The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Head Start little learners headed back to school
Will return to in-person learning on March 3
Some of Lorain County’s littlest learners will get a second “first” day of school when Head Start classes resume in-person March 3.
Head Start welcomed students age 3, 4 and 5 to the classrooms when the 2020-2021 school year began Sept. 2, 2020.
Lorain County Community Action Agency, which oversees Head Start, converted to all online learning the second week of November 2020 when the novel coronavirus pandemic conditions grew worse at the local level.
With vaccines getting out to the community, starting the week of March 1, Head Start will have in-person class sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
New leadership
The Hopkins-Locke Head Start Center also will have a new leader at the helm.
Alicia Risner will be site administrator for the county’s largest Head Start center, 1050 Reid Ave. in Lorain.
Risner, a Huron native, spent 15 years working in public education, then took time away from the classroom.
She began substitute teaching, then in 2019, she resumed her career as a preschool educator at the Community Action Agency’s Elyria Head Start Center, 631 Griswold Road.
Head Start uses a team approach with teachers and family service workers who connect families to community resources.
“The thing I love most about working for Head Start, is the team mentality,” Risner said. “I love that we have so many people and ways that work together to help our families.
“I like teamwork.” This is her third week at the Hopkins-Locke Center.
She and Jennifer Bartlebaugh, education and disabilities specialist, agreed the teachers are ready for their students to come back.
In class
The Hopkins-Locke center can have up to 50 teachers, 10 family services workers and 275 or so students, counting the Early Head Start classrooms for children age infant to 3.
The numbers will be down when school resumes next week.
There will be just eight children per classroom and the school will focus on 4 and 5 year olds getting
ready for kindergarten in the next school year.
In-person lessons will take place Tuesdays and Thursdays, with online learning Wednesdays and Fridays.
Head Start has used the ClassTag app to send readaloud passages, phonics lessons and activities for children.
That app is compatible with desktop and laptop computers, tablets and mobile phone devices.
“It’s been really neat for us to be able to take the school experience from school and actually put it into their homes because of what we have going on right now,” Risner said.
“And our teachers have just been fabulous,” Bartlebaugh said. “Their creativity has flourished in a new teaching model, having to shift from center-based to virtual.”
Mondays are scheduled for teacher planning.
The four-day school week is typical for the Community Action Agency’s Head Start program, the administrators said.
Staying safe
The Head Start centers will have health precautions in place.
Masks are mandatory for all — they were optional for students in the fall.
Head Start will supply new masks and lanyards for students.
Temperature checks are required and building access will limited, including for parents.
Head Start will use curbside drop-off to minimize the number of people coming in.
Ozone clean
Students can handle their books, papers and toys that make up preschool education.
Head Start’s HopkinsLocke and Griswold centers have machines from Zono Technologies to sanitize high-touch items.
“You can put anything in there, from toys, technology, cots, car seats, anything we potentially would want to be sanitized and clean,” Bartlebaugh said.
The Zono machine, an upright metal cabinet, uses tap water to create ozone that disinfects items.
Co-teachers Amanda Gonzalez and Breann Jackson, whose classrooms are near the Zono machine, said they have started the habit to sanitize items that students will touch.
A 30-minute cycle will kill germs on items ranging from computer keyboards to crayons to stuffed toy animals.
The items come out safe to handle immediately, with no chemical residue.
A 90-minute cycle is potent enough to eliminate lice or bedbugs, but again, the cleaned materials are safe to the touch when done.
“We know at this age, play is important, and hands-on experiences, and so we want to make sure we can still provide that opportunity for the students, but to be able to keep them safe and sanitize all the equipment that they’re playing with,” Bartlebaugh said.
At the other smaller Head Start sites, staff will use hand washing, hand sanitizers and sprayon surface sanitizers as precautions against COVID-19.
Head Start uses a team approach with teachers and family service workers who connect families to community resources.