Head Start reports success for young students

Lorain County’s Head Start preschool students are improving in the tasks that will get them ready for kindergarten — and the rest of their education, according to the agency that operates the program.

Lorain County Community Action Agency on June 26 published “Every Child Counts,” its 2018 Head Start Outcomes Report.

The program serves more than 930 students ages 3, 4 and 5, and the document outlines how the youngsters learn as they prepare to enter kindergarten.

Agency President and CEO Jackie Boehnlein and Head Start Director Shauna Metelski discussed the results with Nancy Sabath, vice chairwoman of the Community Action Agency board, and Reginald Cremeans, president of the Head Start 2017-18 Parent Policy Council.

The program has an annual budget of about $8.1 million. About 125 teachers work with youths in 18 locations in Lorain County.

The report included personal success stories and Cremeans talked about Head Start’s effects for his son, who was graduated after the 2016-17 school year and

who finished kindergarten in the 2017-18 school year.

Ezekiel Cremeans, now 6, is ready to enter first-grade in Amherst in the next school year, his father said.

Head Start “was a lifechanging thing for all of us,” Cremeans said.

The family was uncertain about where Ezekiel would begin preschool and discovered Head Start by a printed flyer.

The boy was accepted into the program and things got better from there.

“He met his teachers,” Cremeans said. “And every day, came home with an enthusiasm for learning.

“It gave me an opportunity to be a part of the education of my child that my parents weren’t for me. It truly means a lot for me to be there for Head Start.”

Although his son graduated, Cremeans remained on as a citizen volunteer and was elected president of the Parent Policy Council.

He has attended several conferences for learning more about Head Start and how it works.

“A truly amazing program,” he said. “Every child’s parent has an opportunity to be in the classroom with them, to be a part of their education.

“And that’s something that you just don’t get no more these days, That, to me, means the world.”

Head Start leaders believe parents are the first and most important teachers of children, Metelski said.

The program has a holistic approach to ensure the family is part of the child’s education, she said.

Ezekiel is not the only young learner finding success with the program, the agency leaders said.

Exceeding learning levels

The report includes graphs showing the percentage of students who are below expected learning levels, meeting expectations or exceeding them and how the students change from fall to spring in Head Start.

“As we go across those domains, we like to say we get rid of the red,” Boehnlein said, referring to the colored graphs.

For example, in social

emotional development, 57.2 percent of children were below expectations in fall of the 2017-18 school year.

Among the youths, 41.5 percent were meeting expectations for social emotional development and 1.3 percent were exceeding them.

By the spring, 57.2 percent of the youths were meeting expectations and 29.2 percent were exceeding them, according to the Head Start figures.

The trends of improvement held true for physical development, language development, cognitive development, literacy and mathematics, Head Start figures show.

Mathematics progress was the most dramatic.

In the fall, 74.7 percent of students were below expected learning levels.

But by spring, that figure was down to 27.4 percent.

Students meeting mathematical expectations rose from 24.9 percent to 59.1 percent, and those exceeding the expectations, improved from .4 percent to 13.5 percent, according to the Head Start figures.

Sabath said she looks first at language and literacy outcomes because children from low-income families