- We're now joined by SanDonna Jones, Executive Director of a great organization, Unified Vailsburg Services Organization.

SanDonna, good to see you.

- Great to see you, Steve.

Thanks so much for having me on.

- Our pleasure.

We'll put up the website for Unified Vailsburg as you talk about what the organization does and the impact you have.

- Great.

First Steve, I do have to tell you that it's a bit fortuitous that we're even talking about early childhood education this morning because my sister was one of the inaugural Adubato scholars when the Ready program was in existence.

And I have to tell you that overall experience was just transformative for her in her longer term educational journey.

So my family knows all too well how important those formative years are and how it kind of acts as a building block to everything else.

So I wanna thank you and your family for that, first of all.

- Let me just put that in perspective, for those who don't know.

My late grandmother Mildred Adubato, there was a scholarship fund that was set up and dollars came from philanthropist Ray Chambers through the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark, where I was raised in.

And my grandfather, my late grandfather, was the first executive director of the Newark Boys Club at the time.

So I appreciate your reference to the Adubato Scholars and thank you for that.

Pick it up, talk about Unified Vailsburg.

- Sure.

First of all, I'm relatively new.

I've been there for four years in leadrship.

It's a 50 year old organization.

We just celebrated 50 years.

It started out with a group of residents and faith leaders who were really responding a few years after the Newark Rebellion.

It was established to really stabilize the community.

So primarily right now, the bulk of our programming is early childhood education.

We have two daycare centers, two preschools, but you know over the years we've done affordable housing development.

There's neighborhood planning, community organizing.

We've helped small business in their development.

There's afterschool programming.

So a host of a number of services that we provide.

And more recently, just before the pandemic hit, we partnered with an agency.

So now a good portion of what we do is food distribution.

So it's a collection of services that we provide.

- Let's talk about early childhood/childcare.

Our initiative, Reimagine Childcare, the website will come up.

What would you say Ms. Jones, the most significant negative impact of the pandemic has been as it relates to early childhood education/childcare?

- Now, we know that there were multiple negative impacts, you know, across the board.

But I will tell you with regard to the preschool age and daycare age, it was definitely pretty dramatic.

Obviously there's been learning loss, the social, the lack of social interaction and that was evident in so many different areas.

Even when we did hybrid programming and there was a virtual option, for example, and that allowed, you know, families to get back to work and so forth.

But if you had a grandparent there trying to assist the student and their, you know, English was very limited or non-existent, there was no way they could support that student even with a virtual option being made available to them.

So the impact on our youngest learners was pretty profound.

- Do you sense, Ms. Jones, are there any closer to acknowledging, recognizing and respecting the role of childcare professionals and paying them accordingly?

- Respectfully, I would say not yet.

There's a coalition of us who continue to advocate on an ongoing basis.

And those of us who are preschool providers- I mean, yeah, preschool age providers, we're getting closer to parity with regard to those who are in the local school district.

However, when it comes to infant toddler programming, those dollars are not yet sufficient to provide what I believe would be more meaningful compensation.

And obviously compensation is a huge part of why they do the job.

They're passionate about the children, but they have families as well to- And need the livelihood.

And the compensation where it is now definitely impacts staff morale for sure.

So it is an ongoing effort as far as the leadership of my agency and and across all providers, to do a whole host of things to try to, you know, enhance staff morale.

Because we know right now as far as the dollars are concerned, we can't put them where they should be, where we think they should be on the pay scale.

- Help people understand what that means when you don't pay childcare professionals enough.

Staff morale is where it's at, not where it needs to be.

Help folks understand what that really means in terms of childcare for our children that's affordable, accessible, and quality childcare.

- So we are now in March of a school year.

- We're taping this in the end of March, 2023.

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

- Right.

So my thing is in both the preschool area and the infant toddler area, we still have staff vacancies.

I know across the board labor is in flux, but as far as education is concerned, there has been a profound impact.

So we're relying on one side, substitutes, and on the other side, we're relying on temp agencies until we're actually able to secure the educators that we need.

And the fact is what we're offering as far as the hourly compensation is difficult for people to even say yes.

Even if they have the desire to work for us, it's kind of challenging to accept the pay scale that we currently have.

Even though they might enjoy the agency and so forth.

- Before I let you go, why did you get into this work?

- My family has always been involved in neighborhood revitalization so this is kind of in my blood.

- Where'd you grow up?

- In Newark, West Ward.

- West Ward.

- Yes.

- The late great Senator Ron Rice, who we'll be honoring and recognizing on our series 'Remember Them'- - Yes.

- Who has served the West Ward well.

Not just in the Senate, but in the city council representing the West Ward community as a South Ward Councilman.

You just brought that to mind when you mentioned- - Absolutely, and we just named our building after him.

Yeah.

- You named it after- Is that right?

- Yeah, we named our administrative building.

That's where he had his senate office for a number of decades.

So we last month named it after him.

So trust me, we are deeply indebted to him.

- SanDonna Jones, I want to thank you so much.

Vailsburg is better off, the community's better off through the work, because of the work of you and your colleagues at Unite- Excuse me, Unified Vailsburg Services Organization.

Thank you so much Ms. Jones, we appreciate it.

- Thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

- You got it, see you next time everyone.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Kean University.

PSEG Foundation.

Newark Board of Education.

The North Ward Center.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

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