Oakland City Council Leadership Kaplan, Bas, Thao and Fife Plan Saves Head Start Child Care Centers

Kaplan, Bas, Thao and Fife Plan Saves Oakland Head Start Child Care Centers

Oakland, CA – Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan, Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, President Pro Tempore Sheng Thao, and Council Member Carroll Fife, successful coordination with extended assemblage support, successfully passed a fund amendment to  equitably reopen Head Start kid attraction centers successful Oakland’s astir underserved communities at today’s Special City Council Meeting. Oakland assemblage members called successful to enactment the backing of the Head Start Centers. Last period respective writer basal organizations enactment retired an urgent connection demanding the extortion of vitally needed services provided by the Head Start Centers.  The Council members instantly prompted into enactment releasing an enactment program to halt the planned closures of the Head Start programs, which if allowed to close, volition disproportionately interaction immoderate of the astir under-resourced communities successful Oakland.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, moving mothers person been the astir impacted by cuts to the workforce resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The closures of schools and childcare centers created a scarcity successful childcare providers causing childcare costs to scope an all-time precocious successful 2020.  As California is reopening, mothers are uncovering it harder to rejoin the workforce owed to the deficiency of affordable childcare. This radical of Oakland enactment are profoundly acrophobic with the deficiency of equity successful the City Administration’s program to adjacent kid attraction centers, arsenic it is inequitable, and plans to adjacent the Arroyo Viejo, Franklin, and Tassafaronga centers, each located successful Oakland’s astir underserved communities.  The planned closures disproportionately purpose cuts astatine Black people, and worsen suffering successful Oakland’s hardest-hit communities, low-income families, and radical of color.  The planned cuts besides impact inequitable layoffs of the workers, and undermine our community’s economical betterment astatine a precarious time.

The Council members’ connection volition allocate backing from an excess money to forestall the implicit closure of the 3 Head Start Centers. The nonaccomplishment of these Head Start centers would origin an urgent situation successful service, violates the city’s equity principles, and has prioritized further cuts of work to Black assemblage members.  The projected chopped threatens our societal cohesion successful this struggling economy, arsenic struggling workers can’t spell to jobs if their kid attraction is taken distant and children suffer the stableness of aboriginal learning centers. If the City Council did not instrumentality action, these Head Start Centers would adjacent successful September, 2021. 

Vice Mayor and Council subordinate At Large Rebecca Kaplan states, “We indispensable prioritize equity successful our City’s COVID-19 betterment plan, and allowing our astir impacted communities to person vitally needed services is simply a precocious priority. Head Start is an important programme which helps children, with lifelong affirmative impacts connected their future, and ensures entree to economical betterment for struggling moving parents. The Administration’s program to adjacent these needed centers and layoff these indispensable workers, portion hiding the accusation from the Council and the nationalist for months, is inappropriate.  We request to supply equity and transparency, and support captious services for our communities. I convey everyone who helped walk this important program to prevention Head Start, to enactment providing these services for each of Oakland’s communities.”

“Our astir susceptible children and families successful Oakland indispensable beryllium supported. The Franklin Head Start Center serves a divers assemblage successful District 2, from the Chinatown to Eastlake to San Antonio neighborhoods, and I americium warring to support the services for these families and the jobs for the workers caring for our children,” Nikki Fortunato Bas, Council President and District 2 Representative.

“Robust concern successful Head Start is concern successful our future; it is semipermanent nationalist information planning; it is the close happening to do. Our section authorities cannot let Head Start to fail. To bash truthful would beryllium to proceed the signifier of State-sanctioned favoritism that creates caller racialized disparities and perpetuates existing ones. It is our work to intervene to guarantee that each azygous frontline idiosyncratic caring for families and young radical successful our Head Start centers beryllium capable to support their jobs. I americium disheartened to find retired that this urgent substance has been brewing for months and has lone present travel to the attraction of the city’s elected leaders arsenic a situation to fix. As a working-class Black woman, similar galore of our Head Start providers, I person lived acquisition successful needing entree to affordable childcare. And arsenic an elected official, I americium committed to doing what it takes to support our centers open, funded and accessible to the families who request them most,” Carroll Fife, Council Member District 3. 

“Every genitor knows the archetypal 5 years of a child’s improvement person an tremendous interaction connected the big they volition become.  Head Start is simply a captious assets to the children and parents that request support.  One of my apical priorities is making definite each kid successful Oakland has a accidental to succeed.  I volition proceed to combat to marque definite Oakland Head Start is afloat funded, and Oakland children are not forgotten.”Sheng Thao, Council President Pro Tempore and District 4 Representative.

Post based connected property merchandise sent by Councilmember Kaplan to ZENNIE62MEDIA, INC.