Advocacy as a Team Sport

Ten staff members from 4C for Children joined about 60 other advocates at the Ohio Statehouse last week. The goal was to educate about and advocate for high-quality child care and early education. After a briefing on proposed legislation to improve access for children from low-income working families, we spread out to meet with legislators and their aides. Between us, we met with about a dozen Miami Valley and Southwest Ohio legislators and/or their aides. For most of our team, this was the first such experience and all felt a sense of exhilaration in participating in our democratic process. I asked those who were “newish” as well as those more experienced to jot down their impressions. Here are some comments.

Shelley Nelson, Education and Outreach Coordinator in Parent Services: “Words cannot describe how I felt knowing that I, as a former infant teacher, center director and recent college graduate had been given this opportunity to tell our stories and to make such a difference in children’s lives. The energy around early childhood education sends chills up my spine, knowing I am from the generation that says early learning is just as important as K-12 and to have policymakers in the great state of Ohio agree.”

Paige Runion, Leadership Coach: “We watched Sallie model introductions and we listened carefully to how she phrased her opening descriptions of the legislation we were there to discuss, a new bill not yet introduced. Soon our own stories sprang out of our mouths. Our passion for children and their families outweighed our hesitancies. Will I return next year? Absolutely. And now I’m wondering what Capitol Hill looks like on the inside.”

Lorna Chouinard, Director, 4C Miami Valley: “Advocacy means such different things for different people. Watching those around me – those who were brand new just taking it in and the old pros, calm and collected! It was inspiring! For me, this was a time to thank those elected officials who work on our behalf and to educate those who still think that child care is babysitting and early investment is a waste of money. Looking forward to doing it again in a few short weeks in Washington.”

Annetta Rutland, Director, Family Child Care Services: “Today I felt like a newbie although it has only been about three years since I last made advocacy visits. We met with six legislators or their aides. Here are some of my take-a-ways:

1. HB59 (new high quality preschool spaces) is working as 75% of the slots are full with new children. (Happy to hear).
2. Ohio has the second lowest pay for child care in the nation. (Sad to know).
3. ‘Enrollment verses attendance,’ ‘presumptive of eligibility’, ‘continuous authorization’—these are pieces of the new bill being introduced soon. (It is a good starting point but we also must get higher rates for providers).

All in all it was a good day.”

Lori Shrider, Communications Specialist: “I am relatively new and Advocacy Day was an eye-opener for me. There are so many important aspects about early childhood education, and many people who are affected, and so it is hard to wrap my brain around it! It is important that we continue to have days like this, where all of the people who are affected by early childhood issues–directors of child care centers, teachers and parents–come together around a single issue. When we work together, we can accomplish great things and we can show that our voices deserve to be heard from the Statehouse to Capitol Hill!”

Kim Ginn, Director of Professional Development: “Being the activator that I am, meeting with aides during my first Advocacy Day three years ago brought relief and disappointment at the same time–relief due to overcoming my nervousness on what to say and disappointment because I thought the aides could not make a difference. I have discovered if you truly believe in your cause, it is easy to share. And regardless of who you meet with, they want to hear your story, and it does make a difference! This year, I joined with others who provide direct services to children. I presented the big picture and they shared the direct impact on children and families. It was an incredible experience. Having multiple voices giving the same message put early childhood education on the minds of many in Columbus.”

Delorise Pennington, Leadership Coach: “Advocacy day felt like a dream come true. Sharing my early childhood experiences with legislators and their aides was phenomenal. At first I was a little nervous, however, as the day went on, watching Sallie share with policymakers gave me the courage to share too. Advocating for children has been one of my personal lifelong missions, so this was a great opportunity to take my advocacy to the next level. Now it’s time for national advocacy.”

My particular excitement came from two things. First, that we were receiving such a positive response from legislators from both sides of the aisle and, second, the degree to which our 4C team became active leaders in advocacy. We each had an important role to play – a great team.

View more pictures of our Advocacy Day visits on the 4C for Children Facebook page!

