HSD Turns Focus Toward Improving Early Childhood Education

With the state taking a stronger, more direct approach to early childhood education, the Hazelwood School District has jumped aboard with a newly formed committee.

The district has formed  a committee called Community and Schools Together Achieving Results (CSTAR), which will develop relationships with residents and other stakeholders to help preschool students in the area. The committee first met last month with more than 40 community members attended as well as Rep. Margo McNeil, Rep. Tommie Pierson, and Rep. Sharon Pace and other school board members.

“The first five years contain many windows of opportunity when the brain is operating in a super sponge mode and building neural connections for life,” Elena Amirault, HSD director of early childhood education, said in a press release.  “This appears to be the prime time for wiring brain architecture for all future learning. The brain is already 95 percent developed at age 5.  Research shows that high-quality early education programs significantly reduce special and remedial education, crime rates, and welfare.”

The comittee is in response to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Top 10 by 20 campaign, which is a part of the education reform place to have the state rank in the top 10 national and international measures of performance by 2020.

This part of the campaign’s focus will be on early childhood education as the DESE website said, “the long-term and enduring benefits of high-quality early childhood education programs include an increased rate of high school graduation and a decrease in the rate of criminal activity.”

The first CSTAR meeting emphasized the need for early childhood education and what the return on that investment would mean for the community.

“HSD is working hard to keep up with Missouri’s goals. We have taken advantage of an early childhood special education grant, and are able to serve all preschool students who have developmental delays, which qualify them for an individualized education plan,” Amirault said.

Currently, the early childhood education program focuses on children with development disabilities and getting those children on track for kindergarten.

The district also points to its Parents as Teachers program as a resource for early childhood development. Parents can sign up for the program and receive an annual free screening for their child.