PILOT PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION Baumholder, Germany Organization: Operating 199 schools in 14 districts located in 12 foreign countries, seven states, Guam, and Puerto Rico, this organization’s schools serve the children of military service members and civilian employees throughout the world.
To service the unique needs of military members and their children, this organization needed pilot program development, integration, and implementation of a new Early Childhood Intervention Program based on the Head Start model, for eligible dependents of U.S. Military personnel stationed overseas. Over a two year period, Cristi administered, supervised and managed this Pilot Early Childhood Educational Program including these components; education, health and safety, sanitation, nutrition and community involvement. Successful implementation required both process and content strategies which included:
Creation of Standard Operating Procedures and Programmatic Policy and Standards for successful day-to-day implementation of this comprehensive four component program into an elementary school setting;
Development of program design, hiring, training and supervising procedures, and on site program administration;
Proposal development and management of government and funding sources including budget planning, monitoring and fund-development;
Developed and implemented a mandatory parent advocacy program which included a Parent Training component which focused on supporting parents’ development of parenting skills and development of parents as educational leaders of their families by assisting them in increasing their knowledge, understanding, skills and experience in child growth and development and identifying and reinforcing experiences which occur in the home that will support what the child learns at school;
Organized and trained parents as classroom volunteers;
Assessed, modified, designed and implemented quality individual educational interventions based on current educational research;
Created and implemented effective partnerships among the various service programs within the military community;
Established a solid foundation for future program leaders and complied with requests from the district, school, and community, to present, inform and train other professionals, parents and community agencies about the Preschool Program at both the philosophical and pragmatic level;
Represented at conferences and meetings regarding child development policy and/or research in technical areas related to the program and, in conjunction with others conducting special studies including program evaluation and research.
This pilot program implementation successfully grew a much needed service program into a well received, highly successful, sustainable Early Childhood/Early Intervention Program which is now implemented in many military education delivery sites worldwide.