The Betrayal of Modern Shoe Boxes

Today’s guest post comes from 4C Board Chair Davida Gable.

When I was in high school, teachers attempted to teach us about the awesome responsibilities of child care by having us carry around an egg for a week. When I kept my egg in a shoebox stuffed with washcloths at the side of the soccer field, I could continue to score goals and proceed with my Title IX dreams.

So how can I be blamed when I concluded that the key to taking care of a baby was a really good shoe box?  Eager to have an extra shoe box–er… playpen—my husband and I gladly accepted our family’s offer of a playpen they had proudly saved from the 1960s. Our glee turned to stunned disbelief when we jointly stared at a mechanical Venus Fly Trap.

Then we saw the 1960s car seat, designed to be positioned over the middle of the front seat. This allowed a baby to be high enough to look out the windows and Mom to be right there to quickly throw her arm across the child’s chest in a collision.  As a toddler, I must have particularly enjoyed the “just like real” metal steering wheel just inches from my face and the pretend steel gearshift protruding across my throat.

After a pause, my husband and I chuckled with relief when we thought about our high-tech home appliances and modern baby equipment.  No wonder our moms had to stay home with us!  What a relief.  Child care would be so much easier in today’s world! We were sure we could continue to score our career goals with our precious babies ensconced in 21^st– century shoe box padding.

What I didn’t know was this: When child safety seats were introduced in the mid-1960s, they “bombed.”  Parents considered them an expensive extravagance.  I suspect another reason:  inconvenience.  I never realized how these car seats would be one of my major impediments to utilizing child care help.  My mother would often ask: “Can you get somebody to pick up (drop off, bring) my lovely granddaughter to…?”  Then I would explain that “somebody” didn’t have a backward-facing car seat installed by a mechanical engineer, anchored to the LATCH anchor system federally required in all cars made since 2002.  Even if somebody did have this, the shoulder straps were not set to her lovely granddaughter’s height and age requirements.

Even when I gave our parents our car to drive, they couldn’t independently figure out the five-point harness and buckling system.  One time they asked if we could just use a phone book for our 2-year-old to sit on.

Are phone books still around?

I know, I know. Thousands of children’s lives have been saved by car seats. They’ve even been described as “the single greatest development in child safety in the last century.”  And in 2011 parents were advised to keep children in a rear-facing car seat for the first two years of life.  E.M.T.’s call the rear-facing seat ‘the orphan seat’ because, in a bad car accident, that child is often the only one who survives.” according to a pediatrician with a New York children’s hospital.

The car seat was just one of the betrayals of the modern stuff that was supposed to make parenting easier. One of the biggest frustrations we faced when attempting to utilize child care help was the perpetual question:  “How does this work?”  Whether it was assembling the ultra-safe Pack N’ Play, changing batteries in toys that required surgeon’s tools, operating the latest model microwave or dishwasher for the task.  This dilemma didn’t just apply to baby stuff; it applied to everything!

My conclusion: Diapers and wipes are the only baby supplies that made child care better.  Whoever invented those deserves millions of dollars!

My husband and I finally realized that all the modern stuff wasn’t going to make raising children much easier.  Sound and video monitors don’t make infants cry less often.  High chairs don’t prevent messy babies.  Bath seats don’t make baths safer.  Baby walkers don’t help babies walk earlier.  Water wings won’t teach kids to swim.

And a shoe box is still just a shoe box.

Want to support children? Start with their parents

More and more business leaders and elected officials are talking about the value of high quality early childhood education. And they are so right. The research is indisputable. (Well, there’s always dispute even in the face of overwhelming evidence). Study after study shows that if the right elements are present, top quality early education reaps great benefits for society.

But the fact of the matter is that having a child in a rich environment with dynamic teachers for a few hours a day is not a silver bullet if children return home where there is no conversation and no reinforcement of what is learned. There has been research around for quite a while showing dramatic differences in school performance based on the number of words spoken to the children before they get to school – the more, the better. And the number of words heard is correlated directly to the education and income of the parents. In fact, by age 3, a poor child will have heard 30 million fewer words in his home than a child from a more well-educated family.

