Paterson Reads - Early

Paterson Education Fund (PEF) is a community-based organization that aims to stimulate community action to support, monitor, and advocate for change in Paterson Public Schools. PEF’s activities build and support a constituency for systemic school reform by educating the community about the importance of a high quality education for all children.

This project supports Paterson Reads - Early, which seeks to increase attendance rates in Paterson preschool programs. The project works with the preschool classrooms in four of Paterson’s Full Service Community Schools (FSCS) as well as several district and community-based preschools that feed into the FSCS system. FSCS are schools in which community service providers and schools team up to meet a range of children's social, emotional, and academic needs, using the school building as a hub.

PEF gathers and analyzes data about attendance at the FSCS preschools and those that feed into the FSCS system. It also develops attendance teams at each preschool classroom to work on attendance improvement, uses an Attendance Works Toolkit to train attendance teams and parents at the target schools, trains Success Mentors to work with chronically absent students and parents, and develops and carries out a public information campaign to raise awareness about the importance of preschool attendance.

Learn more about Paterson Education Fund.