Bond-approved infant and toddler program will be built in south side Fort Worth school

The first of four early childhood centers in Fort Worth schools approved as part of a historic bond in November of last year will be housed at the Morningside annex on the city’s south side.

Few details have been shared about the project, which is planned to provide early learning services to infants and toddlers as Fort Worth ISD hones in on the earliest years of life — but a contract to build out the new center was approved as part of the consent agenda at a September board meeting.

Austin-based Pfluger Architects Inc. was selected after a bidding process and the project is expected to cost $486,192.15.

The bond that passed in the last election set aside $13,798,232 for the project, which includes establishing four centers across the city in areas identified as lacking in high-quality early childhood education.

A spokesperson for the Fort Worth school district said the project will now move into the design phase, but did not provide any more details.

Infant and toddler care a new horizon for Fort Worth district

Prior to the passage of the bond, leaders from Fort Worth ISD visited the Crowley school district, which piloted a head start program on school campuses in partnership with the child care organization Child Care Associates.

“We see this as being an opportunity to make sure that we’re providing students high-quality instruction and high-quality child care from the very beginning,” Olayinka Moore-Ojo, Fort Worth ISD’s early learning director, said in an October interview.

Details on whether the program would be based on income eligibility, part of a partnership like the program in Crowley and when the centers would be open were not provided.

But officials said the program will allow the Fort Worth district to play a part in some of the most pivotal years of children’s brain development, track data, and intervene early to identify learning needs, providing equity for students in later years.

Research shows that students who attend high-quality early childhood education programs are less likely to be placed in special education classes, less likely to be held back a grade throughout their academic career and more likely to graduate from high school.

Jerry Moore, the Fort Worth district’s chief of schools, said in October of last year that the district had already begun the work of identifying areas in need.

“We know where concentrations of high-quality early childhood centers are and we know parts of town where we need additional early childhood support,” he said. “We are evaluating our elementary campuses to see where (there is) space available ... that we could reinvent, redesign to meet this early childhood space need.”

Large swaths of the Fort Worth school district are in child care deserts, or areas with little to no access to high-quality, affordable child care.

With staffing shortages and COVID-related closures, that problem has become more dire. According to a 2020 analysis of child care provider data and census data by the advocacy organization Children At Risk, there are fewer than five seats in subsidized child care centers in southwest Fort Worth for every 100 children of working parents.

Across Texas, the advocacy organization’s analysis found that there are an estimated 123,000 more low-income children with working parents than available subsidized seats in child care centers and registered home day cares.

New leader embraces focus on early childhood learning

The project is moving into the next phase just as the district welcomes a new leader, who has worked on similar projects in the past and embraces the idea of working with children in their youngest years.

Superintendent Angélica Ramsey previously served as a principal and assistant principal in the Socorro school district in El Paso, before moving to California, where she worked in the Santa Clara County Office of Education and served as superintendent for Pleasant Valley Schools. She was most recently the leader of Midland schools.

While in Pleasant Valley, she worked along with a neighborhood organization called First Five to provide learning opportunities and care for young children and their parents amid the COVID pandemic.

Any chance districts have to “push in” and help provide experiences to children who might not otherwise have them, they should, Ramsey told the Star-Telegram.

“Our low-income children come to us with a 1 to 5 million word deficit before they ever touch a Fort Worth ISD classroom,” she said. “If you don’t live in a home that has a lot of print text, if you don’t live in a home that has the means to take you to the zoo, to a museum to talk through all kinds of words that you wouldn’t typically hear, then you come to us with a knowledge gap.”

The focus on the first years should be on par with the focus on career and college readiness — a major focus in recent years and a cause championed by Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, Ramsey said.

“I love our mayor and …we were looking to replicate (Tarrant To and Through) in Midland,” Ramsey said, referring to a college and career readiness initiative founded by Parker. “But early education is as important, or probably more.”

“If we can champion on both ends, that would be amazing,” she added.

District not looking to compete with existing care

As school districts expand their presence in the early learning space, primarily with the expansion of pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, and now with these new centers, private child care providers have concerns.

The expansions have to be done with care, and attention to the fragile market forces that barely support the child care industry.

That was one of the messages at an investors luncheon for Child Care Associates attended by Ramsey. CCA is one of the largest child care providers in the region as well as the home of the Institute to Advance Child Care, a research and advocacy arm that looks to study and formulate child care policy.

“We love what our schools do, but we really need to come together with our schools and our community and our government leaders to figure out how to make this happen,” CCA CEO Kara Waddell told the Star-Telegram after the luncheon.

One solution that utilizes the resources of schools while maintaining the needs of other child care providers is called a mixed-delivery system. With so many players and differing interests, collaboration and conversation are paramount, advocates say — and Fort Worth leaders say they are willing to come to the table.

“We need to be good community partners,” Ramsey said. “We’ve already had internal conversations about how do you do that in an ethical way where you don’t put (existing providers) out of business?”

How to do that will take “serious conversations” and partnership with caregivers already serving the community, Ramsey said

In an interview last year, Chief Academic Officer Marcey Sorensen said the district is mindful of the need for different types of care.

“I think first you just always have to acknowledge that there’s always enough room at the table for everybody to join,” Sorensen said. “There are enough issues for all of us to tackle together.”

Sorensen said the district views itself as an element in a mixed-delivery approach.

“There’s not a one-size-fits-all child care that every mom or every family wants,” she said. “So that discussion is important for all of us to be at the table to say, do we have enough quality seats in the community? And who’s then providing those seats? And what do those seats look like?”

The programs Ramsey has worked with in the past, including one that provided parenting classes alongside early learning programs, included partnerships.

“It was partnering with, it was not taking from local child care centers,” she said. “It was resources coming in, and why all of that is so important, because that’s where we begin. Our children.”