Systems Strengthening Recommendations

The Recommendation: Ensure Early Childhood Professionals Across Sectors are Respected, Well-Compensated, Highly Trained and Reflect the Communities They Serve

The Strategies:

STRATEGY 2.1: Raise compensation (including pay and benefits) to attract, recruit and retain highly-qualified teachers in all early learning environments. Seek public and private funding sources aimed at sustainability.

STRATEGY 2.2: Invest in increasing access to the existing culturally responsive, effective and engaging professional development opportunities for the early childhood workforce in Durham (inclusive of Family Child Care Homes; Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) Care; specialist positions) that are funded by public and private sources. Ensure early childhood educators are paid for their time. Include paid training/mentoring models to promote quality classroom interactions with young children.

STRATEGY 2.3: Promote a diverse workforce of providers that serve children and families across sectors by strengthening career pathways, including education and training.

Note: The strategies this action planning team identified were focused on the early childhood education profession, based on the persistent and unique challenges faced by early childhood educators serving children 0-4. In the future, this recommendation could be more broadly focused on early childhood professionals across sectors (e.g. social workers, healthcare professionals, etc).

In order for children to receive high-quality care and education in the first few years of their life, it is critical that the early childhood workforce is adequately compensated and valued for their work. Lack of proper compensation and opportunities for professional development leads to undervalued early childhood education, high rates of burnout and turnover, and ultimately a workforce shortage.

Community Voices:

• “Child care system rests on the shoulders of a workforce that does not have much agency in terms of power of their voice - underpaid, undervalued, many demands without benefits and pay on par” - ECAP participant

• “Let’s just strike. Who is going to come in and teach these kids? Sometimes it will take some radical and revolutionary change.” - Durham early childhood educator

• “Recruit and retain more teachers in ECE and K-3 that have a shared lived experience with Latinx children and students” - ECAP participant

• "Programs catered for and led by people of color.” - Durham parent

The Recommendation: Facilitate Data Sharing Between Agencies and with Communities to Better Understand Areas of Greatest Need, Track Progress, and to Promote Transparency, Accountability, and Systems-Building

The Strategies:

STRATEGY 4.1: Convene a set of community conversations and identify an ongoing community oversight structure to address opportunities and concerns related to early childhood data sharing and inform future data collection and data sharing efforts.

STRATEGY 4.2: Address barriers to data collection and sharing across agencies and age groups so that community stakeholders can continue to identify the areas of greatest need, to track progress in these areas that have been identified as a focus, and to generate funding for strategies that are creating promising results.

STRATEGY 4.3: Pilot data sharing initiatives that support data collection to report on ECAP indicators that are not currently available at the county level and share that data transparently to increase community accountability.

ECAP goals and outcomes are interconnected and not happening in silos, so data must be shared across agencies to monitor collective progress and continuous improvement. Equity is the cornerstone of the ECAP, and similar initiatives nationally committed to racial equity use data to make decisions as a community. Those efforts have led to consistently improved outcomes for children (see The Road Map Project). Sharing data about who is being served and how, what the outcomes are, and what barriers or gaps are present will enhance continuous improvement and allow all stakeholders to adjust strategies for the child’s success.

All families need clarity in their communication about their children regardless of their literacy level or native language. There is a wide diversity of languages spoken in children’s homes in Durham. For example, as of April 2021, Durham Public Schools has 9,161 students enrolled whose home language is Spanish and 749 students enrolled whose home language is not English or Spanish.(1)

There are a wide variety of services offered in Durham, but they are not fully benefiting the communities who do not speak English as their first language or who have a lower literacy rate. Many families shared their frustration with finding a counselor or caseworker who speaks their language to help them navigate the services available. This is also a challenge for students and parents in school as there are not enough interpreters to assist families.

There are also eligibility barriers for parents who are undocumented and therefore do not have access to the early childhood supports and services that documented families do.

Families and caregivers with young children emphasized how difficult early childhood health, education, and other support services are to access because of language and cultural barriers. This was true of early childhood services as well as support for caregivers of young children who are immigrants (documented and undocumented), refugees, non-native English speakers, or lower literacy populations. Parents expressed that language access also needs to be paired with cultural understanding and humility. Just because someone speaks Spanish, for instance, does not mean that they are the best messenger with Latinx families.

In Durham, we want to focus on not just language access, but language JUSTICE. “Language justice creates spaces where people are invited to bring their whole selves, and the whole range of their perspectives and experiences, into the room. It demonstrates a commitment to creating a space where no one language is dominant; rather, every language in the room holds equal footing, and all participants are respectfully committed to a process of open communication and transparency.”(2) Creating spaces where language justice is centered requires funding, staffing, support, and deep mindset shifts.

