(Oakland, CA)— Today a coalition of grassroots organizations and labor unions is joining the workers and families of the Oakland Head Start program to demand no cuts, no layoffs and no site closures to City’s Head Start program. The Mayor and City Administration are expected to make major changes to Head Start, one of the most important programs serving the Oakland community—changes that will gut this vital program.
Oakland Head Start offers free early childhood education and family services to low-income Oakland residents. Our coalition has the full support of District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife who has been working with community and labor to find a solution to this problem,
“The City of Oakland’s Head Start program has long been a critical part of the fabric of family life for generations of working-class Oaklanders. Study after study has shown that Head Start leads to better outcomes among Black and Latino communities. This program has served the most impacted families, and has the most comprehensive set of social services in the City for families with young children. Head Start workers, from frontline to teaching staff, have developed deep relationships with families – often spanning generations. We must protect these vital services and dedicated workers and end the divestment of programs servicing working class Black and Brown Oakland communities,” said District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife.
The pending cuts are a misguided response to the recent loss of federal funding to the Oakland Head Start program. To be clear—the deficiencies identified by the Office of Head Start that prevented the Federal grant application from renewing automatically were not due to any lack of care or negligence by Head Start staff or supervisors, and are largely due to administrative federal reporting requirements that the City’s executive management is responsible for overseeing.
Despite the hard work of Head Start staff who provide quality services year in and year out, Mayor Schaaf and the City Administration have chosen to subcontract significant portions of the City-run program to nonprofits without broad community input. Contracting out the Head Start program and closing sites will result in unneeded disruptions to the lives of vulnerable low-income families in Oakland. The Head Start staff, employed by the City, have built long-standing relationships in these communities and have provided high-quality child care for decades. One estimate predicts that over 100 slots could be moved from City-run programs to nonprofits who lack Oakland Head Start’s long history of employing Black workers deeply rooted in the Black communities they serve. Additionally, the City’s current plan would contract out sites in areas with a long history of disinvestment by the City, further harming Black and
Brown families and depriving Oakland children & their families of this irreplaceable service. Lastly, contracting out will also lead to the layoffs of up to 30 dedicated public servants, the majority of whom are women of color and who have lived in and serviced the City of Oakland for years.
“The workers who will be impacted by the proposed layoffs and site closures are primarily Black and Brown women giving back to their own neighborhoods. Instead of penalizing essential and frontline workers who have supported our Oakland families for decades, we must do everything possible to find resources to maintain services. What is needed is a commitment from City leadership to preserve the legacy of Head Start, and the critical role it has played as an institution to Black communities in our city,” said Betty Cruise, City of Oakland Head Start Family Advocate.
In order to protect Oakland’s Head Start, the coalition is calling on the City to immediately restore the current operation of the Head Start program, ensure that Head Start staff and all City workers are able to remain in their current positions, preserve current City-run child care slots, and stop site closures, especially closures in locations servicing East and West Oakland.
“With so much uncertainty given the current public health crisis, parents deserve to know their children will have a safe, nurturing environment while they support their families. We are experiencing a dual crisis of a lack of child care accessibility and a shrinking early care and education workforce. By developing better practices for engaging families in systems change and increased investments from the City, we have an opportunity to support one of Oakland’s most vulnerable populations, families with young children,” said Clarissa Doutherd with Parent Voices Oakland.
The needs of West and East Oaklanders must be at the center of all future negotiations about the future of City of Oakland Head Start programs. Our coalition, in conjunction with the workers and families of Oakland’s Head Start program, demand that the children, families and workers of the City of Oakland’s Head Start program are not subject to further divestment.
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The group of community and labor organizations representing thousands of Oakland’s Children and Families formed to demand jobs, education and supportive services includes Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), the Anti Police-Terror Project, SEIU Local 1021, IFPTE Local 21, Moms 4 Housing, and Parent Voices Oakland
View the letter sent to Mayor Libby Schaaf and Oakland City Council here.