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2021 Legislative Recap

2021 Legislative Recap

by | Jul 7, 2021 | Podcast, Oregon Policy

On this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto speaks with three guests about the latest legislative session in Oregon. They talk about highs and lows, what passed and did not in the interest of children and families, and what it was like to move through the session virtually.

Guests:

Dana Hepper is the director of policy & advocacy at Children’s Institute, overseeing the organization’s legislative advocacy and community engagement work. 

Anthony Castaneda works as the policy manager at Latino Network, a non-profit transforming the lives of Latino children, youth, and families in the Portland metro area. 

Amanda Manjarrez brings creative leadership and a deep commitment to social justice to her work as director of public policy and government affairs at Foundations for a Better Oregon. 

Summary:

The guests agree that the general mood for early childhood advocates post-session is “hopeful and exhausted!” While there were challenges associated with the pivot to a virtual legislative session, it was largely more accessible to those who could not easily make the commute to Salem. Parents, providers, and community members from around the state were able to successfully advocate for legislation that will support Oregon children and families.

Transcript

Rafael Otto: This is the Early Link Podcast. I’m Rafael Otto. Thanks for tuning in. You can catch us on the airwaves on 99.1 FM in Portland on Sunday at 4:30 PM or subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts.

Today, I’m speaking with three guests about the latest legislative session here in Oregon for 2021. We’ll be talking about highs and lows. What passed, what didn’t and in the interest of keeping it in the interest of children and families. We’ll also talk about what it was like to move through session virtually; hopefully the only time we’ll have to do it that way. I’ll be talking with Amanda Manjarrez from Foundations for a Better Oregon, Anthony Castaneda from Latino Network, and Dana Hepper from Children’s Institute.

Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me today on the podcast.

Anthony Castaneda: Hi there.

Dana Hepper: Thank you.

Amanda Manjarrez: Thank you.

Rafael Otto: First of all, let’s just kind of check in. Is there a sigh of relief now that the session has passed us? And that work is over and we’re just a little bit of a pause. What’s the mood?

Anthony, do you want to start?

Anthony Castaneda: Sure. I think, at least for me, the dust is still settling. I’m beginning to understand what really has happened. What are some of the changes, and what were some of the successes, and what were some of the failures for us.

Rafael Otto: Amanda, Dana, how’re you feeling?

Amanda Manjarrez: I think that captures it pretty well. There’s a lot of dust. I think a lot happened in the final week of the session, even for folks who were tracking it or have been tracking it pretty closely for the last five months. And so I would say in terms of how I’m feeling? Um, hopeful and exhausted.

Rafael Otto: Dana, what do you think?

Dana Hepper: Yeah, I would have to agree there. Exhausted is a great descriptor of what us, and including legislators, are all feeling right now. In fact, the speaker of the house kind of wrapped up the session saying, “Hey, I want you all to take a break in July. Don’t do any work.” So I think that all speaks to how we’re feeling.

We know what bills passed and didn’t pass but we’re still trying to uncover why.

Rafael Otto: I want to talk about some of the specific bills and talk about what those highlights are. But I know it was a strange session for advocates for a lot of reasons, because it was virtual. It just made the work of advocacy, I think, a lot more difficult.

Amanda, do you have thoughts on that? What was it like for you?

Amanda Manjarrez: Yeah. So it was an interesting session for many reasons. As you mentioned, it was all virtual because of the pandemic, but also, 2020 has been a little crazy. And so I think heading into session, while many of us are navigating the pandemic and trying to think about how we can continue to move Oregon forward, there was a lot of banding together to figure out how we could work collectively to advance some of the longstanding and complex educational challenges that we’re facing. So we actually worked closely with the coalition called the Oregon Partners for Education Justice. I think I’ve mentioned that previously in this podcast.

Rafael Otto: Yeah.

Amanda Manjarrez: Yeah. A cross-cultural network of dozens of community organizations, culturally specific groups, education advocates, etc., who are championing racially just policies. It was… I think, on the positive side, more accessible than it’s ever been. I would say I would give the legislative session a mixed bag because in terms of accessibility and inclusivity, we had communities from across Oregon who were actually able to engage in the way that they had never had before.

Folks didn’t have to travel to Salem to testify, especially for our partners out in Eastern Oregon. That’s a long journey. A better online platform emerged, I think by necessity. And to a certain extent, lobbyists and members of the public were actually navigating some of the same online information.

