In a light and airy classroom at Early Partners preschool, in a renovated firehouse in New Orleans' Lower Garden District, three little boys are playing with blocks.

Towers and walls rise from the carpet, and small vehicles are pushed between them. There's an ongoing, low conversation among the playmates.  

From across the room, Kim Frusciante, founder and executive director of Early Partners, sees more than a game. She sees progress among three newer students who might not have played so calmly together a year ago. She sees cooperation, focus and imagination. She sees building blocks — of success in school and life.

Early Partners is an innovative, nonprofit early learning center for about 100 children from 1 to 5 years old, focused on data-driven preparation for kindergarten. To make Early Partners accessible to families of all income levels, the school partners with local employers who sponsor their workers' childcare, leveraging public funding to help pay for community seats. Donors, grants and tuition bring in other revenue.

The result is a student body that mirrors the diverse demographics of New Orleans by design and is helping solve the vexing problem of children arriving in kindergarten unprepared.

Frusciante is proud to say that 100 percent leave the program kindergarten-ready, a remarkable achievement in a state where only 60 percent of students overall are prepared for that step.

And even as she watches her students beat the odds one at a time, the Harvard-educated preschool director's eye is on something much bigger.

"We want to change the game. We want to raise the bar, be a demonstration site, for (other educators) to learn from us, and for us to learn from them," Frusciante said.

Measuring milestones of development

Research shows that small children learn through play. Sustained, imaginative play develops the attention span and curiosity needed to excel later in school. Research also shows that data-driven analysis of students' skills can help teachers pinpoint potential problem areas.

At Early Partners, both play and data are crucial.

While 2-year-olds can't check off answers to multiple-choice word problems, they can be evaluated by a trained teacher for the important milestones of brain development, said Allison Manker, lead teacher of the 2-year-old group at Early Partners.

"We as teachers are teacher researchers," said Manker, who studied anthropology and environmental science at Northwestern University and came to Early Partners three years ago from Louise S. McGehee's Little Gate preschool. "It's incumbent upon us to take notes. How are they walking? How do they take stairs?" When the children scribble, "we take notes on the marks they are making. Are they sophisticated letters or full-handed swirls?" Attention spans and the ability to continue a conversation are other important markers.

Collecting data "allows us to keep track based on developmental milestones that are state-based or nationally based. We tailor our activities or play, and they can surpass what we think they are capable of."

On a recent sunny morning, Manker and other teachers watched the 2-year-old class in the Wild Space, a wide, enclosed lawn that opens unexpectedly from the back doors of the preschool. Here, children play, while teachers observe and quietly adjust activities to challenge the students' skills.

"We open those gates, and it's an acre of land that has natural materials. We'll be bird watching, we'll be running freely. There's bamboo in the corner. They can choose several different areas and build with things, roll over logs," Manker said. Such activities can be correlated with important benchmarks toward school readiness.

In a recent video interview, Michael Hecht, president and CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc., observed of Early Partners: "The data focus ...  is something we've seen in higher grades. The fact that it's being applied in pre-K is revolutionary."

Growing young brains

Ninety percent of the brain is formed before kindergarten, according to the National Institutes of Health. Those early years are crucial to developing the neural connections for reasoning, as well as the social and emotional skills that allow students to thrive in elementary school and beyond.  

A graduate of Tulane University, Frusciante taught high school in Dallas before returning to New Orleans to teach at Collegiate Academies, a charter school network. She helped lead the network’s first expansion school and later aided with school startups, instructional design, data-driven improvement and talent development. Along the way, she had her first child, Edith. 

"I learned a lot about brain development in young children after I had my daughter and started to draw parallels with the high school students I was seeing," Frusciante said. "We had students entering high school at the third- and fourth-grade reading levels."

Edith recently turned 10. The couple has a son as well, Andy, who is 6. 

Becoming a mother, and confronting the obstacles that frustrated success in her high schoolers, sparked Frusicante's decision to go back to the roots of education: preschool.

She returned to the classroom as a student to earn a Master's in Educational Leadership at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she graduated with top honors. While there, she dreamed of a preschool where the science of early childhood development would meet equity and inclusion.

Today, the nonprofit Early Partners continues to collaborate closely with Harvard through research and leadership development.

'It doesn't seem like work'

Shada Lassai was working as an applied behavior therapist for students with autism at the Chartwell Center in New Orleans three years ago and looking for daycare for her daughter, Gianna, then 1. She found Early Partners online and realized it would be a good fit  — for mother and child alike.

Lassai's strong background in evidence-based ABA therapy, coupled with the method's positive, child-led approach, complemented the Early Partners philosophy. 

"Having it be child-led, it is easier to deliver material," Lassai said. Now, she teaches 2-year-olds at the school. To the students, "it doesn’t seem like work. They are learning through play. Like my daughter says, 'We had so much fun.'"

Kindergarten will require the ability to work in groups and share. Being able to enter a  group, being able to play with friends, and paying attention for longer periods are all essential. "Some kids are not able to enter a group properly," Lassai said. "We teach those skills." 

This year Gianna, now 4, is a student in Early Partner's innovative Forest School, where classes and activities take place outdoors, whatever the weather. Logs serve as chairs and the floor of the "classroom" is grass and earth.

"She’s doing a whole different experience of preschool," Lassei said.  

Partnerships and more

If "it takes a village to raise a child," it might also be said that it takes partnerships to educate a modern-day classroom full of children.

The first partners are those children's families. And Early Partners also has joined a powerful array of others, including fellow nonprofits, philanthropists, educators and child advocates.

At a recent cocktail-hour event called Convergence, many of those partners looked on as Early Partners' progress was celebrated and donors got their moment in the sun.

State Sen. Royce Duplessis called on Louisiana to rethink its priorities, using programs like the nonprofit, inclusive preschool as a model.

“This year, we’re spending over $100 million on juvenile detention centers. Imagine the impact if even a fraction of that went toward high-quality early childhood education instead,” Duplessis said.

And there were some big announcements.

The school unveiled plans for a major expansion that will nearly double its size over the next three years, as well as a partnership with ThriveKids Student Wellness, a program of Manning Family Children's Hospital, for programming that will support students with developmental delays and disabilities.

A local donor, Tania Hahn, announced that she would forgive a loan to Early Partners for $100,000. Another donor pledged a $25,000 matching gift.  

Just a few days later, a $250,000 grant was confirmed, courtesy of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority through Agenda for Children. 

And while the financial contributions are vital, Frusciante might be just as excited about the preschool being the first early childhood education center in the nation represented at All Means All, a 15-month leadership development partnership that brings together school leaders, superintendents and charter networks committed to inclusive education. 

All Means All is a big pond for the small nonprofit preschool. Frusciante described All Means All as "generally folks who are more in charge of multiple schools," like the superintendent of a district serving 17,000 kids. 

"And then I stand up and say, 'I am the founder of Early Partners, and I serve 100 kids. But we are just getting started."