A recent article in The New York Times, “The Power of Talking to Your Baby.” by Tina Rosenberg, talks about some new approaches to engage parents to increase talking to babies. And I love this video about the importance of talking to your baby.

Whether this renewed interest in “baby talk” is just the new new thing is yet to be seen. But I am certain of one thing –supporting parents as well as children is essential. Two-generation strategies should get more of our attention. Such approaches should be tested and then widely supported when they are effective. The Aspen Institute’s publication, Two Generations, One Future; Moving Parents and Children Beyond Poverty Together is a great resource to get us started.

Advocacy for Beginners

Today’s post is a guest blog from 4C’s Director of Professional Development, Aaron Haneline.

Last week I attended Child Care Aware of America’s 2013 Policy Symposium. As a seasoned educational professional, I have attended many conferences over the years, but this was my first policy symposium. I was looking forward to this new experience for months.

The symposium was everything I had hoped for I attended sessions on:

• how a bill moves through the legislative process,
• the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBC),
• parent-led reform,
• accountability for federally funded quality initiatives,
• effectively advocating for quality child care outside the early care and education community and
• the President’s early learning agenda.

I spent a thrilling day at the Capitol. Child care resource and referral representatives from across Ohio executed a coordinated effort to meet with 16 Ohio House Representatives and two Senators. My morning started with coffee and an opportunity to meet with Senator Sherrod Brown, who invited us to share the challenges and opportunities our communities are currently facing in regards to early childhood education. I then walked under the Capitol in a labyrinth of hallways that connect to the Senate Office Building to my next appointment with Representative Steve Chabot. Then another walk back through the Capitol labyrinth to meet with Representative Brad Wenstrup.

We shared this message: there are great things happening for children and families in Ohio, but there are challenges to address. The great things include the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant, which is driving an increase in the quality of early care and education. Ohio’s greatest challenge: too many children are being left behind – in either poor quality environments or without access to any early learning and care. Another challenge: too many parents lose out on employment opportunities due to lack of access to child care.

We also reminded our officials that children who participate in quality learning and care are ready for kindergarten have increased third-grade reading proficiency, increased high school graduation rates, less involvement with the juvenile justice system and are ready to participate in our workforce.

We requested their support to;

• Maintain and increase Child Care Development Block Grant funding
• Maintain and increase the 21st Century Community Learning Centers funding
• Maintain Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant funding

Upon reflection, I accomplished all I had hoped to with my trip to Washington D.C. I had an opportunity to see many of the monuments and the White House. The weather was perfect and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. I was energized by the opportunity to participate in our democratic process at the federal level. Most importantly, I was an advocate for increasing quality in early child care education.

If you would like to learn more about early child care issues and challenges facing children and families in our community or how you can participate in the process to increase quality in early child care, please visit 4C for Children’s Web site at and click on the Take Action for Children button.

I’m Not Getting My Hopes Up

As soon as Ohio Governor Kasich’s proposed biennial budget “leaked” last week, I started hearing excited reports that early childhood education was slated to receive an increase of $180 million. This sounds like excellent news, doesn’t it?

But as the actual details have begun to emerge, let’s just say, I am not getting my hopes up. For one thing (a rather large one thing), school districts can use the entire amount of that early education funding in their kindergartens to third grades to boost the reading levels of students. While I am sure schools could use additional help in supporting children who are not reading at expected levels, why wait until students start school behind so we then have to put all those extra resources into remediation?  The Governor said all the right things about the proven value of Pre-K, but gave local schools a loophole big enough to drive a truck through.

And there is another “but.” While 5,700 children are in Ohio’s public school early education classes, far more (86,000) children are in Ohio’s quality-rated community-based child care programs and Head Start centers. Ohio has done terrific work over the last two years aligning quality standards and curriculum between the schools where the 5,700 children attend and the community programs where 15 times that number of children receive their early learning experiences.

This potential new investment in “early childhood education” should be focused on the critical years before a child enters school. These new dollars could provide school districts with significant leverage to work with community-based child care programs that are preparing children to succeed in school.

