(919) 672-4110 | lzaleon@lmzchildcare.com
Expert in Early Childhood Care and Education
Leigh Zaleon, M. Ed, currently living in Chapel Hill, NC, brings with her more than 35 years of experience in Early Care and Education. Most recently, Leigh served as the Workforce Development and Quality Infant-Toddler Services Subject-Matter Expert for the North Carolina Preschool Development Grant Birth – 5. In this role, she managed six projects, all having an impact on infant-toddler quality, early intervention, mental health, increasing pathways for early childhood professionals, cost studies for the feasibility of an infant-toddler program and developing an alternative market rate for North Carolina.
Previously, Leigh was a lead education mentor and early childhood education specialist at Shine Early Learning. In this role, Leigh supervised coaches and disability specialists for a North Carolina-based Early Head Start / Head Start Partner, as well as worked with the team to develop systems, resources, and training for remote learning and quality preschool and infant-toddler programs. She later worked with other Shine leaders to develop systems for remote learning during COVID-19, curating numerous online resources, developing training materials, and coaching teachers and directors in the use of digital platforms. Additionally, she created crosswalks to link learning outcomes to school readiness goals, state early childhood standards, Teaching Strategies GOLD® objectives, and developmentally appropriate activities. Leigh also conducts training for administrators, teachers, and disability specialists on utilizing database systems to ensure timely screening, assessment, referrals, and follow-up for all children in their programs.
As a private consultant, she worked with the state of South Carolina to create a comprehensive plan to improve the quality of early childhood programs in low-performing counties and assisted with the implementation of that plan. The plan included family support, consistent screening and assessment for children, and ensuring the reliability of the teachers’ assessment skills and curriculum planning. Once the plan was in place, Leigh developed training modules to support implementation and delivered the training in all five counties. She also provided early education technical assistance and follow-up in all of the counties to ensure implementation.
Leigh also served as a consultant for the North Carolina Division of Child Development to design and budget for the Dorothea Dix Child Development Center, including creating a sliding scale for tuition. For this project, Leigh met weekly with leaders at Dorothea Dix, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Division of Child Development to ensure that the center would meet all requirements for a five-star center. She created a start-up and first-year operating budget based on current market rates and created a sliding scale for tuition so that the services of the center would provide an affordable resource to the staff at Dorothea Dix Hospital.
As the former Executive Director of the University Child Care Center (UNC/Victory Village), Leigh has robust experience with human resources, budgeting, and grant writing. Victory Village was one of the first early childhood care and education centers in Orange County to achieve a five-star rating. During Leigh’s seven-year tenure, a new center was designed and constructed, which nearly doubled the enrollment from 64 children ages one to five to 120 children, ages birth to five. In this role, Leigh regularly attended childcare director meetings, opened the center’s doors to researchers at Frank Porter Graham, and collaborated with numerous community agencies to promote high-quality early care and education programs. She also formed strong relationships with her staff, encouraging them to further their education, and provided effective coaching to ensure that evidence-based strategies were implemented.
Additionally, Leigh served as the Technical Assistance and Professional Development Manager for Child Care Networks in Chatham County, North Carolina (Lead Resource and Referral Agency for Region 16/13). In this role, she developed effective systems for mentoring and coaching child care center directors, teachers, and family home providers to increase the quality of care provided. She also attended state-wide meetings to plan and discuss state-wide systems for all childcare resource and referral agencies (CCR&Rs) and helped train the CCR&Rs in her region on the implementation of those systems. While at Child Care Networks, Leigh served on the Local Interagency Coordinating Council (LICC) and worked to help providers identify children with disabilities as early as possible and to obtain early intervention services.
As an Education Manager with Orange and Durham Head Start/Early Head Start, she worked as part of a comprehensive team at Chapel Hill Training-Outreach Project (CHTOP) and played a key role in the expansion into Durham County by assisting with budgeting, grant writing, and quality improvement. While in Durham, Leigh served on the Durham LICC, as well as the Durham County, NC Pre-K committee. Leigh worked closely with both Orange County Schools and Durham Public Schools to ensure that children age three to five were identified and referred in a timely manner, and often advocated for children and families at their IEP meetings. She also collaborated with the Child Development Services Agency (CDSA) in both counties, referring children from birth to three for services and advocating for those children and families. Leigh used practice-based coaching to mentor her Head Start and Early Head Start staff in both counties and helped raise quality in those counties. She led School Readiness Committees for all of the CHTOP Head Start/Early Head Start programs and was responsible for aggregating and analyzing data. Once the analysis was completed, Leigh used the data to address child and program needs and provided professional development to ensure that gaps were closed. Data was also analyzed in multiple ways, such as how attendance, number of years in the program, and family engagement affected the child outcomes.
During her 35+ year career in North Carolina, Leigh has collaborated with multiple agencies to ensure quality for children. She worked with the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute on numerous early childhood research projects, including serving as a group leader for the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS-R) and the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-R) to ensure trainer reliability. She also worked closely with the Child Care Services Association and both the Orange County Partnership for Children (serving on the Early Childhood allocation committee and NC PreK committee) and the Durham Partnership for Children (serving on the NC PreK committee and providing training for administrators on Teaching Strategies GOLD). Leigh served on the Early Childhood Quality Committee to assist in writing the final report that led to the establishment of Durham PreK, which, in addition to NC PreK, secured funding from Durham County to serve additional PreK children. This report was instrumental in developing systems for the Durham PreK program.