July 20, 2016
Page 7
O PINION
Your Carpet
Best Cleaning
Choice
Martin
Cleaning
Service
Carpet & Upholstery
Cleaning
Residential &
Commercial Services
Minimum Service CHG.
$45.00
A small distance/travel
charge may be applied
CARPET CLEANING
2 Cleaning Areas or
more $30.00 Each Area
Pre-Spray Traffic Areas
(Includes: 1 small Hallway)
1 Cleaning Area (only)
$40.00
Includes Pre-Spray Traffic Area
(Hallway Extra)
Stairs (12-16 stairs - With
Other Services) : $25.00
Area/Oriental Rugs:
$25.00 Minimum
Area/Oriental Rugs (Wool) :
$40.00 Minimum
Heavily Soiled Area:
Well Intended but with Devastating Consequences
Pre-school
promise risks
isolating kids of
color
by
r on h erndon
K ali t horne l add
and
Black Lives Matter… it is a
mantra we are all too familiar
with. A mantra that emerged out of
the brutality experienced from po-
lice and law enforcement. It is on
the news and in the lens of anyone
who can snap a picture. But there
is another reality not talked about
enough that gets to the heart of the
same ethos. The idea that black
children’s lives matter, and if we
don’t do something to radically
change how we support and edu-
cate them, we risk doing damage
that maintains a similar brutality
with devastating consequences for
years to come.
Portland and Oregon need to
move beyond the semantics of
“equity talk” to implementing
policies and scale programs that
do more than recycle privilege and
the status quo.
One in three black children in
Oregon live in poverty. Black
children are 4-5 times more like-
ly to be disciplined in schools, as
early as kindergarten. Nearly 70
percent of these children are high-
ly concentrated in the Portland
metro area. Forty-four percent ex-
perience food insecurity and while
49.2 percent of black households
are led by women, only 5 percent
of black women participate in
WIC (compared to 88 percent of
WIC participants that are white).
Inequities in access to some
basic fundamental needs are
rampant and lay a foundation for
whether or not children survive
or thrive. This, of course does not
take into account the added weight
and stress of systemic racism and
racial oppression that black chil-
dren and families are subject to
every day.
Hope lies in the seeds of ear-
ly-childhood and K-5 interven-
tions. These upstream solutions
are designed to lay a foundation
at the critical time when the hu-
man brain is still being formed.
Harvard research tells us that
700-1,000 neural connections are
made per second in the first year
of a child’s life. The child’s brain
is literally growing rapidly…sec-
ond by second. The good news is,
we know what to do.
As the State of Black Oregon
succinctly highlights – in order for
black youth to succeed in school,
they need the basics of good phys-
ical and mental health, a strong
cultural identity,
sufficient hours spent learning
and positive teacher interaction
and perception.
This is easier said than done
though… In a series of studies, a
University of Iowa research team
led by Andrew Todd finds imag-
es of the faces of five-year-old
black boys are sufficient to trig-
ger whites into heightened-threat
mode. “Implicit biases commonly
observed for black men appear to
generalize even to young black
boys,” the researchers write in the
journal Psychological Science.
What does that tell us? If pos-
itive teacher interaction and per-
ceptions are critical to the suc-
cess of black children, then who
spends time with them -- their race
and ethnicity -- in their most for-
mative years matters. This is true
now, more than ever.
In Multnomah County, over 600
African-American children are in
Head Start/Early Head Start. An
untold additional number are in
family-based care. Thirty percent
of the educational professionals in
these settings are people of color.
This is a significantly higher per-
centage than in the K-12 system.
How are we supporting these early
childhood professionals?
Oregon has recently introduced
the Pre-school Promise legislation
intended to seed ideas and pilots
that exemplify how we can cre-
atively support children in early
childhood and give more children
access to quality early learning ex-
periences. In the legislation was a
C ontinued on P age 15
Additional $10.00 each area
(Requiring Extensive Pre-Spraying)
UPHOLSTERY
CLEANING
Sofa: $69.00
Loveseat: $49.00
Sectional: $109 - $139
Chair or Recliner:
$25 - $49
Throw Pillows (With
Other Services) : $5.00
ADDITIONAL
SERVICES
• Area & Oriental Rug
Cleaning
• Auto/Boat/RV Cleaning
• Deodorizing & Pet
Odor Treatment
• Spot & Stain
Removal Service
• Scotchguard Protection
• Minor Water Damage
Services
SEE CURRENT FLYER
FOR ADDITIONAL
PRICES & SERVICES
Call for Appointment
(503) 281-3949