Recommendation to receive and file the Citywide Strategic Plan on Early Childhood Education from the Health and Human Services Department.  (Citywide)
Thank you very much. Any more comments on this item? If not, please cast your vote. Now we'll go back to 21. Report from Health and Human Services recommendation to receive and file the city wide strategic plan on early childhood education from the Health and Human Services Department citywide. To purchase secondary schools. Yes, Mr. Vice Mayor, council members, we have a. Report from our Health and Human Services. Department, led by Kelly Collopy and her teammates. Good evening, Honorable Vice Mayor and city council members. Two years ago in the budget process, you are funded a. Half time early childhood. Education liaison for the Long Beach Health Department. This report stems from the work that they've been doing. It's been a strong partnership between the health department. Our early childhood education committee, and also our our school district. So with that, I'd like. To introduce you to Alejandro, Brian Rosette, who's our early childhood liaison. Coordinator, and she will. Give you an update on our strategic plan. Good evening on the role of vice mayor and city council members. My name is Dr. Alejandro Alvarado Moses, the city's early childhood education coordinator. I'm here to present the cities or the cities of long beaches, early childhood education strategic plan. This project was funded through a Pacific Gateway U.S. Department of Labor grant in alliance closely with the city's Long Beach Violence Prevention Plan and My Brother's Keeper plan, as well as Pacific Gateway, strengthening working families efforts. This plan outlines actionable strategies to support all young children in Long Beach. The Early Childhood Education Strategic Plan, identify programs, policies and systems recommendations that support children ages 0 to 5 to ensure they are ready to learn in kindergarten. Research shows that during the first few years of life, 700 new neural connections are formed every second. Laying the foundation for all future learning behavior and development experiences in early, in the early years starting at birth are critical in developing and predicting lifelong success. Children who have strong relationships with their caregivers, spaces that encourage lots of language development and who live in safe, healthy homes are more likely to have lifelong success. We also know that children who enter kindergarten behind their peers are less likely to be reading by third grade and less likely to graduate from high school. Thus, this focus on young children. The Department of Health and Human Services led the development of this plan with special insight from an ad hoc advisory group that included the Long Beach Early Childhood Education Committee and the Long Beach Unified School District. Developing this plan was truly a cross-sector collaboration to understand the strengths and gaps that exist in Long Beach for families raising young children. The Department of Health Staff held over 22 focus groups with parents, community partners, early childhood professionals, and even a group of young children . 19 key informant interviews were held with elected officials, including some of you here today. Parents and other professionals. A thing we heard from the conversations across Long Beach was that many social and economic factors are important for preparing young children for kindergarten. These include a lack of early childhood resources, overall difficulty in access and accessing resources that exist because of transportation, hours of operation, and the high cost of early childhood education programing. A need for parent training, building social connectedness for parents of young children, ensuring community safety and a need to focus on the whole child, not just education . A desire and a desire to ensure that children of all abilities and backgrounds are included in early childhood education programing. Parents and professionals also noted the need for affordable housing, a need for mental health, support for parents and children, and a need for everyone to understand the impact of early childhood on lifelong success. This plan is organized around a set of guiding principles that focus on strengths. Seek to remove barriers and ensure that all children in Long Beach and their families receive the respect and opportunities they need to succeed. The plan considers the whole child, which means that children's health, safety, social, physical, emotional and intellectual needs are addressed. The seven goal areas that were identified by professionals and parents are goal one to support and build strong and resilient families. Goal two to increase access and affordability of infant through pre-K care and education services. Goal three Increase access and affordability of infant through pre-K. Care and education services. Oh, sorry. Goal three to support the development of a stronger workforce for children. Goal four to improve quality of programs and services for birth through age eight. Goal five. To ensure that children of Long Beach live, learn and play and safe and healthy and accessible environments. Goal six To promote partnerships to address access to quality, basic needs and services. And Goal seven to strengthen the alignment of existing birth through age governance structures and early childhood support systems. Within these goals, there are over 100 activities that were developed based on the information gathered through the focus groups and interviews. We know that we cannot do this alone. The stakes are too high for our young children and our communities. Future. It will take all of us. The Department of Health and Human Services in partnerships with the Mayor's Fund for Education invite you and members of the community to enjoy to join us this Thursday at the Long Beach Day Nursery for a presentation of the plan and commit to being a part of the solution. We know that we all have a role in ensuring that all the children in Long Beach reach their full potential for success. Both the full plan and the executive summary can be found at WW w dot Long Beach dot gov forward slash ECP. Thank you for your time. That concludes my report