Strong Start Santa Clara County

Santa Clara County Office of Education Resource and Referral department has been working with the county's Public Health Department to disseminate the guidance in the Mandatory Directive for Programs Serving Children or Youth (available at www.sccgov.org/childcare) to childcare providers. Slides from weekly webinars on specific topics will be posted at SCCOE's Stronger Together page (https://www.sccoe.org/reopening-schools/Pages/default.aspx).

The 2020 Santa Clara County Voters' Guide on Children's Issues is out today at www.sccvoteforkids.org. Almost 450,000 children in Santa Clara County need the adults in their community to vote with them in mind. Visit the guide to learn where candidates for state legislature, county, school board and city council stand on issues affecting children and their families. Our thanks to all the candidates who responded.

Strong Start's partners at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation Choose Children campaign have organized a candidate forum on early childhood education for the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors District 3 election. The event is on Thursday 10/8 at 10 AM and you can register for free at https://svcn.regfox.com/choose-children-candidate-forum

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation has released the results of polling on early learning and care issues, conducted as part of its Choose Children initiative. The results show strong support for increasing access to high quality early care and education programs, including: More than 7 in 10 voters (71%) said that there is a need for additional funding for childcare programs in the area on par with the need for public safety, environmental programs and public transp...ortation. Sixtyfive percent of voters said that the struggle parents face in balancing childcare and work is a very serious problem. Eightyfour percent of voters support making high quality childcare and preschool for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers affordable for all families. Eightytwo percent of voters support guaranteed three months of paid family leave for new parents to care for their newborn child. Nearly 3 in 4 parents in Supervisorial District 3 with children under age 5 (73%) report not being able to rely on their usual childcare provider during the pandemic. The majority of parents of young children surveyed (55%) say that paying for childcare is a financial strain on their family. You can learn more about Choose Children at www.choosechildren.org and read the press release at https://tinyurl.com/yxtxwc9m See more

We know that ECE programs are suffering from the effects of COVID-19. A new @AmericanInstitutesforResearch and @EarlyEdgeCA survey looks at how #COVID19 has affected these programs, which are widely considered to be critical for children's development. Dual language learners appear to be disproportionately affected by program closures and reduced enrollment, and many programs continue to to face great challenges and express urgent needs for funding and guidance. Learn more: https://bit.ly/32QO75V

Steps to Success In July, district superintendents received a letter from Dr. Mary Ann Dewan, County Superintendent of Schools, formally announcing the launch of the county’s early learning enrollment campaign (Steps to Success Campaign). Through partnerships with districts and county early learning partners, the goal of the campaign is to message the impact of early learning enrollment and regular attendance in preschool, TK, and K throughout our community in order to increa...se enrollment. As a part of this campaign, the SCCOE will be developing e-resources and print materials, toolkits, websites, and additional collateral on an ongoing basis. Messaging about these materials will take place through county partnerships, via social media, and additional high-visibility media channels. Over the course of the past few months, the SCCOE has developed two centralized online resources for enrollment: Resource 1: The county early learning enrollment resource website (which can be found at https://www.sccoe.org/resources/early-learning-enrollment) provides families with information about the importance of early learning, the value of consistent attendance, health and well-being resources for enrollment, as well as links to every district’s enrollment webpage. This website is a compilation of all resources used in enrollment processes across our districts. Please note that content is being added regularly to the site. Should you have any additional ideas to add to the site, please don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected]. Resource 2: As of July 1st, the Santa Clara County Office of Education is the new Child Care Resource and Referral for Santa Clara County. To further this effort, the Santa Clara County Office of Education developed a countywide, centralized child care portal which can be found at www.childcarescc.org. This portal can be used by all families to search for safe, licensed childcare and preschool options in our county. Please note that this resource is in its first iteration and will be expanded upon greatly in the weeks to come. In the next iteration, families will be able to create accounts and save their applications for the future. Should you have any questions or ideas for future content and key messaging, please do not hesitate to reach out to [email protected]