Why Early Care and Education Policies Must Advance Equity and Protect Civil Rights

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, March 9, 2022

As a former graduate of Early Head Start and Head Start programs in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood on the eastside of Los Angeles, I know the tremendous benefits that early childhood education programs had on myself and my family, particularly my mother who immigrated to the United States from México. As a working-class parent, my mom was able to volunteer in these programs while I participated in school readiness activities, ate healthy snacks, and played safely with other kids in the program. We both benefited from these programs and developed a trusting relationship with the staff and providers at the Park Place Head Start Daycare Center, who reflected the community members of Boyle Heights.

Early care and education programs transform the lives of young children, their families, and others who care for them. Research also shows that early childhood education programs have lifelong benefits for children, especially children of color and low-income families, for their overall well-being and educational outcomes. For me, I know that my participation in a high-quality and culturally responsive early care and education program provided lifelong investments in school readiness, social emotional growth, and all-around health benefits.

Our Schools Need More Counseling, Not Criminalization

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, August 5, 2020

Source: civilrights.org

Source: civilrights.org

The civil rights community’s vision for the treatment of children is that schools make investments in evidence-based policies and practices that keep children and staff safe, support learning, and do not exacerbate the school-to-prison pipeline, further criminalize marginalized children, or increase the over-policing of students in schools and communities.

The nation is at an inflection point with the role and presence of law enforcement agencies in marginalized communities as Black, Native, and Latinx people continue to be unjustly targeted by police officers. Youth advocates are — and have been — leading the way in K12 schools and on college campuses in cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Denver, Phoenix, Rochester, and Fort Collins. In some instances, justice-minded leaders are joining with them in the call for safe, inclusive, and healthy schools without law enforcement. National and state policymakers must follow this leadership and ensure Black, Native, and Latinx children and other historically marginalized students attend schools that include the supportive professionals that build positive learning environments and are free from school-based law enforcement.

Source: imaginelearning.com/

Source: imaginelearning.com/

The majority of students in the K-12 public education system attend mid-to-high poverty schools, (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019) which frequently results in lower educational outcomes. Furthermore, there is a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students who attend high-poverty public schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019), which perpetuates the racial achievement gaps in academic outcomes. One of the critical factors that contribute to this educational inequity in schools of poverty is the lack of resources, instructional materials, and financial support. Educational equity is defined by the varying needs of students across this country who receive individualized support to achieve academic and social success.

Educational equity is impacted by many contributing factors such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, language proficiency, learning disability status, and other social or cultural factors. In order to achieve educational equity, students who hold unique identities, regardless of these contributing factors, should receive an adequate amount of resources, human capital, instructional time, and all other encompassing academic and social support to ensure that they are learning and growing at their full potential. School district leaders, administrators, teachers, policymakers, and elected officials play an instrumental role in ensuring that students receive the appropriate resources they need to succeed.

Gente De Boyle Heights — Rise and Stand for Your Community

The Berkeley Public Policy Journal, September 19, 2017

Photo: Boyle Heights Beat

Photo: Boyle Heights Beat

"On the outside, non-native Angelenos see Boyle Heights as a cultural war zone where residents are fighting for their lives. Some people might assume that there is a mass of white affluent Angelenos packing their bags from the Westside to the Eastside. Others view that the nearly 100,000 residents of the neighborhood are either fighting against or for the economic forces of gentrification and change. However, the changes in Boyle Heights are less meaningful to most community members.

In reality, the typical Boyle Heights resident does not think about whether they should purchase coffee at Weird Wave Coffee Roasters –the recent target of organized protests and small-time vandalism– or at a Latino-owned business-like Primera Taza; the typical Boyle Heights resident faces systematically racist issues that go deeper than any new coffee shop or art gallery that pops up in the neighborhood.

Both of my parents immigrated from México to Boyle Heights in the late 1960s, and attended Theodore Roosevelt High School in the 1970s, when it was widely considered one of the worst schools in the nation. My mother actually never graduated from high school — she is one of millions of students of color the system failed."

Photo: Getty Image

Photo: Getty Image

Sitting inside local-beloved La Moscata Bakery (which recently underwent its own revitalization) about a mile south from gentrification battle groundWeird Wave Coffee Roasters, Almazan explains why residents of Boyle Heights—a community whose roots in activism was documented in the film East LA Interchange and has become the symbol of the anti-gentrification movement—are defending their neighborhood so zealously.

"At the end of the day, we have to come up with unconventional, creative policy solutions that address systemically racist policies that have prevented families in low-income neighborhoods from purchasing homes,” says Almazan. “I would argue that the majority of elected officials in LA do not see gentrification as an issue. In the public policy world, a city will intervene on an issue when [they] decide this is an issue impacting the majority of people in a neighborhood.”

