With more than 650,000 children under the age of five in Los Angeles County, licensed centers or daycares can only serve 13% of working parents.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the early care and education (ECE) sector was hit hard, facing teacher shortages and limited childcare options for working parents and guardians who are now facing evolving childcare requirements. in-person remote employment.
In partnership with Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, the Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity launched a two-year assistant teacher apprenticeship program that will educate and train local workers seeking careers in the early childhood education sector.
Free training
On the first day of school for 40 new teacher assistant trainees, Kelly LoBianco, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Economic Opportunity, said that based on $1 million in funding from the county’s American Rescue Plan, The program will provide participants with more than 2,000 hours of on-the-job training and more than 144 hours of classroom instruction.
Such investment is a critical component of a total of $39.5 million the county has committed to advance continued high-level training partnership models as a means to address workforce gaps and provide jobs that support families while they work, with the care of their children.
“It is a strange case, but thanks to the pandemic one of the positive aspects was that resources were created for early care and education,” supervisor Holly J. Mitchell told La Opinión. “What we need to do is focus all the money on expanding and offering more spaces for childcare, literally babies and toddlers.”
The county’s District 2 supervisor recalled that, in recent years, the state legislature understood the importance of the workforce, which is why they have worked to increase the salary of people in early education.
“Given all those things that have happened, what do we do to create opportunities for people to do that? Earn while you learn,” said Mitchel. “Many of us, and working-class families, don’t have the luxury of going to school and focusing solely on learning a trade.”
A guaranteed job
The opportunity to have a guaranteed job was the motivation for Mrs. Yesenia López to complete the online teacher assistant course.
“My children have been in the Head Start programs and they have learned a lot,” said the single mother of three children who attend the MAOF organization’s Lew Sands Weltor Center school, located on 48th Street in Los Angeles.
“My expectations for their future are that, from a young age, they learn the importance of getting an education and going to university,” said the woman.
Kelly LoBianco announced that one of the grants awarded was to pay the candidates to finish the program in two years, “having earned a salary and having no school debt, in addition to being guaranteed a job in education and child care.”
Likewise, he reported that $18 million is being invested in the aerospace, film, digital media, health care and construction sectors.
“We know that the education and child care sector is essential for the development of young people in our region and also for working families,” said Lo Bianco. “And in the pandemic, we saw the real consequences of the lack of accessible and affordable health care and the disproportionality on our workers and on who could work.”
The investment is expected to ensure the expansion of social models based on evidence of results.
Therefore, with funds from the American Rescue Plan, 90 new teacher assistant apprentices will be supported this year
Investment that changes lives
Dr. Bárbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, told La Opinión that “there is still a lot of work to do” to reduce differences in care in early education for African-American and Latino children.
“We are starting with opportunities for people to get job training in a job that pays well,” he said. “We want to make sure every child in the county can have early education.”
For her part, Dr. Debra Duardo, superintendent of schools, accepted that early education efforts for minority children are long overdue.
“Today we have the resources to train many mothers who want to be educational assistant apprentices,” she said. “The investment being made now will change the lives of children, their parents and families.”
“Everything is going to change because our children will have the opportunities they need to be prepared when they enter kindergarten and be ready to learn,” he added.
During her speech at the press conference, Dr. Duardo mentioned that the United States is the number one country in incarceration and the majority of those behind bars are Latinos and African Americans.
“I believe that education is the way to get out of poverty, to have opportunities, to have a job, a career where we can live lives where we are not going to have problems with our children in gangs or having to leave school to work. because we live with so much poverty,” he stated. “Things are changing in leadership; “We as women and mothers know what our children need and what families need to be healthy.”
To plan vacations
Lesly Ramírez, who only needs one class left to finish job training in June and 200 volunteer hours to obtain her certificate as a teacher’s assistant, said her life will have a radical change.
“With a stable job we will be able to save a little money and plan the vacations as a family that my husband has been putting off for years.” [Alonso Galindo] and me,” she told La Opinión, since, in addition to her husband, her parents are also from Guatemala.
Solid support
Emilio Salas, executive director of the Los Angeles County Development Authority, stated that, as part of his responsibility, the Housing Authority (HACLA), Section 8 and the public housing program also operate.
“When you think about the more than 35,000 families we help, many of them use it as a launching pad to get back on their feet and get back on their feet,” he said.
“But when you think about all the single mothers with children, that is one of the biggest barriers they face in entering the workforce and finding affordable child care,” she added.
That solution would help families throughout the county, he said, especially those who are really trying to prosper on their own.
Salas looked back to the early years of Covid-19 in 2020, when devastation occurred in the child care industry, where many child care facilities, especially home-based ones, were forced to close, because there was no way to create social distancing.
In home-based child care centers, many people were unable to provide the type of personal protective equipment needed.
“We had a real crisis on our hands, and in order to get people back to work, one of the first things we had to do was figure out how to get child care facilities back up and running.”
The challenge of implementing an emergency relief program for Child Development Centers in early 2020 was met with the utilization and implementation of $10 million in CARES Act funds.
“I remember our approach was to get the money out quickly to try to provide a real lifeline to child care centers,” she said. “Thus, we were able to help a total of 462 facilities.”
The Los Angeles County Development Authority awarded grants of $15,000 for in-home facilities and $30,000 for larger centers.
Because the response was insufficient, the Board of Supervisors subsequently allocated an additional $20 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan to launch yet another program.
In the second intention of achieving the desired goal, Salas specified that they had the challenge of using the Covid-19 vulnerability and recovery index to say, -at the request of Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell-: “let’s prioritize those communities that were more affected by Covid-19.”
With this approach, there were more than 4,000 applicants for financial assistance, 3,000 of which were within the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Development Authority.
The first 368 grants went directly to those in the highest need levels. The first program was first come, first served.
“And that is becoming the norm, because we are now being very intentional about how we deploy our assistance to the communities most in need,” Salas said.
Thus, the county agency awarded grants for home-run businesses between $15,000 and $30,000. And for larger centers, from $40,000 to $80,000.
“Attendance was very good,” said Salas. “In the next iteration we will help 600 child care facilities.”