So it did level access in a way for folks who don’t spend their time in Salem. And so I know that many of our partners within the coalition, myself, others, spent countless hours tracking legislation online, meeting with policy makers virtually, wordsmithing, bill submitting, letters, etc. And you could actually see the growing influence of that community engagement, and culturally specific partners being able to show up and share their experience through the process.

That said, in terms of transparency, I do think, to Dana’s point, same old. Decisions are often made behind closed doors, and you know, it’s a little more challenging when you can’t go to a legislator’s office, talk to their staff, have a conversation about what’s going on with some of these budgets.

And oftentimes items are posted without much time for review. So you’ll get documents that, you know, a hundred-plus pages that are posted a few hours before a public hearing begins. And in some cases, especially towards the end, the public hearings go away. So I do think we have a lot of work to do in terms of transparency. But I do hope that there are parts of this virtual session that sustain moving forward, because I do think it made it accessible for folks who hadn’t been part of it in the past.

Rafael Otto: Dana, Anthony, do you have additions to that?

Dana Hepper: This is Dana. I just really agree. I think being able to meet with legislators from home or from work, being able to testify at hearings remotely, was really important for people from all across Oregon, to be able to participate in the process in that way. And I hope we hold on to that more inclusive approach even as the Capitol building reopens to the public. But yeah, Amanda rightly named a really big con, which was, if the only way to contact a legislator is to call them or email them or text them, and they don’t necessarily call you or email you or text you back, you’re just kind of stuck. Whereas when, you know, Amanda, Anthony, I, people who are professional advocates can be in the building, we can usually find someone within a day or so and try to get the answers that we need. Why is the bill being killed or what is the controversy? This time it was just so much harder to get that information, even for us who do this for a living. And that makes it harder for us to communicate that back to the communities across Oregon that we work with.

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Oregon, National Reports Provide Child Well-being Data, Address Need for Continued Investment in Early Childhood

Oregon, National Reports Provide Child Well-being Data, Address Need for Continued Investment in Early Childhood

by | Jun 28, 2021 | Podcast, Child Care, Community Engagement, National Research, Oregon Research

On this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto speaks with Jenifer Wagley and Chris Coughlin from Our Children Oregon about their advocacy work, and what the data is telling us about children and families in Oregon and across the country.

Guests:

Jenifer Wagley is the CEO and Executive Director of Our Children Oregon, an advocacy and research organization committed to improving child well-being statewide so all children and youth can achieve their full potential. The organization was born under her leadership after she successfully led the merger of two historic Oregon organizations, Children First for Oregon and The Children’s Trust Fund of Oregon. Jenifer brings more than 15 years of deep experience in community development, grass-roots power building, and organizational leadership. She was a 2018 recipient of the national Local Initiative Support Corporation Rubinger Fellowship. Jenifer spent her fellowship year working to build bridges across a divided nation. Her time spent writing, researching, traveling the country, and presenting and engaging diverse audiences eventually led her to Oregon. Jenifer is driven by her passion to create a more equitable, healthy, and loving society.

Chris Coughlin has extensive policy, advocacy, communications, coalition management, and outreach experience. She has worked with communities, non-profits, political campaigns, and businesses, as staff, consultant, and volunteer on a wide range of issues for more than 30 years. Chris has focused much of her work in non-profit management having served as Executive Director of several non-profits. Chris has worked on policy issues impacting children and families including child welfare, health care, education funding, and tax and revenue issues.

Summary:

Jennifer provides an overview of Our Children Oregon and describes the organizations “whole-child philosophy.” Next, Jennifer and Chris describe the state trends in child well-being found in the KIDS COUNT Data Book and share what story the 32 years of data is telling us about how Oregon’s children are doing. They also describe what the data tells us about the impacts of COVID on children and families and discuss the benefits of the new Child Tax Credit. Finally, Jennifer and Chris look ahead to the next 30 years of data collection and share what changes they hope to see for children nationally and in Oregon.

Additional Resources:

Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’

CBS News 2021 Child Tax Credit Information

IRS Child Tax Credit FAQ

2021 KIDS COUNT Data Book

Transcript

Rafael Otto: [00:00:00] This is the Early Link Podcast. I’m Rafael Otto. As usual, you can catch us on the airwaves on 99.1 FM in Portland on Sundays at 4:30 PM or subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts. Today, I’m speaking with Jenifer Wagley and Chris Coughlin from Our Children Oregon. Jenifer is the executive director and Chris is the policy advocacy and engagement director. Both have extensive experience working on advocacy and policy in the nonprofit sector on issues relevant to children and families. We’re going to get into that and talk about some of those things today and take a look at the data picture. What’s happening for children and families in Oregon and across the country.

