SPRINGFIELD – I got a glimpse recently of a promising collaboration between public school pre-kindergartens and community-based early education and care programs in this Western Massachusetts city. The recently launched Professional Learning Communities bring together early educators from Square One, the Greater Springfield YMCA, Holyoke-Chicopee-Springfield Head Start, Children’s House, and Trinity Nursery School and Kindergarten with pre-k teachers and administrators from three public schools, the Sumner Avenue, Margaret C. Ells and Elias Brookings Schools.

Sumner Principal Lisa Bakowski and Cindy Recoulle, assistant vice president of programs for quality assurance at Square One, talked about their experiences at a briefing sponsored by Springfield’s Read! campaign, a citywide initiative of the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation to boost reading proficiency by the end of third grade.

In this first year, Bakowski and Recoulle said, their collaboration has focused on observing each other’s settings, conducting a needs assessment and providing joint professional development.

“We tried to build trust and respect,” Bakowski said.

“It’s demystified what they are doing in public school,” said Recoulle.

The two offered one telling example of their increased understanding of their different settings. Children with special needs receive services through the early intervention until they turn 3, at which point the public schools are responsible for providing services.

“It was kind of a mystery what happened before kids came to us,” Bakowski said. “We knew they received services,” she added later in a telephone interview. “We didn’t know how they were identified, why they were identified, what the services looked like.”

“What happens to our children when they age out of early intervention,” said Recoulle, “was really a learning experience.”

Members of the learning community meet monthly. They are currently focusing on oral language development and transitions, areas the needs assessment process identified as issues of mutual concern. In the future, they plan to collaborate on curriculum – “so,” as Recoulle said, “there’s some alignment and continuity in what children are being offered.”

“I am learning an incredible amount,” Bakowski said.

“This isn’t stopping now. We’re already looking ahead to next year,” Recoulle said.  “There’s mutual respect that’s being developed.”