By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
With the start of the school year already underway, the different leaders of each of the Northfield School District’s buildings have been making reports to the School Board highlighting recent successes and focus areas for this next school year.
Will be talking about each of the different schools in the coming weeks.
We’re starting this series with the Community Education Center, which serves members across the entire Northfield community, including programs in Pre-K learning, Adult Education Programs, and recreation programs.
Director of Community Education, Erin Bailey, noted that they have two preschool programs, which are Early Ventures and Hand in Hand. She noted that both programs were preparing kids for kindergarten, with 93% in Early Ventures and 73% in Hand in Hand considered well-prepared to start school. Bailey noted that Community Ed also welcomed diversity and students from many backgrounds into the programs:
Listen to the News:
“When you’re looking at hand-in-hand preschool would which has a very diverse population last year of those 180 students just over 44% were receiving a scholarship 36% where students of color and 36% were special education students and so love to see the outcomes we’re seeing when we are supporting students from a very diverse background as they’re entering the NCEC as well.” – Erin Bailey, Director of Northfield Community Education at the 8/25/2025 School Board Meeting
The success of Preschool at Community Ed also includes 3 years of increasing parents’ satisfaction with the overall average survey rating of 4.5 out of 5.
Bailey noted that other success areas went beyond education and included their community partnerships, like establishing a food shelf operated by the Community Action Center at the NCEC. In the last year, it has had 1,132 visits from 257
unique households, and 47,164 pounds of food were distributed. Additionally, there were partnerships with Health Community Initiative to implement the Early Childhood Navigators program, which worked with 90 different families, and partnerships with many more community groups.
Looking ahead to this school year, the focus areas include improving employee engagement and maintaining the parent satisfaction rating. However, the main goal focuses on the academic programs.
“And I think one of the most exciting things that Community Ed staff which are diverse say is they all want to be able to see themselves in the school Improvement plan and so that is why you see this these goals by program area it’s the ability for the number of program areas that we serve in the building to be able to see themselves reflected in those in those academic goals.” – Erin Bailey, Director of Northfield Community Education at the 8/25/2025 School Board Meeting
You can see the full presentation here
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