Jenifer and Chris, great to have you here today.

 Jenifer, I thought maybe you could start. Could you provide an overview of Our Children Oregon and the role of your organization and advocating for children in the state?

Jenifer Wagley: [00:00:51] Yeah, thank you. Our Children Oregon is the only whole child children’s advocacy organization in the state of Oregon. And what that means is that we are intersectional and that we bring together well over a hundred partner organizations throughout the state to develop a shared agenda for all of the children in Oregon.

And then we put that together in the children’s agenda and advocate for that so that children and youth across the state have representatives in us and in the capital.

Rafael Otto: [00:01:24] Can you say a little bit more about your whole-child philosophy and how that shapes your work?

Jenifer Wagley: [00:01:29] Yeah. A lot of organizations focus on particular concerns and opportunities that children need. And for us, the approach is really to be intersectional. Children don’t live in sectors and when I’m talking to, you know, regular people, it’s like, you know, you don’t live in the education sector, you don’t live in the healthcare sector.

I mean it takes a lot of things for a child to thrive. Whole-child is really just representing that it takes everybody leaning in together, all sectors, to have healthy thriving children. So our work is to bring those organizations and the communities together so that we have a comprehensive, whole look at what it takes for children and youth to reach their full potential.

Rafael Otto: [00:02:07] Can you say a little bit about that? Maybe Chris, if you want to chime in too about how you manage that in terms of developing a policy agenda with so many organizations at the table and so many issue areas for you, how do you make that? How do you make that happen?

Chris Coughlin: [00:02:21] Well, it’s a lot of work and our partnerships are really important. So we have a steering committee of nine members, who are those subject matter experts in those different areas whether it be housing or early childhood or broader education, wellbeing, healthcare, and others. So that we have people at the table and the steering committee helping look through the different policies  that are potentially moving forward and really thinking through what’s going to have the biggest impact on children’s lives and how do we also think a lot about what needs and extra booth. Because there are a lot of good ideas out there and there are a lot of ways money can be spent. But we really want to think about  targeted universalism of thinking about which policies and investments can make the biggest impact for those children and families who are furthest from the universal finish line. And that is something that we always keep in mind. And so look at data, we think about what are those targeted investments that can be made. Then we look to our partners for both what they’re working on, what are best practices from other parts of the country and obviously the political landscape is also a consideration as we’re moving things forward.

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Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis & How to Fix It with Elliot Haspel

Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis & How to Fix It with Elliot Haspel

by | Jun 21, 2021 | Podcast, Child Care, Policy Trends

On this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto speaks with Elliot Haspel, an early childhood policy expert and author of the book “Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It.”

Guest:

Elliot Haspel is a nationally-recognized early childhood policy expert and author of the book “Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It.” Elliot’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, among other mediums. Elliot is a program officer at a philanthropic foundation in Richmond, Virginia.

Summary:

Elliot describes what the child care crisis looks like today and talks about what has (and has not) changed since his book was released in 2019. He discusses the impact of COVID-19 on an already fragile system and provides historical background on the constellation of issues facing a functioning child care system. Elliot also breaks down the economic return on investing in free, universal child care and describes the goal of Child Care NEXT, a grant program to support transformational change in five states’ child-care systems. Finally, Elliot emphasizes the importance of focusing on racial equity when working towards an effective child care system for all.

Additional Reading

Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It

36 States Enter National Pool for Child Care NEXT Transformation Grants

Transcript

Rafael Otto: [00:00:00] This is the Early Link Podcast. I’m Rafael Otto. As usual, you can catch us on the airwaves on 99.1 FM in Portland on Sundays at 4:30 PM or subscribe and listen wherever you find your podcasts. Today, I’m speaking with Elliot Haspel, who is a nationally recognized early childhood policy expert and author of the book “Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It.”

Elliot’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post among other places. And he is a program officer at a philanthropic foundation in Richmond, Virginia. Elliot, welcome! It’s great to have you on the podcast today.

Elliot Haspel: [00:00:35] Thanks so much for having me.

