When developing a community-wide plan for school readiness, you will need to consider where you are, where you want to be, and the people who will be involved. Community engagement activities exist on a continuum from transactional to transitional to translational.¹⁴ Through collective impact, organizations work together strategically to solve a complex problem. In order to shepherd deep translational community engagement, there are key issues to consider regarding: relationships, data, and the early childhood landscape of your community.

Your stakeholders may include:

• Business leaders

• Community action agencies

• Community leaders

• Community services boards

• Early childhood care and education providers

• Head Start

• Health departments

• Libraries

• Local government

• Military services

• Organizations that serve English language learners, and/or low-income, homeless, or immigrant/refugee families

• Parents and families

• Private funders

• Professional associations

• Social and human services agencies

• Early childhood special education

Consider all of the stakeholders who are interested in child development, family health and well-being, school readiness, and economic success.

Relationships

Relationships are at the heart of this work—and that means not just organizational relationships but also individual ones. As people move into and out of positions and organizations, their knowledge and commitment can move with them. To prevent this, you should consider formalizing partnerships through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) or similar mechanism.

Strong partnerships include shared goals, consistent engagement, and steadfast leadership. While many successful collaborations can and do happen at the staff-to-staff level, high-level support for this work is essential to ensure a long-range community vision.

You may need to coordinate disparate entities for whom collaboration is new. Drawing on existing relationships and establishing trust is essential for successful partnerships.

Relationships with Families

Remember to include provider and family stakeholders as well, so that they are involved in this work from the beginning. It’s not just about sharing information—it’s also about listening to and understanding what families and services providers really need. By authentically engaging with families, collaborators can understand how systems are working and what additional resources would be most valuable.

Data

Understanding what your community needs means a careful consideration of the available data. Knowing where your community stands on various indicators of school readiness and human well-being will help you set goals and create strategies.

It is important to use data that are disaggregated by socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity of children to help identify trends and provide opportunities to correct inequities.

You may likely have, or be able to gain, access to other sources of local data about child outcomes (such as PALS PreK and PALS K data). In working to connect data from the early childhood setting to the public schools, you may need to expend considerable effort shepherding data-sharing agreements.

In addition, you may need to develop strategies to gather data that are not readily accessible. You may want to partner with a data or research consultant to design strategies to obtain data you would like to have, such as fiscal mapping.

Deeply analyzing available data and gathering information about the lived experiences of your community members will allow you to bring your data to life and use it to tell meaningful stories.

Some available sources of data include:

• Early Childhood Workforce Survey

• Data Sharing and Use Toolkit

• Virginia Longitudinal Data System

Some available resources regarding fiscal mapping include:

• Examples of Community Fiscal Maps

• Tutorial on Implementing a Fiscal Map

• Virginia’s Children’s Budget Inventory

To explore these resources, visit: http://smartbeginnings.org/virginia-early-childhood-integrated-financing/

Program Landscape

As a leader in your community it is important to understand the landscape of early childhood programs and services in order to help coordinate programs and funding.

Obtaining a census or conducting a scan of the way your landscape of programs, agencies, services, etc. looks in terms of geography, auspice, quality level, capacity, ages served, hours available, and more will be essential in this work.

Fiscal Mapping

Having a granular sense of how and where (and for which children) funding for early childhood education services are distributed in your community will help you better discern where gaps are, for which children, and where additional investment may be warranted.