We’ve come a long way with the work underway in Ohio stemming from the Early Learning Challenge Grant (part of Race to the Top). This budget proposal feels like a step backward to when folks incorrectly thought

1. that learning begins only when children enter school and
2. that only schools are capable of providing quality early childhood education.

It seems like an advocacy opportunity awaits us.

Sequestration – Big Word with Bad Consequences for Head Start

I came upon this video about Head Start that shows the wonderful advantages of this nearly 50-year-old program that gives children from low-income families the best possible early start. The point of the video is to describe the impact that “sequestration” would have on Head Start.

Wikipedia defines sequestration as: In U.S. law, a procedure by which an automatic spending cut is triggered, introduced to the federal budget in 1985 by the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Budget Act. It was most recently implemented in the Budget Control Act of 2011. This has led to worry over the “United States fiscal cliff.”

Essentially, if Congress cannot reach a deal to reduce the deficit by the end of 2012, automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion, evenly split between defense and non-defense spending, will go into effect. The intent is to pressure Congress into making decisions – not permitting continuation budgets.

Head Start provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. With sequestration pending, funding for Head Start and many other early childhood education programs is in serious jeopardy.

This video highlights one important tool in our country’s efforts to end the cycle of poverty through early education.  To quote the source of the video, “as many as 80,000 children could lose access to Head Start’s comprehensive services and more than 30,000 teachers, administrators and support staff could lose their jobs. At a time when one in four children under age 5 is living in poverty, we need a strong Head Start program now more than ever.”

Reauthorizing the Federal Child Care Act

The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) is the main source of government funding for child care in America. The main source of overall funding is, of course, tuition paid by parents. But CCDBG is critical to the success of childcare because it:

1. Helps low-income working families pay a portion of the cost of child care, allowing them to work to support their children, and
2. Helps drive up the quality of child care so that it supports the dual goals of work support and school readiness.

The original legislation passed in 1990 and was reauthorized along with Welfare Reform in 1996 – and has not changed one bit since then. Fortunately, funding has continued to flow as both Republicans and Democrats understand the value of sustaining a child care infrastructure. However, the law desperately needs to be updated. A lot has changed in 16 years.

So it is great news that the U.S. Senate HELP Committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) has begun hearings to consider making important changes.

I listened in on the first hearing this week and heard some interesting testimony and great questions by the members of the Senate. Here were some points that got the Senators’ attention:

1. Our tax dollars are being used to pay for child care provided by people who may have records of child abuse and neglect.
2. Many states do not do background checks on individuals who are paid to provide child care. (Fortunately that is not the case in Ohio and Kentucky.)
3. While CCDBG was intended to help families stay off of public assistance, the funding level is such that most states can only afford to support working families whose income is so low that they are also receiving public assistance.
4. The 1996 law required that states use a minimum of four percent of the funds to improve quality. Most states use more than four percent because quality has been unacceptably low, putting children at risk. But this takes away from serving more children.
5. The pull between quantity and quality is greater than ever, leaving states to choose between serving more people in low-quality settings or fewer children in environments that are likely to lead to school readiness.

Among the speakers were Linda Smith, currently with the Department of Health and Human Services and former Director of Child Care Aware of America, and my dear friend Janet Singerman, President of Child Care Resources Inc. of Charlotte, NC.

Stay tuned. Even though there is passion and momentum to reauthorize this bill from both sides of the aisle, gridlock seems to be ruling the day. I’ll keep my fingers crossed – which may be the best I can do – given that our Senators from Ohio and Kentucky are not on this committee. If it gets past the HELP Committee, 4C will be calling on you to get involved.

It’s the Poverty, Stupid – Reprise

Teacher Tom is a prolific blogger in the field of early childhood education, writing about art, dramatic play, fine motor skills and circle time. His recent blog, a passionate piece entitled, “It’s the Poverty, Stupid,” made this accurate point:

“The evidence is crystal clear. Poverty is really the only national education reform issue that matters. Poverty is by far the number one reason children ‘fail’ in school. Poverty, poverty, poverty. To phrase it as Bill Clinton might: It’s the poverty, stupid. It’s not a lack of a progressive play-based curriculum, it’s not a lack of accountability, it’s not about lazy teachers . . . Say it with me: it’s the poverty.”

