The purpose of the Early Child Care DAC is to provide a forum for discussion of support for early childhood programs focusing on children ages 0-5 years. While there are many questions and issues the DAC could discuss and provide assistance on for the 2019-2020 school year, the DAC selected two priority areas on which to focus its attention. The DAC chose to narrow its focus with the hope that it can make meaningful contributions to district policy moving forward. The proposed charges are as follows:

1. The DAC will work to determine if there are preschool eligible students in our community who are currently not attending preschool. We believe it is important to improve our understanding of the types of challenges that may impede attendance, as well as the resources needed to support all families so children can successfully attend preschool; and whether those resources are currently available and accessible.
2. The DAC will consider the types of data to gather from preschool, Transitional Kindergarten and Kindergarten. This data will be used to help SMMUSD maintain quality programs that best prepare our youngest students and their families to be successful in elementary school and beyond.

Since SMMUSD already collects data in early learning (the Desired Results Developmental Profile [DRDP] in preschool and Transitional Kindergarten; as well as the Early Development Instrument [EDI] in Kindergarten) the DAC’s role will be to consider how to best utilize existing data, what additional data would be helpful, and what the challenges might be to collecting any additional data.