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We believe education begins at birth and lasts throughout life. Education can be a key to unleash the potential of opportunity for everyone, especially for those whose communities have been marginalized. Therefore, education should be equitable, excellent in its delivery and accessible to all regardless of place, gender, ability, income or ethnicity.

Care and Learning (CandL) Data on Early Care and Education

Equitable, high-quality early care and education start children on a solid path to becoming lifelong learners, leading to healthier lives as engaged, fulfilled adults. However, too many WNC families cannot access affordable care, a circumstance made more challenging by a shortage of teachers and the barriers they experience entering or remaining in the field.

Dogwood Health Trust is investing in early childhood education to ensure our region has the resources and sustainability to provide developmentally appropriate, affordable and accessible care and education so that all children in WNC enter kindergarten ready to learn.

In its latest commissioned study, Dogwood partnered with NC Child’s Care and Learning Initiative (CandL) to extend a statewide listening tour into 13 WNC counties and hear first-hand the concerns and needs of parents, caregivers and child care providers in those counties.

During the webinar, presenters shared their findings and offered a high-level analysis in addition to answering questions.

Presenters

The CandL coalition seeks to model language justice and will offer simultaneous Spanish translation during this webinar.

WNC After 3pm Initiative RFP

To make out-of-school-time experiences more accessible and meet the needs of the youth and families in our communities, Dogwood launched the WNC After 3pm initiative. Alongside a landscape analysis of our region’s out-of-school time, Dogwood requested proposals from nonprofit organizations, government agencies, education institutions and others who serve the Qualla Boundary and our 18-county service region in Western North Carolina and wanted to expand out-of-school-time programming. The RFP closed on July 24, 2023. Award notifications will be made in November 2023, and funds will be distributed in December 2023.

Landscape Analysis of Out-of-School Time

Education Grant Activity 2023

Listen to Dogwood’s own Dr. Ereka Williams as she talks with Dr. Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher, University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Lorenzo Baber, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Dr. Heather Shotton, Fort Lewis College, regarding Moving Beyond Diversity Toward Racial Equity in Pathways on the REACH Collaborative’s podcast.

Equitable, high quality early care and more productive, fulfilled, education starts children on a solid path to become lifelong learners, leading to healthier lives as engaged, fulfilled adults. However, too many WNC families cannot access affordable care – a circumstance made more challenging by a shortage of teachers and the barriers they experience entering or remaining in the field. In 2022, Dogwood completed research on the early care and education (ECE) landscape capturing those issues for our region.  In 2023, Dogwood launches a multi-year effort with partners focused on growing and sustaining the ECE workforce for WNC communities.  

During the K12 years, what happens outside of the classroom can have a huge influence on a student’s overall learning and development. Dogwood’s 2022 commissioned report on the K12 landscape of our region found that students with disabilities, students of color, specifically African American students, students who are English language learners, and students in our lowest wealth communities had less access and success in our K12 classrooms across DHT communities. Disproportionate access to accelerated coursework, absenteeism, suspension and expulsion, and dropout rates point to challenges our community and schools must address and resolve together. One in 5 students in our region is chronically absent. If we are committed to eliminating gaps in achievement, retention, and graduation rates for the most underserved among us, then exploring the root causes, sound interventions, and responsive supports for these issues in service to our K12 learners is critical for all districts across WNC.   

Within our overarching Goals and Objectives (see below) our 2023 Education focus areas and activities include:  

  • Implementing the first Early Care and Education (ECE) Equity cohort with the Frank Porter Graham Equity Academy, working with the 2022 Workforce RFP Awardees on their innovative and responsive approaches to recruiting and retaining professionals for the ECE workforce across WNC. 
  • Initiate the WNC After 3PM Effort with inventory of afterschool, weekend, and summer opportunities that support our K12 youth across the region, and determine our best path forward for building on the abilities of community partners across the region to collaborate, align and deepen out-of-school opportunities.

More details about 2023 grant opportunities will be coming soon. Please join our mailing list for updates or check this webpage. 

