Voices From The Community with Amy O’Leary

Voices from the Community is an opportunity for the BU Wheelock: Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being to lift up the voices of community members who are actively working within the early childhood community and provide a space for them to share their experiences, expertise and thoughts.

In this edition of Voices from the Community, the Institute is excited to have Amy O’Leary from Strategies for Children share her experience as a leader in early childhood here in Boston, regionally, and nationally in a conversation with director, Dina Castro.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

I am the Director of Strategies for Children and actually just celebrated 20 years with the organization. Our coalition is about 22 years old, and we have been working on the early childhood workforce pipeline, leadership development, and opportunities to learn and practice. Our coalition members are individuals who work as early educators, in K-12 education, higher education, structural leadership and more. We have a 9:30 am call every weekday morning with a list of 900 people and about 60 people who join each morning to talk to each other about topics and issues in the early childhood world. We are also developing 9 individuals who are becoming advocacy leaders and experts in their neighborhoods. We are also a part of the Common Start Coalition that has been holding this comprehensive vision for early childhood care in Massachusetts. With this coalition and others, we have done local and national work to propose and pass bills in the legislature and it’s been great to see the success of all of these groups over the years.

Can you share your thoughts and recommendations on the issues in early childhood that we are facing here in Massachusetts and nationally?

I think what you talked about at your inaugural keynote on equity and how we are thinking about children both during the pandemic and after we move out of it are so critical. What we hear from the people who we work with every day is the need for secure and stable funding so that they can do the work they are meant to be doing. We know that early childhood workers are “can do” people but we cannot rely on their situation-by-situation problem solving as we reimagine what early childhood education and care can be. The other piece I’ve heard recently is that while early childhood care and education are tied to our economy so that parents can go to work, lately there has been more of an emphasis on the quality of that care. As we continue to think about programs and the support that they need, how are we continuing to support the quality of that education? We know that it’s connected to the salary and training of the workers, as well as the materials that are available along with the curriculum and really addressing the developmental needs of children. We need to do work around equity, language development and supporting families that need to make difficult decisions about childcare, their work and their long-term goals for their families. The way I’ve heard it framed is the field going from stabilization to sustainability and to growth. That’s a new way of thinking for early childhood that focuses on what we are really doing and where we want to go.

We think about programs like Head Start that was developed at a time in history for a concrete reason and not going back in time to revisit the why. Instead, we can think about the Head Start model and how we use it moving forward. And that’s just one example in a field that has done what we have done for a long time.

I was struck a few weeks ago because it was the anniversary of the GI Bill and there has been conversation before about a GI Bill for early educators. We have seen the higher education field take a serious look at itself and how it prepares for future generations based on where they are coming from in life. Early childhood must also begin to do the same.

Finally, in Massachusetts, in June we had a lot of time lined issues. In our state budget we have potentially historic amounts of funding allocated through our state budget practice. We have bills that have been moved out of committees and we hope will pass by July 31. Then, at a federal level we are watching the proposals for early childhood care, which is a scaled back version of what we thought we’d see, but nonetheless important in continuing the work that needs to be done.

There seems to be a focus on the workforce, the providers, and educators. It makes us think about the early childhood centers and how they are related to our public-school systems. In Massachusetts we have universal pre-k but what about family childcare providers?

What we’ve seen in the pandemic is really parent choice. We’ve seen parents deciding where to send their children, when to send their children, and what schedule makes the most sense. We saw an interesting dynamic in Boston where both things were true: family childcares were closing at higher rates than center-based programs and at the same time parents wanted to choose family childcare providers because they were smaller, and they felt more comfortable with them. Where we are, in Massachusetts, family childcare has always been a part of policy making, the work we need to do is figuring out what can be a right process for family childcare. In Boston, we are working right now to figure out how to work in family childcare into the universal pre-K system. There are promising practices at the local level: Cambridge, Salem, Pittsfield and more. It’s important in these contexts to understand the local landscape, what these areas currently have available for children and families and learn from families what they need. From there, the local governments can figure out how to fill in the gap. What we know has not worked is localities seeing a gap and placing an early childhood care center there without feedback from the people. It hasn’t worked because families need to be included in the process and checked in with throughout the process about how it works.

We also talk a lot about how families don’t live in funding streams and sometimes we attach so much of our policy to where the money comes from. It can become hard to be flexible and understanding when it comes to a family’s experience and what we’ve learned in the pandemic is that families do want to be included in the process and development of early childhood care.

Thinking back to what you mentioned about Head Start as the model that originally included the presence of the family and the community, perhaps we should go back there. It came from a very holistic perspective because it addresses children’s health, care and education. Do you think that is a direction we should return to in early childhood?

