We are pleased to announce that United Way of Greater Charlottesville was awarded the lead agency for Ready Region Blue Ridge, a geographic region covering 21 Virginia localities. The intent of Ready Regions is to bring access to early education to every child in Virginia regardless of race, ethnicity, economic status or place of residence. The Virginia Department of Education and the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation have oversight of the program.
Our initial tasks are to create a regional leadership team and prepare to pull all individually-funded Preschool Development Grant (PDG) partners under one grant managed by United Way of Greater Charlottesville effective July 1, 2022.
The PDG program is designed to roll out the State’s new quality rating improvement system—VQB5—to all publicly- funded classrooms, both public school system preschool classrooms and early education centers and family day homes that participate in the subsidy program. VQB5 uses the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) methodology that measures teachers’ interactions with children. This methodology is mandated for publicly-funded classrooms effective school year 2023-2024.
United Way participated in VQB5 practice year 1 by helping collect CLASS data that will help the VDOE better understand trends and plan ways to support local observers and leaders to ensure high quality pre-k instruction. 157 teacher observations were conducted along with professional development opportunities, a family survey and a coordinated enrollment assessment.
United Way is now managing the region for practice year 2 along with 4 primary partners: ReadyKids Cville, JMU, Sentara RMH, and United Way of Staunton, Augusta County, Waynesboro. Next year, all of the Mixed Delivery grants will be combined into one that will be managed by UWGC. Effective with the 2023-2024 school year, United Way will have access to the regional data to be able to prioritize opportunities for improvement across the numerous communities.