Child Care Aware of Washington Scholarships

09/03/2021

Congratulations to Patty Coss-Maxwell, Clare Juico, and Jagtar Minhas, three Child Care Aware of Washington Scholars selected for the Noris Daniel Fellowship at North Seattle College!

“We are thrilled to have selected Clare, Jagtar and Patty for this fellowship,” said Samantha Dolan, North Seattle College (NSC) ECE Associate Director of Early Childhood Initiatives. “These brilliant educators embody everything the fellowship and its namesake, Ms. Daniel, know to be essential in those that teach young children.”

Earlier this year, the Noris Daniel Fellowship was established to support racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse members of the workforce to complete masters’s degree programs and enter the statewide Early Childhood Education (ECE) faculty pool. Three fellows were selected: Patty Coss-Ma...

08/20/2021

Many of the employees and daycare operators who remain in the field do it for the love of the job. Although Arruda left and at one point worked as an HR manager for a retail establishment, she couldn’t stay away from it for long.
'I missed working with kids. It called back to me,' Arruda said. 'I’m very excited to be back in the field. But I’m very aware it’s definitely not the highest paying field out there, unfortunately.'
The system can seem like a paradox: parents spend thousands of dollars, while the workers looking after these children receive insufficient salaries.
'It’s a perverse result of families having to privately finance this expensive period of education,' Morrissey said. 'K-12 education is universally available publicly. But from [ages] 0 to 5, families are on their own.'” ~ Marketplace Business News

Child care centers, which already struggled to recruit staffers, face additional pressures brought on by the COVID-19 crisis.

08/20/2021

Families and providers - looking for resources to make back-to-school during the pandemic (part 2) a little easier? We can help.
https://childcareawarewa.org/back-to-school-during-covid-19/

08/19/2021

Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families

"Vaccine Requirement for Child Care Providers: On Aug. 18, Governor Jay Inslee announced that most child care and early learning providers must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18, 2021. Read our full announcement here:
https://content.govdelivery.com/.../WADEL/bulletins/2ed5eee "

Vaccine Requirement for Child Care and Early Learning Providers Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families sent this bulletin at 08/19/2021 10:23 AM PDT Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page. Vaccine Requirement for Child Care and Early Learning Providers Dear Child...

08/19/2021

"When a little girl in Chris Nelson’s family child care center painted a picture of a purple cow, a boy in the program was quick to correct her: Cows, he said, could only be black and white. So the North Troy, Vermont, provider began organizing cow-related field trips so the preschoolers could reach their own conclusions.
Over the next year, they visited dairy farms, brushed Highland cattle’s long hair, and branched off to learn about elk, deer and llamas. They read stories about cows, counted cows and compared different breeds. That’s the kind of child-led learning experience that Nelson plans to continue this fall when she participates for the first time in Vermont’s Universal Prekindergarten program...
Allowing providers such as Nelson to participate in a publicly funded pre-K system could speed up the timeline for providing universal access to 3- and 4-year-olds — along with tuition-free community college, the other half of President Joe Biden’s plan to provide four more years of free public education. But a new report from the National Institute for Early Education Research and Home Grown, an organization working to improve home-based child care, suggests it’s not that simple. Including family child care in pre-K initiatives could satisfy parents who prefer their home-like environment and increase the supply of preschool programs in communities with limited supply..." ~ The 74

When a little girl in Chris Nelson’s family child care center painted a picture of a purple cow, a boy in the program was quick to correct her: Cows, he said, could only be black and white. So the North Troy, Vermont, provider began organizing cow-related field trips so the preschoolers could reac...

08/18/2021

"Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday expanded the state’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement to include K-12 school staff, most childcare and early learning staff, and higher education, as the state struggles to contain a rising tide of COVID-19 cases.
The governor also expanded the state indoor mask mandate to include everyone again in indoor settings, regardless of vaccine status.
Inslee made clear his announcements, in contrast, are legally binding orders.
'I want to make sure people understand this. This proclamation is a legally binding document,' Inslee said Wednesday. 'Employers will need to comply, shopkeepers will need to comply. Business owners now will have a legal obligation in their operations to comply, both to require the use of masks in their businesses and to as appropriate in the vaccination requirement for their employees.'” ~ The News Tribune

Read more here:

The requirement covers public, private and charter schools. It does not include tribal schools.

08/18/2021

Child care providers - COVID-19 vaccines are now mandated. We will share additional information as it becomes available. Please contact your doctor for health and vaccine information specific to you and your family.

08/18/2021

"As retired generals with more than seven decades of combined service, we don’t lightly decry the state of child care in America and its impact on parents, especially women and members of communities of color.
But the military is only as strong as the nation it represents, and the child care crisis is doing real and growing harm to the future of our youngest Americans, and inevitably to the future security of our country. Left unabated, millions of American parents — particularly from historically disadvantaged communities — will be forced out of the workforce while tens of millions of children won’t get the care and attention they need to succeed later in life." ~ The Hill

Neither party has a monopoly on good ideas for how to expand access to child care. The question now is whether they’ll have the compassion, wisdom, and political will to do so.

08/17/2021

A new research study, conducted by the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership at National Louis University and funded by the Foundation for Child Development, will consider the North Star vision of a unified professional framework for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) program leaders from a social justice and racial equity perspective.
If you are an ECEC program leader of color and are currently working as an administrator in a school, center, or home, we are interested in your views on how to ensure racial equity in the professional preparation, ongoing professional support, and compensation of program leaders. We are conducting focus group research to help us identify the obstacles and challenges, as well as the supports needed to build a diverse, well-qualified, and fairly-compensated leadership workforce of the future.
Participation in this study requires your active engagement in a two-hour Zoom focus group and 30 minutes of prep time (reading and reflecting on five policy recommendations for building a unified professional framework for ECEC program leaders of the future). Here are the details:
1. The focus groups will be scheduled in August and September; dates and times to be determined after the eligible participants are selected.
2. To participate in this research study, please complete a brief survey at https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/6310015/Building-Leaders-Part-2-I-Informed-Consent-and-Demographic-Information

08/17/2021

"Adolescents were most likely to bring the virus into the home: Children from 14 to 17 made up 38 percent of all the index cases. Children who were 3 or younger were the first to get sick in just 12 percent of households — but they were the most likely to spread the virus to others in their homes. The odds of household transmission were roughly 40 percent higher when the infected child was 3 or younger than when they were between 14 and 17." ~ The New York Times

Although young children bring the coronavirus home less often than teens do, their close contact with caregivers may make them likelier to transmit it.

08/17/2021

Did you know there are thousands of young children across Washington who are experiencing homelessness?
Our Family Center provides free help to families with young children experiencing homelessness, including connecting them with child care that will be free to them for up to one year. When young children facing the trauma of homelessness are enrolled in child care, they get to experience play-based early education, friendships, better nutrition and more - all of which act as a buffer against the toxic stress trauma can cause. Learn more: https://childcareawarewa.org/services-for-families-experiencing-homelessness/