As we think about Massachusetts at a state and local level, Head Start has always been at the table and has been a wonderful partner. I think you’re right, looking at the Head Start model it’s always been

thoughtful and supportive. I think we’ve always thought about how we can learn from Head Start and something I’ve admired is that Head Start has always funded their programs based on how they want them to run. I think we can learn from that and as we look across the system, we can see who does what well. From there we can assess the best parts of programs and learn how to amplify what everyone is bringing to the table. This will help break down the silos we have built ourselves that have made it harder to work together.

There are many things that we have learned from the pandemic. Thinking about the national policy landscape, what would you like to see as we move forward?

One of the outcomes of the pandemic is a greater understanding of how programs actually work. To be in Massachusetts and to have a federal delegation that has been fighting on the issues from the beginning, I believe sometimes we take that for granted. As we look back over the last two years, we have seen how involved our delegation has been, how they have listened to constituents, and how that translated to national policy. We saw the federal dollars that supported the stabilization grants which we are now receiving data on from the Department of Education. Now the Department of Education is asking what programs would look like if we didn’t have that federal support. The answer is that more programs would have closed, and more programs would have sought funding from different avenues including raising parent’s tuition, all during a time where that was not feasible for many. The federal relief dollars also taught us what we need to keep things running in our field and so often in the early childhood field we are used to doing more with less and shortchanging ourselves from an advocacy perspective. I think the action we’ve seen over the last two years at the federal level that if we come together with a clear understanding of the impact of not doing things, we will continue to have more success and get the funding we need to support children.

There are a couple of topics on my mind that I’d like you to address before we finish, one is what are the issues related to equity in our field in terms of access to high quality early childhood education?

What has become evident is who are the people who are providing early childhood education and care and that is mostly women of color. We have had chronic underinvestment in them and built our field on the backs of these women and with low wages. There is a general agreement that we can’t continue to do that, and we can’t act like that is not the history of our field. I think the other piece we are seeing as we meet in coalitions and learning communities is the emphasis on language and accessibility. Who can hear accurate information? Who has access to accurate resources? Whose role is it to make sure we are not only an English speaking, 9-5 culture? We know this work is happening at different hours because educators can’t attend meetings in the middle of the day. For me, it’s that we can’t act like we don’t know and understand this anymore. We know the differences between the K-12 system that may be more structure and the early education system that can be more customized and personalized as parents bring their youngest children to be with other people, whether that is supporting a child’s home language as they are developing skills or thinking about how we are going to assess their development. I’m worried about what it will look like when we assess this period of early childhood and children entering elementary grades because sometimes early education has been the scapegoat as the reason children are not meeting assessments. We need to become more thoughtful about what has been met over the last two years. The best part for me over the last two years was watching providers who are not used to being a part of the conversation be trusted with funding and decision making.

Another topic that has come up with equity is around who can pay for early education. Parent affordability and how we need to translate these numbers into personal stories to show the real impact. Historically, this is an issue that has not been addressed and there are some families who receive financial assistance, but many families are paying out of pocket or simply choosing not to send their children because they can’t afford it.

Also, there are some families from immigrant backgrounds that underutilize the funds available to them because they don’t think they are eligible, but they are because their children are US citizens.

Exactly and we must think about who the messengers are. One of the most telling things I’ve heard in Boston was a quote from a mother who said she has never felt her white privilege more than when she went to register her child for kindergarten. That has stuck with me because you can fill in kindergarten with finding childcare subsidy and early childhood care. So many of our systems are built for those who might have access to different information, where language is not a barrier, or have a community of people who have better information. We need to think about who the messengers are who can provide valuable information.

Final question, I know you work a lot on policy. What are the highlights and topics we should pay attention to and get involved with?

I think one of the major things right now is relationship building. We have seen unprecedented access to policy makers with zoom calls and virtual testimony hearings. We are so excited about those people taking a little bit of risk and getting to know their elected officials and I think it’s being reciprocated with having a new level of understanding and listening from public officials that we’ve seen translated into actual policy. We’ve had over 1,200 people in Massachusetts email the conference committee at the legislature to advocate for the state budget. We have seen the Common Start Coalition file legislation and many parts of it are now a part of a proposed bill.

What I am encouraged by is seeing people who are structural and non-structural leaders share their stories and be a part of the process. We have learned that we can’t one-time fund decades of neglect. This is not an easy fix, there must be continued understanding and investment. I am hopeful living in a place like Massachusetts where we know our policy makers make decisions that save lives and childcare. We need to continue the conversation between educators and elected officials and focus on hard things like racial justice and equity.