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SCHENECTADY
Four groups partnering up to help children
Goal is to support kids from diapers through the college years
BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter

    Four local organizations are teaming up with the goal of providing better resources for children and families.
    The Bigelow Corners Partnership is a coalition of the Schenectady City School District, the Parsons Child & Family Center, the Schenectady County Action Program (SCAP) Head Start and the Capital District Child Care Council. All of these organizations are located on or off Albany Street near Bigelow Avenue and will collaborate to help improve children’s well-being.
    “There would be services in place that would support a child basically from birth right through when they go to college so they would be successful in school as well as in life in general,” said Keith Houghton, director of early child education for SCAP.
    The initiative has received a $60,000 grant from the Schenectady Foundation to develop a comprehensive plan to integrate agency and school services. The four organizations held a kickoff carnival last Friday to launch the partnership.
    Houghton said the idea is to put children who may come from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds on more of a level playing field with other children from more affluent backgrounds. They hope the results will be better student grades, fewer issues with discipline and a higher graduation rate.
    Ray Schimmer, chief executive officer for the Parsons Child & Family Center, said the geographic proximity of all of the organizations made a collaboration logical. When his organization moved into its building with its Early Head Start program, the old Time Warner building on Bigelow Avenue was vacant and St. Luke’s School had just closed. However, since that time, SCAP moved into the Time Warner location and the school district leased the St. Luke’s facility on Albany Street and created Keane Elementary School.
    Schimmer said his organization reached out to the Capital District Child Care Council and the Schenectady Foundation and decided that it would try to coordinate the efforts of these organizations around the shared mission of helping families succeed and children grow in school.
    Schimmer said a lot of families are living in poverty and do not have the financial or material resources to support children. The goal would be to have a variety of support services for parents including housing, vocational development and higher education. Schimmer said the organizations are already sharing curriculum. They pooled funding and shared staff time to get the carnival off the ground. This is just the first of what is hoped will be many collaborations.
    “Different nonprofit organizations can work together and be united in a common goal as opposed to simply working on their own in isolation,” Schimmer said.
    Superintendent of Schools Eric Ely said he envisions a continuous spectrum in which a child would start at the Parsons Early Head Start program, then transition to SCAP and then proceed to the Schenectady school district’s prekindergarten program. The family will become familiar with each organization and the service agencies will be familiar with the children.
    “There will be communication so nothing gets lost,” he said.
    SCAP’s Houghton said the first step is to develop a plan for strengthening families. A request for proposals has been sent out to various universities to see if there is interest in undertaking this study project. ..................>>>>............................>>>>...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01600&AppName=1