 and 2017.”
Blackwell says the that program’s
successes during the past five years
boils down to staff dedication and
Tribal Council investing in its
youngest Tribal members.
“We are very, very blessed here,”
she says.
Afterhours health line
Tribal members can contact the Afterhours Health Line for questions
about health care concerns you may have when the clinic is not open.
You can reach the Afterhours Health Line by calling 503-879-2002 and
follow the prompts.
The Afterhours Health Line will coordinate care and communicate with
Grand Ronde Health & Wellness Center providers.
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