BY ELISSA Y. SCHUFMAN

Last year, 100 percent of Joyce Preschool graduates were kindergarten-ready.

If you’ve seen the data from Minneapolis you’ll know why this is a big deal. It’s an even bigger deal once you know that half our families are Latino, because data for this demographic is deeply discouraging: only 42 percent of Hispanic kids and only 35 percent of Spanish-speaking kids are kindergarten-ready upon entry. Spanish-speakers, in fact, are the linguistic group least ready for kindergarten in our city.

It’s a problem because the cost is high, for the public and the child.

It’s a problem because Latinos already make up 10% of Minneapolis, and over the next 40 years, the Latino population will grow to make up a full third of the U.S. population.

It’s a problem because these kindergarteners are our neighbors, our friends, our future voters and colleagues. And when families like five-year-old Lydia’s* find themselves without a place to live twice in two years—Lydia, who loves to read, who is learning both English and Spanish, whose Spanish-speaking mom moved to the Twin Cities just so her kids could have better educational opportunities and struggled to keep her kids in school in the face of abuse and homelessness—the problem can seem insurmountable.But in the face of what seems to be such a big problem, there are many small solutions going to work. Joyce Preschool is one of them. 

Joyce Preschool serves about 105 students and their families, but in 2009 we only served 88. And just two-thirds of our students went on to Minneapolis Public Schools that year.

But in wading through the statistics and percentages about kindergarten readiness in Minneapolis, it’s easy to forget that even when a program is small, it can have a big impact. Joyce kids made up 1.2% of the kids in Minneapolis Public Schools that year, and every one of them was ready for kindergarten. It would only have taken 83 preschools — small ones, just like Joyce — to have every kindergartener ready to succeed.

Alongside other programs, we’re making a difference for families in Minneapolis. And we’re growing. The story of our growth is rooted in two key factors: we’re not just a preschool, and we’re not doing it alone.

There are much larger fish in the early childhood education pond — fish which allow small programs like Joyce to benefit. The biggest fish, arguably, is the President of the United States. President Obama’s continued emphasis on the importance of early childhood, and the support of our own Senator Al Franken among others, keeps the early childhood conversation moving on a national level, as well as informing individual citizens with no background in early childhood about its importance.

Coalitions are also critical on the state level: MinneMinds** is a perfect example. A 60-member group of foundations, early childhood programs, and organizations with a vested interest in education form what is essentially one very powerful lobby for one educational budget item: scholarships for 3/4-year-old low-income children. Created with the idea of advocating for one big ask, rather than working independently for many small ones, the coalition successfully created a $40-million fund for scholarships over the biennium. 

Joyce also receives a lot of support on the community level. As a nonprofit, Joyce partners with foundations, churches, local businesses and organizations, and individuals to ensure its accessibility, continued to growth, and ability to provide scholarships to all families in need. Volunteers who share of their time and talent make our classrooms rich and vibrant — like parents Reka and Titima, who shared their musical and cultural gifts with some of our classes this year.

Photos of Reka and Titima. Reka has the cello, Titima has an instrument called a “sor ou”

Joyce also continues to develop deeper partnerships, without which our expansion would not be possible. Our partnership with Windom Dual Immersion Elementary led to the opening of our classroom there in fall of 2012, marking the first private preschool program to operate in a Minneapolis Public School. Our newly-formed partnership with Park Avenue United Methodist Church gave us the chance to find a new (and bigger!) home when Joyce’s longtime founding location, Joyce Church, closed.

Joyce demands a lot from its families, and our families demand a lot from us. Our classrooms are balanced linguistically and socioeconomically, so families from many cultural backgrounds and walks of life spend time together. Because we demand this language balance from our families, we also demand it of ourselves: our teaching staff is about half native Spanish speakers, half native English speakers. This provides both peer and adult role models for all students in both languages.

Because of the unique nature of our program, Joyce developed its own curriculum. And as additional needs of families demand more from our programming, Joyce adapts its model to fit. Club Leopoldo, our family literacy program, was created to involve parents in the literacy development of their children, and continues to be strengthened through a partnership with Minnesota Reading Corps. La Asociación de Padres de Familia, our Latino family support group, addresses the needs of Spanish-speaking and immigrant families and helps them access resources. Our Home Visiting program, piloted two years ago, brings staff into the homes of families, and allows us to assess deeper needs that may not have another outlet for discussion, and provide actionable resources.

Addressing the needs of the whole child—not only school life, but also home issues that can affect stability—is critically important to the success of our program.

Scaling up—the process of taking an existing program and adding to its breadth or depth—is a tricky business. But with our supporters and the increased buy-in from the greater community about the importance of early childhood, it’s become a reality for Joyce.

Five years ago, faced with waitlists of families wanting to enroll their children at Joyce, our board of directors came up with a strategic goal of growing our program. After a few years of planning, it became a reality: in fall 2012 we opened Joyce at Windom, and this coming fall we’ll reopen our main location at Park Avenue United Methodist Church. From 88 children in 2011 to 106 in 2012, Joyce is set to expand to serve 130 children this coming year, and we continue to seek new partnerships for future growth.

Joyce is also working to scale in a different way: through sharing its curriculum. While the curriculum alone can’t replicate our success, preschool programs looking to implement atwo-way immersion curriculum have very few resources (which is why we wrote our own). Sharing our curriculum helps other schools build on Joyce’s experience without having to write their curriculum from scratch.

While there’s certainly potential to scale in other ways, Joyce continues to balance expansion with honing our existing program. Our program wasn’t bilingual when it was founded in 1966—that’s a shift we made in 1996, after realizing that our community needed it. Home Visiting wasn’t included in our curriculum 10 years ago, but we responded to a demonstrated need in our community. As we continue to expand, we also continue to adapt to the needs of our families, something that as a nonprofit and independent program, we are privileged to be able to do. Identifying the most efficient and most effective ways to leverage Joyce’s impact continues to be a challenge we engage every day.

BY THE WAY,

We’re not the only school that wants you to share your talents. Educators and nonprofits seek out the unique abilities of volunteers to help ensure the vitality of their programs. I work at Joyce Preschool now, but my journey began as a volunteer trying to find small ways to give back to my community. Giving just a few hours of your time at a school can have a huge impact—you could be the first time a child has experienced live music, the first juggler they’ve ever seen, the first voice that really gives a storybook life.

Become or refer a Minnesota Reading Corps tutor.

Volunteer at Joyce or find a volunteer site in your community.

Write a letter to your legislators thanking them for supporting MinneMinds.

*For the privacy of the family, this child’s name has been changed.

**Joyce Preschool is a supporting organization of the MinneMinds coalition.

Elissa Y. Schufman is the Development and Communications Coordinator for Joyce Preschool.