and we are open for questions. Thank you, Councilman Franco. Thank you, SBA. I strongly support this program, obviously. The research is is is indisputable. Early childhood education really raises good kids. And it's an opportunity for us here in Long Beach to really get involved and engage in that aspects of our of our youth. We build strong communities. We build the strength of our kids. So I can certainly support this. And I look forward to the full. Length of the program in the strategic plan so that we could move this forward. On a side note. When I first started with the city back in a few years ago, we used to have early child development programs here in Long Beach through our parks and recreation programs. And unfortunately, over the years, through budget cuts and hard economic times, we had to restructure our our program, our parks programs and early childhood development went away. And I'm glad to see that we're making a comeback. And I'm looking forward to seeing it gained strength and continue to be an important, integral part of city services. So thank you very much for bringing this forward. Thank you. Congressman Ewing. That Councilman Richardson. Thank you, Vice Mayor. So Dr. Moses and entire health team. Kelly and the team, I think, you know, you've done a good job. You've done a great job once again. I think, you know, the traditional sense of what city should do has changed. There's a greater focus on the role of cities to lead on these broader social issues. You know, frankly, you know, there's there hasn't been really been leadership at higher levels of government or bureaucracy really slows it down. And so the real focus and the burdens been placed on cities to really move the needle. I think we've you know, we've talked about this through the work on things like My Brother's Keeper, acknowledging that, you know, there are important milestones to having a successful life, you know, from a health standpoint, an education standpoint, an economic standpoint. And some of those milestones are literally directly linked to early childhood education. Reading by third grade, the key switch from learning to read to reading to learn. So the the, the better and more strategic we are about being intentional about these focuses, then it will have long term downstream impacts on all of our services. We know that. And so I really love that we have this strategic plan. I look forward to, you know, better understanding how me as a policymaker, how I can help to support the systems change involved with this. And I look forward to ensuring that we keep that lens on early childhood education with all the rest of our decisions in terms of sort of our parks, recreation, our health departments, our libraries, how we can really work together toward that goal. So I spoke a little more than I initially thought I would. But, you know, I read to my kids when I get in early enough and it's something that doesn't come naturally to me. It's something that I have to work toward. And we have a team and we're trying to build an environment, a culture to support that. Right. And I think that the more we can model this as a city, the better habits and behavior we can do. And I tell you, there's just so many opportunities from the fatherhood initiative that you're doing to, you know, all the work in our libraries and My Brother's Keeper. I just think this is really incredible and strategic. So thank you for your work. Thank you. Spears. Thank you. I want to echo my council colleagues sentiments. I you know, your presentation was great, but it still doesn't give the weight to the work that the vision and the plan. I just think that continuing to talk about this weekly, continuing to talk about how we're implementing this as much as we can and really having this lens on everything that we do when we talk about investing in our children, when we talk about public safety and how important it is to cities, when we talk about economic development and how important it is to cities, it doesn't matter what we do on the back end if we're not investing in early childhood development. And so I really just I want to echo the comment, particularly around the role of cities. And I know that some of us might have a different understanding of the role of cities. My work at Lane, a nonprofit for a decade, it really was under the the understanding that cities is where change happens. Cities is where we can get our hands in there and really make change, that people can feel that impact. And then when we start leading in cities, that that change goes up. And so looking through this, a couple of things that I just wanted to to highlight for folks. You know, 9813 is one of the zip codes in my district. And it says that a few miles away from 90803 in zip code 90813, the percentage of children under 18 living in poverty increases to 46.1%. We talk about equity a lot. And I know sometimes it's a it's a word that can trigger us to feel divisive on the council. That number right there, 46.1% of children are living in poverty. One zip code over that is what we talk about when we talk about equity. That is what we talk about. We talk about investing in our children and how how do we have an impact on public safety? How do we make sure our city is thriving and in changing and recognizing that that's a problem is the very first step. And so I just I think this is a wonderful lens to be able to look at how we govern. I know that some of us on the council have talked about initiatives for children, and I want to recognize the families that are here tonight with their children, because we know that it's now 830, so I'm not going to talk extremely much longer, but that this is a time when you should be at home reading to your kids. Right, or your kids are going to bed. So I want to thank you guys and know that at the city level, we are looking at opportunities for us to have child care on key nights and we have issues where we might have families. And so that is coming soon and I'll be there on Thursday. And I want to just echo again any opportunity with any item that we have come forward where we can talk about investing in youth and in families. I expect that this council will fully support and I look forward to partnering. