Upcoming Events
Family Child Care Collective Response Convening: January 4 at 1pm
Join family child care providers and advocates as they strive to streamline resources and communication across NYC to support the workforce that provides early education to our youngest children!
Bronx Impact Food Access Collective: January 5 at 12:30pm
This group of community advocates is working to realize a collective vision of food justice for all Bronx residents by identifying policy and programmatic strategies to address the structural inequities which repress equitable access to food and nutrition. The group meets bi-weekly on Tuesdays at 12:30pm.
Healing-Centered Schools Community of Learning: January 5 at 4pm
Interested in supporting the mental health and well-being of students as they return to school and navigate online learning? This group meets to discuss best-practices related to creating healing-centered schools and gain insights from SBRT’s healing centered schools pilot.
Partner Corner
New York Public Library
NYPL has been offering a variety of remote learning resources for students, educators, and parents including free online tutoring with Brainfuse and college and career-readiness counseling. For a list of their resources, click here.
My.BronxImpact
My.BronxImpact.org is a search engine for free and low-cost services like food, healthcare, housing, legal support, education, transportation, and work programs all across NYC. Begin your search here.
NYC Department of Education
The DOE is hosting a series of virtual elementary admission events for families who want to learn about 3-K, pre-K, and kindergarten admissions. Click here to register.
Supporting child care providers
This past Wednesday we testified at a joint-hearing with the Committee on Education and Committee on Women and Gender Equity concerning the impact of COVID-19 on family child care (FCC) providers and families who rely on this form of child care. Here are a few highlights from our submission:
Family child care represents 81% of child care settings in the Bronx, making it the most common form families utilize. While providing quality care and early education, FCC settings also provide rich, culturally responsive care and are often capable of offering non-traditional hours, which is especially important for children of essential workers and other working families. However, the family child care system has struggled to survive throughout the duration of the pandemic. As the new year approaches and providers who had temporarily closed look to reopen, we hope the City of New York will address the following barriers:
Loss of Income
Provide financial compensation to FCC providers for the months of lost income in order for these small businesses to survive the pandemic. Additionally, funding should be provided in the form of direct grants, not via reimbursements, and be applicable to cover rent/mortgage payments, utilities, and other overhead costs.
Challenges to Enrollment
The backlog and delay of parent certification and eligibility applications must be resolved so that funding can resume.
Inadequate Payment
Increase payments to FCC providers that reflect the true cost of child care, incorporating hazard pay to FCC providers who have cared for children throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Virtual parent community
In October we launched our South Bronx Virtual Parent Community and are hosting several parent community workshops. You can find an archive of the workshops on our Facebook page in addition to clicking the links below. We look forward to facilitating workshops on digital literacy in the new year. Stay tuned for more information!
Every Child is a Super Reader (Spanish and English)
Talking to Young Children about Stress (English)
Talking to Young Children about Stress (Spanish)
Staying Healthy During COVID-19 (Spanish and English)
Food Access (Spanish and English)
To learn more about our upcoming workshops and meet other parents in the South Bronx, join our virtual parent community Facebook group.
Bronx Digital Equity
Two weeks ago we encouraged you to demand digital equity for Bronx students by signing on to a letter to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza. Your voice was heard along with 204 others. Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza have received the letter and we will continue to hold them accountable to these demands:
Provide appropriate digital devices to ALL students immediately
Hold internet service providers accountable
Improve communication to families around distribution of devices and other technology support
Increase resources for technology assistance for students and families
Establish digital security and privacy
Address educational neglect cases involving technology issues
Ensure quality of remote learning
Thank you for your support!
Meet the team
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be re-introducing our team to you and sharing a bit about ourselves. This week we’re highlighting our Early Learning Systems Manager, Lara Kyriakou, who has been with SBRT since October 2018.
Lara has over 10 years of experience in the early childhood field, with a particular focus on parents and children in the first three years of life. Prior to joining SBRT, she was a project manager at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Lara earned her Master’s Degree in Human Development from the University of Pennsylvania.