Medical assisting student Kiri Fabela checks 5-year-old and future kindergartner Deveonn Anglin's blood pressure. The P-3 Early Learning Council's Early Childhood Health and Education Clinic included physical and academic checkups, helping parents gauge their student's health and readiness for kindergarten.

The P-3 Early Learning Council started 16 months ago as an effort to help all children be ready for kindergarten and fluent readers by the end of third grade, when students move from learning to read to reading to learn. Since then, it’s been coordinating between parents, child care providers, preschools, elementary schools, health care and social service providers and the Northwest Regional Education Service District.

In May, it organized a two-day medical and academic clinic for 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, where more than 130 children were screened for health, developmental and other issues at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds and the Seaside Civic and Convention Center.

Early Learning Council representative and former Seaside Principal Dan Gaffney reported to the Knappa School Board Monday night that the council needs the community’s continuing support to hold a second clinic in February.

“Right now, we have no money in the bank, but the desire is there and the support is there,” said Gaffney, adding that the NWRESD is willing to front the money for the clinic, until the council can raise the money locally. The cost in May was $35,000.

The clinic’s purpose is to catch issues that might affect student learning, be they academic or physical. The clinic found students in need of various follow-up exams and screenings, including:

• 14 percent for a medical exam.

• 22 percent for hearing.

• 25 percent for speech.

Gaffney said some children had trouble with the vision exam, such as recognizing the difference between the letters M and E, leading to 59 percent needing further examination. Only 54 percent of students attending had a primary care provider.

“The feedback we got from parents is that they couldn’t imagine having all the resources in one place,” said Gaffney, adding that he got sign-offs from parents to share the results from the screenings with health care providers, preschools and elementary schools to provide them an idea of incoming students’ needs. The Astoria clinic, he added, will be moved from the fairgrounds into the center of town to ease transportation issues.

A clinic in February, he said, would allow clinicians and educators to catch issues with children early enough to start serving them this year through special education programs before they leave on summer break. Another idea behind such an early clinic, he added, is to send kids home with materials to help prepare them for kindergarten, if they are not in a preschool.

Since its inception 16 months ago, the P-3 Early Learning Council, also known as Clatsop Kinder Ready, has supported several kindergarten-ready workshops through Northwest Parenting, which provides parenting classes in Clatsop, Tillamook and Columbia counties. It established a lending library of preschool materials to educational partners and helped move a van full of learning materials from a recently closed preschool to a newly opened preschool in Gearhart. As kindergartners started school, it surveyed parents and caregivers on their needs.

As the council pursues those and other fact-finding missions, it largely lives on a $75,000-a-year grant from the Oregon Community Foundation lasting three years. The three-year grant, worth $225,000 in total, is funded through the Lora L & Martin N Kelley Family Foundation Trust and the Fred W. Fields Fund. The local council was one of nine winners out of more than 20 applications for such OCF grants.

Gaffney said the council, seven months into the first year of funding, is now drafting a grant proposal for the second year. “We need to show the Oregon Community Foundation that we’re doing good stuff,” he said, asking for Knappa’s support in helping secure another year of grant funding.

The council hopes to create Clatsop County’s first Community Needs and Resources Assessment. It also hopes to establish a document defining kindergarten-ready in Clatsop County.

“We expect that we’re going to send kids to Hilda Lahti (Elementary School) and other schools better prepared,” said Gaffney to board members and administrators, including Hilda Lahti Principal Leila Collier, a member of the P-3 group. “We’re going to have those kids supported at home as they become fluid readers by third grade.”