Hello Chair Ortiz, Vice Chair Doan, and honorable City Councilmembers, We, Build the Future, are writing in strong support of Councilmember Campos’ memorandum to elevate the Child Care Policy Opportunities Status Report to the March 17 City Council March Budget Message. This will provide an opportunity to consider promoting childcare as a goal within the City’s Growing Our Economy Focus Area.
Build the Future, a campaign dedicated to advocating for affordable, quality childcare for all, remains steadfast in its commitment to ensure that childcare is affordable and accessible for everyone.
Affordable, high quality childcare helps our cities have a thriving economy and workforce. Residents are being priced out of San Jose due to the rising costs of childcare and housing. As stated in the Childcare resolution that was passed unanimously by San José City Council in December of 2023, “investing in affordable, accessible, and diverse forms of quality childcare…improves business productivity and consumer spending, decreases poverty, leads to safer communities, and provides additional revenue for cities…” We urge the City of San José to keep its promise and continue to support childcare solutions for its residents.
Sincerely,
Jaria Jaug
Build the Future Campaign Manager
What makes family childcare home unique for families they serve?- by Bela Khetan Bela's preschool (FCCH Santa Clara county)
The term family in family childcare homes is what makes our program unique! We are an extension of the child’s family environment. In saying this, I echo the sentiments of all my fellow providers. Year 2020, when the world shut down due to a pandemic, family childcare homes were open full time, willing to take the health risks and continue providing their services and support to their families. Finally, the society realized that we are an essential services category!
Due to the small size (1:6 /1:12 ratio max) and family environment, FCCH not only meet the developmental needs of the children but also prepare them for KG (Please refer to the Pyramid) Maslow's hierarchy of needs_ Wikipedia
This pyramid explains the social/emotional needs of humans. In early education, FCC providers provide children's basic needs of healthy nutrition, warm loving care, safe, secure environment leading to a trusted long-lasting relationship with children and families.
By teaching and guiding the children to build characteristics of kindness, respect, honesty, self-reliance, FCC providers are helping the the young toddlers to enter preschool with a positive self-esteem. The social emotional and cognitive development continues through Pre-k years. ● Family childcare providers are educators providing continuity in learning and growth. ● During Pandemic /lockdown FCC educators continued providing online learning through zoom making sure that the children graduating to KG do not miss the benchmarks for KG readiness. ● Many families greatly appreciated the foresight of FCC providers in preparing the children to adapt to online learning and trusted them to continue helping with their online KG in family child- care homes. ● Children graduating to KG from FCC homes are ready and meet the KG readiness expectations in the following areas:
Language skills
Alphabet/sound recognition
Phonological awareness (recognizing beginning/ending sounds, vowel sounds) Reading skills (CVC words, rhyming words, Digraph sounds, sight words, simple sentences) Writing/printing skills
Math readiness skills
Counting by rote
No. recognition
Matching objects to quantities
Shapes, patterns
Simple addition/subtraction
Measurements, time and money concepts
Aside from preparing the children for KG, FCC homes also serve families with special needs, Provide early intervention services in partnership with inclusion collaboration, First 5 and Quality matters programs.
Ms. Manju says: Quote
The #1 concept that makes my child-care unique are the personal attributes I include in my lesson plans which are closely curated based on the people that I serve. I interview every family that comes by my childcare and ask them detailed questions that helps me understand what they want for their child.
My curriculum includes daily math, reading, motor skills, and social lessons. The second thing that makes my daycare unique is that I set up children for success way beyond their early childhood care.
All the parents that have worked with me in the past will visit me or communicate that their child is thriving in elementary school because of the foundations & confidence that I have instilled in them at an early age. We have a teacher to child ratio of 3:1. VS. a regular school classroom where it’s mostly 1 to 12 “unquote
One of many responses from a family in KG year
“We just came back from K’s first parent teacher conference at kindergarten. His teacher says he is doing really well. He is reading at first grade level already! He got a DRA score of 8. His writing and handwriting are also very good, exceptional for a kindergartner! his teacher says.) We think it’s all because of the time K spent with you reading, writing and tracing last year. Thank you so much! We can go on and on with success stories from all the providers in Santa Clara County. We hope you understand that Family childcare providers have been providing pre-k education and Kindergarten readiness skills all throughout their careers and that is the uniqueness of a family childcare home. High quality continuing care and education!
Families today are already struggling to maintain the affordability of basic necessities. These basic needs are
Job security Childcare
Housing Job security
Food Housing
Childcare Food
Every family needs to work to afford rent, food and childcare. Without Childcare the family cannot go to work! If they don't work, they don't get to afford the other necessities, hence Childcare is at the top of these necessities. This important service is provided by the Family childcare homes and Friends and family neighborhood care. If funding is cut for these programs, one can only imagine how the foundations of a strong economic system will be shaken up. 90% of these Family childcare homes are small businesses, women run; by cutting the funding we are forcing these small businesses to shut down creating a short supply of Childcare. These FCC homes are already struggling to sustain themselves due to low enrollment since UPK.
Affordable childcare is an important element of a strong economy and cutting resources to this industry is not going to bring any better results in other segments of the economy.
So please consider the necessity of keeping the programs alive and meeting the demand for childcare with the required resources.
Thank you for listening
Bela Khetan
Voice of Shared service alliance of 60 childcare providers