Rafael Otto: [00:00:38] I wanted to start by talking to you about your book, which came out in 2019, and it takes a look at the child care crisis in the country. I know things have changed, or I’m hoping they’ve changed a little bit, since 2019, but maybe not enough. But can you talk about the crisis and sort of where we are today? Paint the picture for us.

Elliot Haspel: [00:00:57] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s been an eventful year-and-a-half since the book came out. So the child care crisis in the US is still raging. It’s just the contours look a little bit different now than they did back in 2019. So what is described as a child care crisis is the fact that child care is largely unaffordable, inaccessible, of questionable quality, and is a sector where practitioners are getting paid miserably low wages.

So it’s not working for anyone. There’s no part of it that… no one is benefiting from the system. It’s not working for parents. It’s not working for providers. It’s not working for businesses and it’s not working for kids. And a lot of that has historical roots going all the way back to the founding of the country and going through our history. But what’s happening right now, you know, the pandemic really brought the hammer down on an already fragile industry. So, you know, where the beginning of the pandemic, when all the child care programs had to basically close, except for those that were serving the children of healthcare workers and other frontline workers. It was an existential crisis because the way we treat child care in this country, we treat child care programs more like restaurants than we do like public schools or libraries. And what that means is they need paying customers to stay in business. And all of a sudden the customers were gone. There were surveys coming out, which I think were accurate, that without any kind of government assistance, we would lose half of the child care programs in the country.

Rafael Otto: [00:02:27] Right.

Elliot Haspel: [00:02:28] Now there were some trials, some government assistance with the CARES act, and you know, the PPP loans, all those things, were able to kind of keep the sector afloat during the worst of the pandemic. And then the American Rescue Plan, the December stimulus combined for about 49 billion dollars which is truly a historic investment in child care.

So the sector has been stabilized. The devastation that we were facing didn’t come to pass because we were able to glue it together with assistance. But now there’s this sort of additional knock-on crisis, which is child care programs are having a huge trouble finding staff.

So, while we’ve heard of labor issues across the country. In child care, it is particularly bad because there are mandated child to adult ratios, right? That means that if you don’t have enough teachers, you just can’t open all the classrooms you otherwise would be able to.

That’s becoming more of a problem as the median wage for child care workers is about $11.65/hr. Other industries, fast food, retail, you know, are raising their wages, they’re offering better benefits. Child care programs have no ability to just take a little bit less profit and make that up cause they weren’t making any real profit to begin with.

So, yeah, we’re really in a moment where it’s sort of been crisis after crisis after crisis.

Rafael Otto: [00:03:42] Can you talk a little bit about the historical background. I know you said going all the way back to the founding of the country, and a little bit more recently, we could point to maybe some progress that had been starting to get made in the sixties and the seventies. And that was held up.

Can you talk a little bit about the history that is informing the current crisis today?

Elliot Haspel: [00:04:01] Yeah.

So to begin with, you can’t separate out understanding  American child care from understanding how ambivalent America has been about mothers of young children working. For the first child care, sort of external child care that existed in the country, came in two forms, right?

One were enslaved women who were forced to care for the children and their enslavers. And the second was sort of these charities set up basically as holding pans for kids of widowed mothers, or truly like, destitute mothers who had no choice but to go and work, you know, in the late 1800s. We’ve never really shaken out of that.

There has always been sort of this reluctance, or exploitive, you know, system, that we’ve never sort of embraced the idea, even though we espouse gender equity these days, this idea that women and mothers should be able to go and work outside the home if they want to, and they should have viable high quality care options available to them so that they can do that.

Or if they don’t, if they want to work part-time, whatever the situation that they want, they should be empowered. We’ve never acted that out. We have a child care system that really rests on a welfare frame. You mentioned the sixties and and the seventies and there was this moment in that 1971 Congress passed the comprehensive child development act, which would have created much more of a nationally or federally funded child care system.

But it was vetoed by president Nixon, in pretty strong language and really, putting the kind of stake in the ground that the federal government should not be involved in the family. Right? And so it really cemented this idea that child care is a family responsibility, it’s not a societal responsibility and the ghosts of ‘71 continue to haunt us to today.

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Creating Connection and Community at Chaku-Hayash Khapa Q’at Pi T’wax

Creating Connection and Community at Chaku-Hayash Khapa Q’at Pi T’wax

by | May 12, 2021 | News, Parents and Families

The most recent addition to the campus at the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) is an outdoor learning landscape called Chaku-Hayash Khapa Q’at Pi T’wax, a name in the Chinook language that translates to English as “Where We Grow in Love and Light.”

