Early Edge Joins Final Meetings of LAUSD Board Committee on Children and Families in Early Education for 2023-24 Academic Year
Early Edge California Director of Policy, Carolyne Crolotte, joined the final meetings for the 2023-24 academic year of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board Committee on Children and Families in Early Education as an external member of the committee.
April 4th Meeting
At the meeting on April 4th, the committee heard two presentations by Dr. Dean Tagawa, Executive Director of the Early Childhood Education Division of LAUSD. The first, Success Begins in Preschool: Dual Language and Special Education Programs in Early Education, provided an overview of LAUSD’s Early Learning dual language and special education programs. At the end of the presentation, Carolyne praised LAUSD’s work in this area and also encouraged them to continue to expand dual language programs further, emphasizing the critical period of brain and language development in the first five years of life. She shared that with the expansion of Transitional Kindergarten to become universal for all four-year-olds, we have a great opportunity to begin these programs early and offer pathways for children to continue their bilingual journeys and eventually receive their State Seal of Biliteracy.
The second presentation, Program Quality and Instructional Outcomes in Early Education, focused on the efforts LAUSD is undertaking to measure and improve the quality of their Early Learning programs. They shared how they are leveraging child observational data to inform their instruction and professional development opportunities and have been seeing positive results.
You can see the materials and watch a recording of the April meeting here.
May 21st Meeting
The May 21 meeting of the committee focused on district policies to support child care and family leave policies as well as a recap of the committee’s work together. There was a presentation by Leanne Hannah, Director for Certificated Assignments and Support Services, Ranae Amezquita, Director for Early Childhood Education Division, and Martha Alvarez, Chief of Legislative Affairs and Government Relations, entitled Family Resources for District Employees, which outlined the district’s current policies, as well as current efforts at the state level to improve policies available to LAUSD’s staff members to support their own children with child care and paid family leave.
The meeting ended with an overview and discussion of the committee’s recommendations, which were developed based on the presentations and discussions throughout the year. Carolyne shared that she was very pleased to see these recommendations, particularly the recommendation to expand early dual language programs as well as the recommendation to explore partnership opportunities with home and center providers to meet the diverse needs of families enrolled in Universal Transitional Kindergarten (UTK). She also emphasized the importance of developing an action plan for these recommendations to ensure that they move forward in implementation and that she looks forward to contributing to the action plan and to moving the recommendations forward.
You can see the materials and watch a recording of the May meeting here.
Board Member Gonez ended the meeting by sharing that there will be continued opportunities for committee engagement in the 2024-25 academic year and that the first meeting will take place on Thursday, September 19th, at 10am. Early Edge looks forward to the continued collaboration!