Gentrification should be tackled with the same urgency as California’s water crisis, Almazan says, and Angelenos should vote for local and state candidates “who are willing to take the risk of putting their name behind a policy that actually put the needs of the community first before profit.”

Steven Almazan, a Boyle Heights native who was present at the protest, has been conducting research and analysis on displacement, affordable housing, and potential equity building opportunities for low-income families in marginalized communities for his masters in Public Policy from UC Berkeley. Almazan considers himself and other upwardly mobile, college-educated Latinxs from the community "gentefiers," and sees the strife around Weird Wave as indicative of a much larger issue facing Boyle Heights and other lower-income communities nationwide.

"When I started working in LAUSD, right after my college graduation, I was excited to help the next generation of kids from my neighborhood. But while I understood teaching theory, I struggled to manage my boisterous class – and my students struggled as a result. Additionally, despite my requests for assistance, I wasn’t given the coaching I needed from school leadership. Then, with three months left in my first year of teaching, I was informed that my contract with LAUSD wouldn’t be renewed.

Hearing that I would not be returning to LAUSD was crushing. However, I still knew I had potential. With time and the right guidance, I believed I could be a great teacher. Because I wasn’t granted permanent status (also known as tenure), I couldn’t go back to work in my district. But I learned that KIPP LA, a charter school in my old neighborhood, was hiring. I applied and was hired."

Teachers need more than 18 months to grow professionally

The Berkeley Public Policy Journal, May 1, 2017

Not all residents are on board with this militant approach. “Some groups have found very extreme ways to show that they’re against changes in the neighborhood, ways that show this place is only for a very specific group of people,” Steven Almazan, a teacher in the Boyle Heights area, told CityLab last year. “The neighborhood shouldn’t say, ‘Get out—this place is mine.’ You want to find a balance. We want investment from the city here,” he says.

Older advocacy groups like the East Los Angeles Community Corporation, or ELACC, have a more compromise-based approach, building affordable housing developments in the area and trying to secure tenants better deals during evictions and displacements. But after many years of work, they ended up coming under fire for forcing residents out and planning unwanted developments.

The Neighborhood That Went to War Against Gentrifiers

The Atlantic — City Lab, March 1, 2017

The Guardian found one dissenting voice: Steven Almazan, a former neighborhood council member currently pursuing a Master’s in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said the anti-gentrification resistance jarred with the area’s melting pot history: Japanese and European Jews settled here before Mexicans.

“The fact they’re using racially-based tactics is a bit demoralising. Boyle Heights once was seen as the Ellis Island of the west coast. It shouldn’t be a place of contention. Art galleries do not cause gentrification. They’re a byproduct of systemic issues. There has to be a more productive way for the city, developers and the folks of Boyle Heights to [advance] the discussion.”

“Gentefication occurs when upwardly mobile, college-educated Latinos return to their old neighborhood and invest their time, money, and interests in [that neighborhood],” says Steven Almazan, a Boyle Heights resident who returned after graduating from USC and now teaches special education there. “I’ll come out and say I consider myself a gentefier.”

Almazan says that with pride. For him and for some other residents, being a gentefier means being part of a neighborhood revitalization effort that protects the area from invasion by richer (and whiter) outsiders, who they argue are more likely to displace residents.

Defining 'Gentefication' in Latino Neighborhoods

The Atlantic — City Lab, August 15, 2016

Where do these successes come from? What makes a great school in Los Angeles? According to Avellan and Almazan, there are a variety of factors that have led to their schools’ successes.

"(The school's success) starts with the human capital we have on staff," Almazan said. "The school has done an amazing job of recruiting talent and it’s talent that reflects the neighborhood."

Blended learning is another major factor Almazan attributes to success. This is a teaching technique that customizes students’ work to their individual skill level. They do it with laptops — each student has one.

"Being able to differentiate our instruction and activities the students work on so specifically has been supported through the technology we use," Almazan said.

Sadly, I am the exception--not the rule--in terms of college access for members of my community. Most of my neighborhood friends were pulled into gangs, and pushed out of school. I was one of the first in my family to attend college, and during my time at the University of Southern California (USC), I worked with a group of my college peers to support high school students in organizing around the School Climate Bill of Rights for LAUSD in 2012. The School Climate Bill of Rights resolution, which was adopted by the LAUSD School Board last year, guaranteed a safe, high-quality school for every student, recognizing that an appropriate learning environment is a prerequisite for improved academic achievement. 

School Climate Data Is an Equity Issue

Education Week, May 14, 2014