Comprehensive Studies of WNC’s Early Care & Education Landscape

A Landscape Analysis of K12 Education Outcomes in Western North Carolina

Landscape Analysis of k-12 Education Outcomes in WNC cover

Education Goals & Objectives

GOAL 1

Improve Early Childhood Education Ecosystem

Invest in an improved early childhood education ecosystem with the resources and sustainability to provide developmentally appropriate, affordable and accessible education and care to support ages birth to five, so that all children in WNC enter kindergarten ready to learn

GOAL 2

Improve K12 Education

Support K12 learning experiences with the resources and sustainability to provide an excellent academic and social-emotional education, so that all students graduate ready for college or career

GOAL 3

Support Higher Education Career Readiness

Work in tandem with Economic Opportunity Strategic Priority to invest in career readiness at the community college and university levels

GOAL 4

Develop a Comprehensive Landscape Study

Continue to source, analyze and share a comprehensive set of publicly available data that provides a regularly updated, county-by-county picture of access, workforce and student outcomes in early childhood education and K12 education specific to Western North Carolina

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Partner Highlights

WRESA

STEM West, Inc.

WNCSource

Smart Start Regional Cohort

St. Gerard House

Youth Transformed for Life

Students of different backgrounds with "LEARN" written on top.

WRESA

Even before the pandemic, area school systems were experiencing the need for additional mental health and social and emotional learning support. One of the largest areas of need centers around the Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), a framework that focuses on meeting students at their levels. MTSS focuses on social-emotional learning, and educator professional development in this area is key. WRESA (Western Region Education Service Alliance) and Dogwood realized this need and created an avenue for educators to receive the training they require to serve the students of WNC. As a result of the Dogwood and WRESA partnership, 12 WNC school districts trained 200 educators.

STEM West, Inc.

To increase reading scores, students need to have an interest in reading. LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Essential sets provide relevance and interest in literacy. With funding from Dogwood, STEM West created the infrastructure for collaborative learning and a curriculum to align reading texts and literacy skills through engineering and coding with LEGO® sets.

WNCSource

In Henderson County, 3,318 children are eligible for subsidized child care. Finding high-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care for infants, toddlers and children under five can be challenging. For this reason, Dogwood is partnering with WNCSource, a leading provider of early childhood education programs in Henderson County, to renovate a 70-year-old facility in Henderson County. The retrofitted building will provide Early Head Start, Head Start and NC Pre-K early childhood education programs to 94 children and future generations of Henderson County families.

Smart Start Regional Cohort

A Regional Cohort of Smart Start Local Partnerships is helping young children, their families, and early childhood educators increase resiliency and reduce trauma throughout Western North Carolina. The approach includes Resilience Academies to develop personal and organizational resilience cultures with Smart Start leaders, Reconnect for Resilience trainings for early educators and families, and the expansion of Sesame Street in Communities’ successful programs and Family Engagement Tool Kits to support young children’s social and emotional resilience and development. Each community within the Cohort starts at its own level of readiness, but all are working in a regional and collaborative way.

St. Gerard House

Opened in 2010, St. Gerard House (SGH) provides therapy, training, social skills classes and a wide array of additional services for individuals with autism and their families. Dogwood responded to SGH’s call for operational support to create scalable growth to serve more waiting families. Since receiving the Dogwood capacity grant, SGH has hired a full-time revenue cycle manager and a full-time “Feed The Need” program administrator. These changes have improved efficiency in their billing and utilization departments as well as placed SHG on a path to provide more autism therapy in the community.

Youth Transformed for Life

For more than seven years, Youth Transformed for Life (YTL) Training Programs have supported participants struggling academically, socially and emotionally. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, YTL strengthened its efforts to provide a safe place for participants to learn, grow and engage in academic and social activities with support in a safe environment. Dogwood supported YTL as it provided at-home learning support for Asheville City and Buncombe County students, summer programming with academic tutoring, outdoor activities, art programs and STEM enrichment.

Education | Goal 1

Develop a Comprehensive Landscape Study

Source, analyze and share a comprehensive set of publicly available data that provides a regularly updated, county-by-county picture of access, workforce and student outcomes in early childhood education and K-12 education specific to Western North Carolina

Education | Goal 2

Improve Early Childhood Education Ecosystem

Invest in an improved early childhood education ecosystem with the resources and sustainability to provide developmentally appropriate, affordable and accessible education and care to support ages birth to five, so that all children in WNC enter kindergarten ready to learn

Objective: Address early childhood educator workforce challenges

Education | Goal 3

Improve K-12 Education

Support K-12 learning experiences with the resources and sustainability to provide an excellent academic and social-emotional education, so that all students graduate ready for college or career

Objective 3.1: Address teacher workforce challenges

Objective 3.2: Equip families of students to support academic growth and social-emotional health

Objective 3.3: Increase capacity of partners to provide supports and services, particularly for children facing challenges related to poverty, systemic racism, being differently abled or English language learners