(1) Durham Public Schools. Multilingual Resource Center. “Data (Datos) – Número de estudiantes desde el 1 de abril 2021.” Retrieved from: https://www.dpsnc.net/Page/5499.

(2) Antena. “How to Build Language Justice.” (2013). Retrieved from: http://antenaantena.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/langjust_eng.pdf.

Community Voices:

• "Fewer obstacles when requesting help, more information on the programs in the clinics and more bilingual people." - Durham parent

• "Create more help with different languages ​​in all schools so that the family is involved with everything school." - Durham parent

• “Whenever conferences have been offered, sometimes the parents who speak another language don’t come or engage as much.” - Durham Public Schools K-3 Teacher

• “It’s so hard for families who speak languages other than English to enroll in [PreK and Head Start].” - Durham parent

• "Lack of support for ELL [English Language Learners] in schools." - Durham parent

• “The interpreter they provided was really a service navigator who only spoke English and didn’t ensure I had support at all steps when it was all so foreign to me.” - Durham parent

• "Those of us are trying to get our citizenship papers in order, they told us not to ask for any state assistance. Bc then it will look poorly on us when they review our cases. Idk if it's true or not that it will affect my status BUT I am afraid." - Durham parent

• “They need to look at the population size and determine how much support is needed for interpreters based on that. E.g., the schools with 50% Spanish-speaking need more than one.” - Durham Public Schools K-3 Teacher

The Recommendation: Expand Opportunities for Accessible, Inclusive, Safe, and Family-Friendly Enrichment Activities and Public Spaces

The Strategies:

STRATEGY 6.1: Enhance Durham’s public spaces and local developments to become more family-friendly, safe and inclusive of all of Durham’s residents and to encourage playful learning throughout the community.

STRATEGY 6.2: Invest in programs and activities that already exist to improve marketing/promotion and reduce barriers to access (e.g. transportation)

Children spend much of their time out of formal learning environments, so the role of parents, communities, and public spaces in early childhood learning and brain development cannot be understated or undervalued.(1) As a community, we must do more to promote play and support healthy brain development in public spaces and enrichment programs outside of scheduled school time. These opportunities for play and engagement in public spaces can also support healthy social-emotional interactions for children and their families.

Parents and caregivers across Durham expressed a desire for better access to Durham’s public spaces and for those spaces to be safe and inclusive. As Durham grows, there is an opportunity to intentionally create family-friendly, safe, and inclusive public spaces where more families can interact and see their families reflected.

Durham can also learn from examples in other cities to incorporate opportunities for parent-child interactions and “playful learning” in public spaces which enhances children’s cognition and social development. For example, in Philadelphia, community organizations came together to enhance a bus stop into a stimulating environment with story art, a puzzle wall, and more.

(1) Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy. “Playful Learning Landscapes.” Retrieved from: https://kathyhirshpasek.com/learning-landscapes/.

Community Voices:

• "Better access to parks and playgrounds for children with disabilities." - Durham parent

• "More child friendly areas downtown!" - Durham parent

• "More locations that are multi-purposeful (play area, coffee shop, car mechanic, etc. all in one place)." - Durham parent

• “There is a lot of buildings and I see they build a lot of buildings. And I see they build parks. But it’s not large enough when they build the parks. It’s always the same types of games. And sometimes the ground they put it on is rocky and dangerous.” build parks, but it’s not large enough. It’s always the same type of games. And the type of ground they put on can be rocky and dangerous.” - 9th grader at Durham Public Schools

• be rocky and dangerous.” - 9th grader at Durham Public Schools

• "More parks and playgrounds! My kids love them and I think that as our city grows, we need to revamp the parks that we do have and add in more family friendly outdoor spaces." - Durham parent

• "More splash pads, more parks, more green open space, more public swimming pools." - Durham parent

Desire for more accessible, affordable enrichment activities (particularly for children under age 5):

• "Lower cost programs. No income to low income families having access to these programs" - Durham parent

• "Wider range of programs that are free or have the scale for reduced cost be wide - Especially need free after school care, camps & tutoring." - Durham parent

• "I wish they would provide affordable resources for other programs like karate, ballet or soccer. These kinds of sports are not affordable...it would cost you a two-week paycheck to pay for them. You would have to work 80 hours to pay for 4 hours of these programs. It is not something affordable and I wish they would change that." - Durham parent

• "Having group activities for children between the ages of 2-5." - Durham parent

• "More activities for 2 year olds, they seem to be forgotten." - Durham parent

• "More free or low cost options for entertainment for kids under 3" - Durham parent

Awareness about what is available:

• "More advertisement for free/low cost things in the area." - Durham parent

• "More awareness of community events, sports, etc." - Durham parent