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FSA prioritizes needs for central Orange County <br /> <br />By Katie Jansen / The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C. (TNS) <br />Published: Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 09:19 AM. <br />HILLSBOROUGH — The Family Success Alliance on Wednesday night shared preliminary data <br />gathered from 68 survey responses collected in central Orange County between I-40 and I-85. <br />The region, known as Zone 4 to the Family Success Alliance, is one of two pilot zones selected to <br />begin work in creating a pipeline that supports children from the cradle to college or a career. <br />Mayor Tom Stevens thanked those for their interest in the community’s needs and for their work to <br />meet those needs. <br />“It’s not right if the things that make us a cool town and a great place to live are not available to <br />everyone,” he said. <br />To gather the data, volunteers went door-to-door administering surveys, and the survey was also <br />available online. <br />Input was received from youth, parents, community leaders and service providers, said Meredith <br />McMonigle of the Orange County Health Department. <br />Focus groups also had discussions about needs in the community. Groups included a group of service <br />providers, a group of Latina mothers and a group of middle school girls. <br />Allison Young of the Orange County Health Department and Jennifer Walters, a social work <br />researcher at RTI, presented some of the trends found from the data. <br /> <br />Many families surveyed expressed a need for early childhood resources, such as easier access to child <br />care. <br /> <br />EOG scores also showed potential problems within schools. The average third-grade reading <br />proficiency for Zone 4 was 19 percentage points lower than the average third-grade reading level <br />across the entire school district. <br /> <br />However, Walters said, most parents surveyed did feel that students were supported when in school. <br />They also felt the district offered a wide variety of after-school programs, although parents cited <br />several challenges that inhibited participation: cost, transportation and lack of communication — <br />meaning that parents simply don’t know what’s available to their children. <br /> <br />Some of the challenges were specific to the Hispanic and Latina community. <br /> <br />New Hope Elementary, a school within Zone 4, currently has a student body that is 42 percent <br />Hispanic or Latina. This may suggest a shift in the demographics of the population. <br /> <br />But many Latina mothers expressed concern about communicating with their children’s schools and <br />about transportation. If they were to take their children to afterschool activities, they said they would <br />be afraid of getting stopped by the police in routine traffic stops.