I visited recently on a warm Friday afternoon with the sun pouring through the indigenous Cottonwood trees and many people gathering in the shade. The learning landscape currently takes up a small portion of the campus at NAYA, an area approximately 100 x 100 feet. The rest of the NAYA campus takes up 10 acres in total and stretches from NE Columbia Boulevard in Portland all the way down to the Columbia Slough. About five acres are reserved for outdoor activities including community events, powwows, family exercise groups, and gardening. It also serves as a place for wildlife to thrive.

“When we purchased the land in 2007, it was a way of reclaiming it for Native purposes,” said Paul Lumley, NAYA’s executive director. “We surveyed the community and people wanted to use the land to express themselves culturally.”

The idea to use a portion of the land for the learning landscape started more recently and grew from the desire to create a community gathering space designed for everyone, from young children to elders in the NAYA community.  

Mick Rose, the culture, education, and wellness manager at NAYA described the effort as one that is building and strengthening community. “It’s an act of living in abundance, it’s sacred work,” Rose said. “We are part of a community and we are creating it with and for each other.”

Lumley said that Rose carried the dream for the learning landscape and holds the vision for how the five acres will eventually be used. That includes a children’s plank house, walking paths, patios, and a network of gardens growing traditional foods such as the Three Sisters, the combination of corn, beans, and squash which, when eaten together, create complete proteins.  

Rose said that the vision for the space doesn’t belong to one person, but rather belongs to the community. “We talked to the elders about it, and they really supported it. The community supported it. The work had really been planned for years, but people were afraid to take it on. The pandemic actually helped bring people together to get the work moving.”

Suzie Kuerschner from the Future Generations Collaborative (FGC) said the idea for the space started with a dream, and people are now making the dream come true. “We wanted to create a multigenerational place of nurture and exploration, a place where traditional knowledge could inform best practice and where cultural traditions are celebrated,” she said. FGC has been a long-time NAYA partner. The FGC Education Mode collaboratively designed and funded the project, which was, in turn, honored by the generosity of the hearts and hands of the people who embedded cultural values and reflected these elements through the carved, cedar canoe and traditional hammocks.

Lumley said that the space is more than a space for play, but a place kids and families can get in touch with the environment and the earth. “We often forget where food comes from. Here, people can learn how to grow their own food and do it themselves. Kids can learn that.”

The space also fosters the ability to explore and focus on historical resistance as opposed to historical trauma.

Monique Lopez, a community education worker at NAYA, said that understanding historical trauma is necessary, but focusing on historical strengths is more powerful. “I decided to stop generational trauma in my own life,” she said. “And this space is about empowering the next generation to find their traditional ways.”

Alberta Qamar, a parent-child support specialist at NAYA, described the importance of the concept of resistance in her Afro-Indigenous heritage. “Our ancestors fought and resisted, and they would have wanted this for us, wanted us to gather in this space, in this way, working to strengthen our culture and our families. NAYA helps create a space for that and has helped me reconnect with indigenous practices as part of my lineage.”

Rose added, “These kinds of spaces allow us to do that. They help so many to live a life of liberation.”

Inside the learning landscape, children can explore a multisensory environment. This teaches risk benefit instead of risk management, and that promotes internal control, self-governance and self-discipline.

Lumley said, “The environment itself is a manager of behavior, and it stimulates cognitive and motor development.”

“Indigenous people all over the world know the power of creating spaces like this,” Rose said. “Green spaces, places to explore, places to play. Kids need that. Adults need it, too.”

Kuerschner described Chaku-Hayash Khapa Q’at Pi T’wax as a project that tells a story of people and place. “It creates positive community momentum and pride,” she said. In many ways, the space is about creating and sustaining connections: keeping indigenous people connected to the environment and nature, keeping children, adults, and elders connected to each other and their heritage, and strengthening the relationship between indigenous traditions and learning.

On the day I visited, Lukas Angus was continuing the work of carving a canoe for the space, one that would work on the water if desired but would also be for children to play with and learn from. “A canoe this size was used historically to gather food. This one uses a Nez Perce shape and design,” Angus said. “This dugout style canoe was not especially elegant or seaworthy, but was used to harvest Wapato roots in the Columbia Slough.” Today, Wapato remains threatened by pollution and no longer grows in the Slough near the NAYA campus, but Angus would like to help it return.

