A team of educators, community-based agencies who serve youth, business leaders, government agencies and philanthropists have come together to identify the school-aged childcare needs of Central Oregon parents and families and explore possible solutions. Led by High Desert Education Service District’s Better Together, the effort is designed to respond to the region’s evolving childcare crisis created by the pandemic and the resulting school building closures in Crook, Jefferson and Deschutes counties.
“Our kids need quality childcare options and parents need to be able to work and support their families,” said Anna Higgins, chief strategy and innovation officer for HDESD and executive director for i4Education. “This is a community problem that we need to address collectively. Our schools can’t do this alone and employers can’t either. Right now, the entire weight of this burden is on families. As a trusted regional entity that centers equity and aligns existing resources while bringing new solutions to the table, Better Together was the perfect place for this project to land.”
Last week, Better Together welcomed Becca Tatum to lead the initial research to better understand the diversity of needs in the tri-county area and engage existing childcare and business resources to explore solutions.
“Our first priority is to ask questions and listen deeply to the diverse needs of our parents, families and business leaders from across the region. Then we need to move quickly to launch a handful of innovative pilot programs by this fall,” said Tatum. “We’ll be partnering with existing childcare providers and leaning on their experience and expertise to create options that are smart, safe, scalable and support the educational goals of our schools and districts.”
“The urgency of this work is loud and clear,” said Higgins. “We plan to build upon the existing efforts underway to address Central Oregon’s longer-term childcare needs and hope to help bring increased awareness to these challenges as we stand together with families, schools, childcare providers and local businesses to support our kids.”
Bettertogethercentraloregon.org • hdesd.org