My first reaction after, “Well, yes,” was to think what the elected officials, business leaders, parents, clergy and his readers like me could do about eradicating poverty since that was where he laid the responsibility – especially on Wall Street. I agree with Tom that there is no magic bullet in a particular curriculum or standardized test, and that until communities are economically stable, the achievement gap between rich and poor will persist. The cure will not come from a new gimmick.

But there is no doubt that in the United States, as well as every other country in the world, education is the game changer. And that early learning – and school readiness – is the most effective way to get education on the right track. I don’t plan to give up our work to ensure that all children get the best possible early learning experiences. 4C works to make sure that teachers know how to guide children in their social/emotional, physical and cognitive development and to support families as they raise their children in this complicated world. There surely are additional strategies to level the playing field for children living in poverty but none more important than helping children get the best educational start. Giving poor kids the knowledge and tools they need to succeed is the ticket.

Teacher Tom paraphrased Bill Clinton. I will paraphrase Tammany Hall circa 1860 – start early, start often.

I’m Feeling Especially Proud of 4C Staff and Volunteers

Most of my blogs are specifically about public policy issues, but I want to take a quick moment to “brag on” 4C volunteers and staff. In the past week, 4C for Children was given a great honor to be named the overall winner of the ONE Award. ONE stands for Organizations of Noteworthy Excellence. The award recognizes business best practices among tax-exempt charitable organizations in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

This year, 15 organizations submitted applications and six met criteria for at least one of the three categories (people, principles, process). 4C was the only organization to be recognized in all categories. The ONE Award is based on the Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Award, given at a national level for businesses that meet a rigorous set of standards. The process includes review by a team of trained examiners.

This was the first time 4C submitted an application, although I must say that we have been working for a number of years to increase our use of data to improve all aspects of our services and impact.  The kudos for this recognition are due entirely to the high expectations and diligence of the 4C staff – 70 strong.

We were most honored to be in the company of other terrific organizations that make a huge impact in our region. One of the greatest things is that all the winners this year serve children. The other honorees are:

• Assistance League of Greater Cincinnati
• Cincinnati Union Bethel
• Redwood
• Society of St. Vincent DePaul
• The Children’s Home of Cincinnati

The other highlight of the year (so far—and it is only the end of January) was the very successful Champions for Children gala held on Saturday January 28. Nearly 350 people, dressed in their finery, cheered our champions Senator Eric Kearney, Digi Schueler and Toyota, as well as Champs: The Next Gen – Kenton County Schools’ Hanner’s Heroes. Hundreds stayed to dance the night away. Generous sponsors and friends made the evening a big financial success. One corporate leader, who has been to hundreds of benefits, declared this event to be in her all-time top 10.  (I had fun too!) In this case, the kudos go to our volunteer committee chaired by Marla Fuller and Tori Ames, and to Karen Hurley, 4C’s VP of Development.

I wonder what other great things 2012 has to offer.

Public Policy Effort, Day One

I have just finished day one of a four-day public policy effort in Washington, D.C. There are so many challenges ahead for children and families.

Today we heard from a renowned pollster who has surveyed parents and the public on their views of the role of government in support of child care.  (More on that in a future blog.) We also heard from a consultant who advises corporations and organizations on positioning their issues in order to get through all the noise. Finally, we heard from top legislative staffers from the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats who shared the realities and opportunities before us in the current Congress.

Tomorrow our 4C contingent from Miami Valley, Northern Kentucky and Southwest Ohio (that is, Lorna Chouinard, Julie Wittten, Carolyn Brinkmann, Elaine Ward and myself) will meet with our Senators and Representatives – seven visits in all – to share information about families and children, to ask for their support of specific legislation and to urge them to put kids first. I’ll let you know what we hear from them.