“We learn from the land, we learn from the elders and from multiple generations,” Kuerschner said. “When we started work on the space, someone suggested we take the Cottonwood trees down to create room.” Laughing, she continued, “I said we can’t do that, they’re indigenous just like we are.”

 

Qamar’s son played in the gravel and built what looked like a small city with shells and stones. At one point he moved to the canoe, playing with the fresh shavings from Angus’s work. Her younger son slept in the hammock in the shade of the Cottonwood trees. Eyes closed, dreaming perhaps, he unknowingly represented the first generation to grow in this new space in love and light.

Momentum Builds for Early Childhood in Oregon, Federally: An Interview with Miriam Calderon

Momentum Builds for Early Childhood in Oregon, Federally: An Interview with Miriam Calderon

by | Apr 29, 2021 | Podcast, Federal Policy, Oregon Policy

On this episode of The Early Link Podcast, host Rafael Otto talks with Miriam Calderon, the Early Learning System director at the Early Learning Division in Oregon’s Department of Education. Miriam has been a long time advocate for early childhood and is leaving Oregon for a new position in the Biden-Harris administration.

Guest:

Miriam Calderon has been the Early Learning System director overseeing the Early Learning Division in Oregon for the last 4 years. Previously, Calderon has worked on policy at the BUILD initiative and served as a political appointee in the Obama administration. She also served as the director of Early Childhood Education at DC Public Schools, where she oversaw Head Start and pre-kindergarten programs, including helping to implement universal pre-kindergarten in DC.

Summary:

Miriam discusses her role as Early Learning System director and the vision she has for Oregon’s early childhood system. She also shares the negative impact of undervaluing childcare providers  and describes the tension  that exists between access versus quality, when trying to solve problems in the early childhood field. Looking forward, Miriam explains how we can continue to build the early childhood education system to support children and their families, and the importance of making big, institutional changes over small, program adjustments. Finally, Miriam shares what she is hoping to accomplish at the federal level in her new role in the Biden-Harris administration.

Transcript

Rafael Otto: [00:00:03] This is the Early Link Podcast. I’m Rafael Otto. As usual, you can catch us on the airwaves on 99.1 FM in Portland on Sundays at 4:30 PM or subscribe and listen, wherever you find your podcasts. Today, I’m talking with Miriam Calderon, who is the Early Learning System Director at the Early Learning Division in Oregon’s Department of Education and has been in that role since 2017. She has been a long time advocate for Early Childhood and has worked on policy at the BUILD initiative and in the Obama administration.
And soon she will be leaving Oregon for an exciting new role in the Biden-Harris administration. Miriam, you’ve been on the podcast before, welcome back. It’s great to have you here. How are you today?

Miriam Calderon: [00:00:45] Thank you, Rafael. I’m really happy to be back. I’m doing okay. It’s my last week at the Early Learning Division, my last week in this role, coming off of my last all staff meeting saying goodbye to many colleagues at ELD. So…

Rafael Otto: [00:00:59] A big week

Miriam Calderon: [00:01:01] It’s emotional. But yeah, a big week.

Rafael Otto: [00:01:03] And you don’t have any time, really. You’re starting.. you’re moving into your new role right away next week.

Miriam Calderon: [00:01:07] Yeah. Start Monday.

Rafael Otto: [00:01:09] Well, I appreciate you carving out some time in your schedule to talk with me today. It’s great to have you back on here. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you is just to kind of look back, if you think about the last four years, and thinking about the development of the Early Learning system in Oregon, and how has that changed and evolved since you started?

Miriam Calderon: [00:01:32] Yeah, that’s a great question, a big question. Um, I guess, I think back to when I was considering whether to take on this role of Early Learning System Director, I was really trying to figure out what was needed at the time from a leader. I consider these positions to be really important.

It’s an honor and a privilege to sit in the seat, to have this responsibility. It’s really important that you’re the right match at the right time. I think it’s about also timing. And, it’s not about, kind of, me necessarily having a job, right? I can go work at many places. It’s what I can contribute.. um, really the right fit for what’s needed kind of at this moment.

So I talked to a lot of folks, folks inside the governor’s office, the Early Learning Council, our chair at the time, particularly Sue Miller – spent a lot of time with her – folks inside the division, advocates… And I had a lot of the same questions, like “What’s the ideal candidate look like?” “What are you looking for in the next Early Learning System Director to bring?

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