Our Impact: San Jose Starting Smart & Strong
As the largest city in Northern California, San Jose is a robust community of a million residents. It is known as a hub for science and technology and has been nicknamed the capital of Silicon Valley. The Franklin-McKinley School District is located in the southeastern part of the city and was originally founded in the mid-1800s in a one-room schoolhouse. Today, the district serves a diverse student body of children who speak many different languages.
However, the Franklin-McKinley School district serves families that have an average household income that is 30 percent below the county median.
With a vision to ensure all children in this community grow up healthy and ready to learn, we’re working with the Franklin-McKinley School District on a range of solutions, including creating schools as hubs for family services, fostering safe and productive relationships with community members, and providing professional development for teachers.
Franklin-McKinley and its partners have:
- Opened Educare California at Silicon Valley on the Santee Elementary school campus
- Implemented a district-wide framework (Pyramid model) for teachers and care providers that promotes the social and emotional development of young children.
- Implemented a new student data tracking system
- Scaled developmental screenings for all young children in the Franklin-McKinley School district
- Developed a Professional Development Institute with Educare for teachers and care providers of young children in and around the Franklin-McKinley School district
- Provided outreach to informal care providers and parents through Family Resource Centers
- Developed community partnerships that support children and families from cradle to career through the Franklin-McKinley Children’s Initiative
- Collaborated with Educare and the Family Resource Center to serve as best practice laboratories for early learning (birth through age 5) professional development in Santa Clara County
- Collaborated with the Santa Clara County Office of Education to inform the development of the Data Zone and an early learning data dashboard
- Scaled the Early Development Instrument (EDI), a population-level measure of young children’s well-being
Our Community Partners
