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‘City of Roses’
Volume XLV
Number 29
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • July 20, 2016
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Photo Courtesy n aim h asan PhotograPhy
Albina Head Start staff members Valerie Thomas and Evelyn Lopez join hands with their preschool kids and long time Portland education advocate Serena Stoudamire
Wesley (center) during a special visit earlier this year. The most diverse Head Start staff in Oregon is poised to be on the losing end of a new state law that penalizes early
education providers that hire parents and people of color with practical experience over new employees with college degrees.
Preschool Promise Conflict
New requirements
fail kids of color,
advocates say
C ervante P oPe
t he P ortland o bserver
Early education serves as an important
avenue for a child’s transition into their
future formative years, but recently imple-
mented legislation could negatively impact
some of these children culturally.
A shift in requirements rolled in by
the Oregon Preschool Promise demands
a Bachelor of Arts degree from present
and future early development educators,
by
which could potentially hinder the needed
educational relationship between minority
students and their culturally experienced
preschool instructors.
Part of the legislation, which passed
in December, is beneficial. The Oregon
Department of Education’s Early Learn-
ing Division seeks to award a handful of
early learning facilities with funded con-
tracts that would expand preschool options
across the state. But the attempt to increase
the quality of instructors in the process
risks isolating kids of color, especially at
Albina Head Start, the most diverse Head
Start staff in Oregon, a program with a de-
cade of flawless federal reviews and annual
local audits.
According to longtime backers of the
organization, the legislation devalues the
experience of well-trained instructors who
have deep cultural knowledge and par-
enting experience to create good learning
conditions for some of our most vulnerable
children.
Kali Ladd, executive director for the
KairosPDX Early Learning network, says
the problem with Oregon Promise is that
there are “unintended consequences.” Kai-
rosPDX is a non-profit organization that
tackles some of the consequences of Port-
land’s low minority graduation rates and
educational inequity.
The group provides culturally compe-
tent consulting and services to current in-
home providers and families, friends and
neighbors who serve under-represented
youth including low-income youth and
youth of color.
KairosPDX has been in place in Port-
land for years, including Albina Head Start,
whose instructors risk being negatively af-
fected by the Preschool Promise decree.
“In my 40 plus years with Head Start,
I have seen absolutely no connection be-
tween a BA and a good teacher,” says
Ron Herndon, the director of Albina Head
Start. “This is not about professionalizing;
we don’t need this veneer of respectability
placed upon us by people on the outside
that feel this is going to help.”
According to Herndon, Albina Head
Start has the most diverse demographics
C ontinued on P age 15