This summer the governing boards of Oak Park Elementary School District 97, Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 and the Village of Oak Park all unanimously approved an updated intergovernmental agreement (IGA) that continues the three entities funding of the Oak Park based Collaborative for Early Childhood while tweaking the amounts and percentages of their budget that each entity will give to the collaborative. This IGA will provide funding for the collaborative over the next five years.
OPRF, D97 and the Village of Oak Park provide around 85% of the funding for the collaborative which has an annual budget of $1.85 million. Those funds are spent to support programs designed to help children from birth through the start of kindergarten.
“It’s a lovely and renewed commitment to a long-standing public investment in this work,” said Mary Reynolds, executive director of the Collaborative for Early Childhood in a telephone interview with Wednesday Journal.
Reynolds has been making the rounds of board meetings this summer to answer questions about the new IGA. All three boards strongly supported the work of the organization.
“I think this is one of the more important things we do as a district,” said Fred Arkin, an OPRF school board member, before the unanimous vote.
Fellow OPRF board member Jonathan Livingston said the work of the collaborative is vital if OPRF wants to achieve its equity goals.
Nancy Ross Driben, a D97 school board member, who like Livingston, serves on the IGA’s governing board, said what happens before a student enters school has a big impact on later development.
“By the time a child walks into a District 97 kindergarten classroom, so much of their development and learning has already been shaped by the experiences they have had in their early years,” Dribin said in the collaborative’s press release. “This agreement is one way District 97 invests in children before they ever reach our classrooms and strengthens the foundation they bring with them.”
Under the new agreement D97 will again make the biggest contribution, paying 42% of the total contribution of the three entities to the collaborative in 2027. The contribution percentages are designed to keep contributions to around 1% of each entity’s operating budget.
All the entities will be paying significantly more under the new agreement because the collaborative is losing approximately $260,000 in funding it has been getting from the COVID federal relief package known as the American Rescue Plan Act that is expiring at the end of the year.
OPRF’s percentage of the contribution will decrease by 1.5%, dropping to 32.5% from 34%.
The Village of Oak Park’s ratio will also drop by 1.5% going to 25.5% from 27%.
Some $205,000 from the IGA’s reserve fund will also be sent to the collaborative next year to lessen the first year impact of increases. The first IGA was approved in 2013 and was updated in 2016.
Although the collaborative provides services in both Oak Park and River Forest, and to a lesser extent in some neighboring communities, River Forest School District 90 and the Village of River Forest declined to join the IGA when it was created in 2013 and don’t help fund the collaborative. That’s something that some are interested in changing.
“I think our current IGA partners have had some really promising conversations with both the Village of River Forest and some of the D90 folks about the possibility of revisiting that now and seeing if they might be interested in participating,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds said she met a few months ago with River Forest Village President Cathy Adduci and River Forest Village Board member Megan Keskitalo to tell them more about the work of the collaborative and perhaps lay the groundwork for the village government to contribute to funding the collaborative.
Adduci did not respond to a request for the comment from Wednesday Journal about her level of interest in helping to fund the collaborative.
Reynolds said she has yet to talk to new D90 superintendent Janice Pavelonis who began work at D90 on July 1. In a statement that was emailed to Wednesday Journal Pavelonis expressed interest in finding out more about the work of the collaborative.
“I look forward to learning more about the Collaboration for Early Childhood and discussing possible collaboration opportunities,” said Pavelonis in a statement that was emailed to Wednesday Journal.
“Our work is really to support the whole early childhood sector, including families and professionals across a bunch of different disciplines,” Reynolds said. “We really aren’t designed as a direct service organization. We’re really designed to be working at that system level so supporting the folks who are directly working with children.”
The collaborative subcontracts with Easter Seals to send child development specialists on home visits to young children and their parents. Last year it paid for 508 visits to 45 kids aged 0 to 5.
The child development specialists work with the kids and parents to promote healthy development and provide tips for parents to help their children develop appropriately.
The collaborative’s services are provided to all who want them and are not means tested, except for screenings for the state funded preschool for all program.
“All our services are available to anybody,” Reynolds said. “It is our goal to be able to reach every family of a young child, every family from before a child comes all the way through that child enters kindergarten.”
In addition to approving the new IGA the OPRF school board also approved a data sharing agreement, similar to one that has already been in place in D97, with the University of Chicago affiliated NORC (National Opinion Research Center) to do longitudinal research on kids who received services from the collaborative in an attempt to measure the impact of the services that the collaborative provides or funds.
“It really gives an interesting and complete picture of children’s experience,” Reynolds said.
Former OPRF school board president John Phelan, who was on the OPRF school board when the IGA was first created and the contract with the collaborative was signed, said he is interested in what the NORC study reveals about the impact of the services that the collaborative provides.
“If it doesn’t have an impact I’m not sure if we should keep spending the money,” Phelan said. “If it does have an impact that would put more pressure on the Village of River Forest and District 90 who are also getting services because of District 200’s involvement but aren’t signed on to the agreement.”