Executive Summary

How can communities improve, align, and coordinate the programs and services that serve young children and their families across the early childhood and elementary school years? And how can state agencies best guide and support this work?

In 2018, state leaders in Maine determined that their efforts to support children and their families were hampered by the lack of coordination among key stakeholders—early education and care providers, public school educators, and health and social services providers. Addressing these challenges would require new forms of collaboration both among state agencies and at the local level. In response, they created initiatives designed to work in tandem—a state inter-agency team and a companion initiative in 13 communities throughout the state.

Maine chose to use the First 10 framework* to guide and structure this work. First 10 partnerships bring together school districts, elementary schools, early childhood programs, and community agencies to improve the quality and coordination of education and care for young children and their families. They work to improve teaching and learning, deepen partnerships with families, and provide comprehensive services for children and families.¹

Maine’s First 10 state team includes representatives from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services. Its goals are to improve the coordination of programs, generate policy ideas, and provide technical assistance to local communities. Maine's 13 First 10 community teams have developed and are implementing plans that address the full early childhood-elementary continuum. The state team has followed the progress of the local teams, building in opportunities to learn from implementation and collecting suggestions from local leaders that have informed its working agenda.

Three themes have emerged from the planning and implementation activities of Maine’s 13 First 10 communities. Many created new structures to significantly deepen family engagement and support—often using school-based play and learn groups to begin building relationships with and supporting families well before children enter kindergarten. Most First 10 plans address the “seam” between early childhood and K–12 education, both instructionally and in terms of information-sharing about students. And many plans integrate efforts to improve pre-K and kindergarten teaching and learning into broader school and district initiatives to improve elementary school instruction more generally.

Maine’s First 10 teams encountered a number of challenges, including identifying and accessing service providers in rural areas and funding staffing arrangements to facilitate the First 10 teams and help carry out planned activities.

A year and a half into Maine’s First 10 initiatives, several lessons are becoming apparent that have implications for the design of similar initiatives in other states and communities.

• Maine’s experience demonstrates that First 10 strategies can be adapted to both urban and rural contexts and to meet the needs and budgets of a wide range of communities.
• Rural teams gravitated to elementary school hub models that provide integrated supports to children and families beginning before children enter kindergarten and continuing through elementary school.
• A number of Maine’s First 10 teams developed especially strong partnerships between school districts and local Head Start programs, partnerships which yielded a wide range of benefits and led to significant changes in practice.
• To be successful teams needed to actively manage their plans, addressing obstacles and coordination challenges and maintaining the comprehensive nature of their First 10 work.

Maine’s First 10 initiatives created a structure in which the state team was able to support community efforts while learning from their experiences. This collaboration between the state and local teams has helped pinpoint needed policy changes and technical assistance strategies, such as providing state guidance to local school boards, streamlining licensure, continuing to facilitate cross-community learning and exchange, and identifying and coordinating comprehensive services, especially around mental health.

Maine’s experience has generated lessons about aligning early childhood education, K–12 education, and health and social services. It represents one state’s approach to connecting state and local system-building in a coordinated way so that the two efforts inform and support each other. As such, it may prompt similar creative thinking about this type of coordination in other states and communities.

*The author provided technical assistance to Maine’s state and local teams in support of this initiative.