Will Newsom Mend the Gaps in State’s New Plan for Early Learning?

Here’s my latest op-ed published today in CalMatters: Will Newsom mend the gaps in state’s new plan for early learning?

California’s just released Master Plan for Early Learning and Care is smartly timed to be in line for funding, should a Biden-Harris administration secure additional resources for their ambitious caregiving initiative.

State policymakers need to address four serious gaps in the plan to ensure access to affordable care for all of California’s working families and fair compensation for the early care workforce.

Early Childhood Education Bill Package Announced

California Assemblymember Kevin McCarty held a press conference this morning with Senate and Assembly colleagues to announce a bill package, taking action on Governor Newsom’s Master Plan for Early Learning and Care released last week.

Here’s the list of the announced bills and priorities:

• AB 22 (Asm. McCarty): Universal Transitional Kindergarten – Expands UTK to all 4-year-olds.

• SB 50 (Senator Limón): The California Early Learning and Care Program establishes a coherent framework of whole-child services for children 0-6.

• Tiered Funding Rate Reform: Address inadequate funding for child care system and need to pay fair wages for a high quality early education. Legislation and Budget action to follow.

• AB 92 (Asm. Reyes): Preschool & Childcare & development services: family fees-Alleviates burden of family fees for low-income families.

• Preschool Expulsion Ban (Asm. Rubio): Prohibits suspensions and expulsions in subsidized early learning programs.

• Mandatory Kindergarten (Senator Rubio): Makes kindergarten compulsory.

 

Sacramento Voters Don’t Think Father Knows Best

Dan Walters November 9 column in the Sacramento Bee recycled timeworn arguments in defense of Measure A, the City of Sacramento’s “strong mayor” proposal defeated on November 3.

Sacramento, he wrote, is like a “gangly adolescent” not “willing to grow up,” not mature enough to adopt “a big city governance structure.”

Really? I see it differently: One of the state’s most politically sophisticated communities – more policy wonks per precinct than most municipalities – resoundingly rejected a flawed proposal that doesn’t fit their values and vision for Sacramento.

It’s not that Sacramentans don’t “get it,” that they’re not able to understand what civic sophistication really means.

Quite the opposite. The real problem is that Sacramento voters aren’t being heard by a paternalistic political elite – a small group of leaders who assume they know what’s best.

The “strong mayor” proposal was poorly timed and marketed with brash manipulation.

For many of us involved in City politics (but not part of the Mayor’s inner circle), Measure A came out of nowhere, and was strong-armed through City Council in a matter of weeks.

There were no neighborhood-based, public hearings and scant opportunity to vet a complicated proposal that would have fundamentally restructured city government.

At the two Council meetings where Measure A was deliberated, dozens of community leaders implored Councilmembers not to push forward with a city charter amendment right before “the election of our lifetimes” and in the middle of a pandemic, when people are struggling to find or keep jobs, pay rent, and quite literally, stay alive.

The appeals made no difference: Business support was already lined up, and Mayor Steinberg, Measure A’s most visible advocate, moved ahead and spent over a million dollars to promote Measure A.

You read that right: over a million dollars.

Continue reading “Sacramento Voters Don’t Think Father Knows Best”

Remembering my Father

Harry Abraham Karpilow – husband, father, teacher, friend – would have turned 100 today. He died in 2004.

I think of him often, especially this year, as I celebrate a landmark birthday. Something about the life-clock striking 65 has stirred me to reflect back, and look ahead.

My dad was a good father.

For his generation, he was especially present in our lives. We told jokes and talked politics at family dinners. He went dancing with my mother and had a monthly poker game with his buddies. He built a family cabin. Continue reading “Remembering my Father”