Random Access

There was a certain irony in the air at the launch of Understanding The Early Years (UEY) Malton project yesterday.
Concentrating a wealth of resources to produce a state-of-the-neighbourhood report on the factors affecting the success of youngsters entering the school system in such a "high risk" community is an irrefutably reasonable thing to do.
But a lot of the community members at the launch looked slightly bewildered at the idea, as if they couldn't believe that such an effort — sponsored by the Peel District School Board and funded through a $375,000 grant over three years by the federal government's social development partnerships program — could really be happening to them.
For Malton is, in so many ways, the orphan child of Mississauga — separated geographically, culturally and in some ways, emotionally — from the rest of the city.
To grossly oversimplify, it's a community settled by newcomers who got off the plane and didn't have the resources to wander too far away. The countries of origin of the people who settle in Malton's neighbourhoods have changed over the years but the plot line hasn't: it's still a struggle for families to establish themselves here.
"We still have lots of people here working three or four or five jobs to make ends meet," says Rick Williams, the school trustee who acted as emcee at yesterday's launch and has seen a lot of faces change in his 35 years of residency. "The needs are much higher in this community. There's a lot of transience."
The good news is that the people who come and stay in Malton truly care about their community. The better news is that lots and lots of them are sitting on the "guiding community collaborative" that is setting the course for the project.
The Malton UEY is the second federally-funded study using the Early Development Instrument (EDI) to look at student outcomes which has taken place in Mississauga.
A similar project at the beginning of this decade in Dixie-Bloor did a similar intensive survey of kindergarten children and their family backgrounds. It found fully one-quarter of students, "displayed signs of problems, placing them at potential risk of future academic failure." The report's main recommendations called for more early identification and intervention with vulnerable children, more ESL supports for children and families, expansion of the kindergarten experience (this was before mandated JK) and the closure of the gender gap. Boys were found to be significantly less ready to learn when they entered school than girls.
To no one's surprise, children whose first language is not English, who are not exposed to pre-school programs and who come from poorer neighbourhoods in "high social risk" areas, face the most serious barriers to success. In Dixie-Bloor, almost one-third of students were not ready to move on from kindergarten to Grade 1.
But there's a big difference in the way the project will be undertaken between Dixie-Bloor and Malton projects, says Peel Board research director Paul Favaro. "We're taking all the lessons we learned in Dixie-Bloor and we're making this a community-driven project. We are having the collaborative determine where we are going with this project."
One of the 40-odd members of that collaborative is 30-year Malton resident Valerie Thompson. She got involved when her oldest son John entered school and is still involved. She still sits on the Lincoln Alexander Secondary School council even though her three children have all graduated.
Thompson admitted with a laugh that she bought in Malton originally because the price was right. But she stayed because "Malton is a really great community."
It's the kind of place where, if you establish a homework club, as Thompson and others did, you also make it a wrestling club so that it will lure more kids out.
English is not the first language in many, if not most, Malton homes. People forget that, "it takes a lot of energy to come to a new country and establish yourself," says Thompson.
And it takes a lot of energy (and in some cases knowledge) that most parents don't have, to get their kids ready to enter school.
"This is about empowering parents and understanding the development of children," says Thompson, who has served on a half-dozen school councils over the years. "This is about letting the community know there are resources out there for them."
The first of those resources went home clutched in a lot of hands yesterday. It was a Program Inventory outlining all of the services available in Malton, all gathered together in one little booklet for the first time.
While there will be a report coming out of this exercise, the real legacy it will provide is the opportunity for all the players in the community to coalesce to develop long-term sustainable programs that will last far after the school portion is done.
Favaro was even talking yesterday about involving local corporations in the collaborative, as well as funders like the United Way, so that supports can be built for the community structures that are needed over the long term.
Maybe Malton, orphan child, has found a community full of responsible step-parents right in its own backyard.