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Councilman Gonzalez. I just want to say thank you as well to Kelly, Alejandro and your team for doing this really great work. I know I had been interviewed for this. And, you know, similar to what Councilmember Pearce said, you know, we don't like to highlight the negative attributes of the city and the things that we like to work on . But they're the reality oftentimes and I happen to represent and I know when three and that has been a really big not only challenge for our city but it's also been a very big priority for me to ensure that all the students in 98 went through all the kids and families really have opportunities and this provides goals and a real good baseline because we can talk about park equity and digital inclusion without really starting with a baseline for for the work. And I think that this report absolutely does that. So thank you very much for that work. And you know, in that regard, I spoke a lot about greenspace and access for kids. So in addition to early education and the goals we have here, it's like, what are they doing after school? What are they doing during the weekends? How can we really supplement a lot of the work we're doing in the early education realm with other policies that really help that? And I just had the pleasure of congratulating UN Mundo, the Amigos, the right in central Long Beach on 14th and Long Beach Boulevard. They just celebrated ten years. They offer free daycare and a very high quality daycare and I'm really proud to have that in my district. So thanks again for your work. Thank you very much. Councilwoman Gonzalez, any public comments on this item? Please state your name. Hello. My name is Andrew. Hello, Mayor. In the City Council. My name or face me or say my name is Enjoyment of HANO, a community organizer with Long Beach Forward supporting the best art central Long Beach Initiative, which is comprised of residents, families and service organizations with a focus on children ages zero through five. We have supported collaborative spaces such as the Home Visitation Collaborative and also the Long Beach Child Abuse and Neglect Network. Several of our leadership team members are here today, along with our partnership members. Some of them had to go home and everything, and some of you may actually know some of them. But these are some of the most dedicated parents I have ever came across. And I think that is shown by their commitment of staying here for over 3 hours with their children who are so tired and ready to go home and sleep. Some of them actually just left. I'm sorry. We work to ensure central Long Beach is a community where babies, children and their families are healthy and safe with the passion for life and learning. We are here to show support for the city wide early childhood education strategic plan. Several of these goals, such as increasing access and affordability of early care and education services and improve the quality of birth through age eight. Programs and services are exactly what central Long Beach needs for our community to thrive. We look forward to working with you in the future to see these goals through. Special shout out and thank you to Kristina Boatright, who is also on our leadership team, and Alejandro Moses and the countless of others who've worked on this plan. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, Honorable Vice Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Whitney Leathers, executive director for the Long Beach Day Nursery and chair for the Long Beach Early Childhood Education Committee. I'm so excited to be here tonight. More excited than you can probably tell. This plan has been long in the making and it's been a true partnership. I'm here to thank you for your support of the Early Childhood Strategic Plan and for the support of staff support from the Health Department to make this come to fruition. This plan didn't come alone as a solo effort. It came with an inclusive community, partners and process. In the creation of this plan, as you saw above with is the focus groups and what have you. We came together as a diverse group of stakeholders, and the outcome is an inclusive plan greater than we could have anticipated. As you've heard, research supports early education is key to college and career success. This plan, I'm so proud to say, not only addresses the needs of our children, but also the necessary resources and supports for our workforce and families in order for them to be successful. It's a real four feet to create this plan as a community, and the momentum around it is palpable. Now the real excitement lies within what's next implementation and expanding programs and services to young children and families. We look forward to continuing our work with the Health Department on the shared programs and events that we host, such as the Week of the Young Child, the Early Childhood Symposium and the Early Learning Festivals. We also look forward to adding to these supports, as you'll see in this strategic plan. The success of this plan will take a collaboration of partners many city departments, the ECB committee and the Long Beach Unified School District. We look forward to building these partnerships with the charge before us and meeting the goals in the plan. Before I say thank you, I want to acknowledge all of you for seeing the importance in early childhood education. LLENA Councilmember John Gonzalez In our district, I have a site and I know 813 and we're working on expansion so that we can support children and families more. We also have a site that will be hosting on Thursday and I'm excited to see many of you there and I can't wait to continue the work with our partners. So thank you so much for your ongoing support for early childhood education. I look forward to continued engagement as we move forward with the implementation over the next five years. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you know, I myself truly support this this item because the fact that my chief of staff every Saturday, she's with her little child at every one of our cleanups. So I'm just letting you know. Mrs. Mongo, get ready. Yes. Thank you very much. Would you like to take the vote, please? Now we're going to move on to item 19.