How do you complete this sentence? “Children have the right to . . .”

-protection from violence?
-nurturing emotional care?
-an hour of time outside?
-food?
-health care? 
-quality education?
-clean air and water?
-be treated like people whose thoughts and feelings have value?

We’ve come a long way from the days of exploiting children as chimney sweeps and factory workers, and public education is now available (compulsory, even).   But how well can you argue that Jacksonville is an ideal environment for children, that people want to come here because it’s a “great place to raise your kids”?  Do our policies and practices foster their thriving in body and mind?  

As we mull and make decisions about the obligations we have as a community to address issues in child care, safety, health, and education, JCCI volunteers are hard at work, implementing our Children: 1-2-3 inquiry recommendations to close gaps in policy and promote effective practices so that this community becomes more child-friendly (which, as these children grow, leads to Jacksonville’s being—say it with me!—more adult-friendly).

This week, you can learn about the U.N. Convention on Rights of the Child and how grassroots and organizational efforts can transform how children are treated, and in turn, how they shape their community as they grow.

Clear your calendar for Friday, August 10 at noon. 

You don’t want to miss this very special Issues and Answers forum!

Gerison Lansdown, international expert in child rights and founding Director of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England will lead our community in a discussion about children’s rights, child-friendly cities and child and youth participation.  She will be accompanied by members of Funky Dragon, a youth council promoting the effective participation of children and young people in decision-making about policies and services in Wales.

RSVP here now!

“I will refuse to allow our library system to be rendered irrelevant.”  --Bill Brinton

JCCI’s Spring 2012 Check It Out:  Independent Library Funding Inquiry concluded that dedicated funding for the Jacksonville Public Library will likely ensure its ability to continue providing excellent service to this community.  Rather than continuing to cut more staff and buy fewer materials, our library system could become the kind that attracts talent and supports shared community values of literacy and education for children and adults alike.

Looking to library systems in Alachua and Orange County for inspiration, advocates are taking action.

This week, a Florida Times-Union article announced that supporters have begun the process to pursue dedicated funding for the Jacksonville Public Library.

Listen to WJCT’s Kevin Meerschaert’s brief report on the kick-off of this process:  gathering 26,000 signatures to get a question onto the ballot (a “straw poll”) in 2014.  It’s a bit of a toe-in-the-water temperature test before taking the voting plunge.  If the straw poll receives a positive response, it will show that this community supports dedicated funding for our library system, sending a message to the Florida Legislature that a binding referendum has a place on the ballot in 2015.

Channel 4 News reports that advocates are gathering signatures now with the help of library volunteers.

Following the release in 2009 of JCCI's inquiry on City Finances (Our Money, Our City: Financing Jacksonville's Future), a subcommittee of the project's advocacy task force began the process of looking closely at the growing crisis in funding shortages in Jacksonville's three public pension plans.  It was, and still is, the elephant in the room that dwarfs all other aspects of the financial mess the City faces.

Estimates at that time were that the unfunded liability of the three funds exceeded $1.5 billion, and in 2011, the City faced required funding obligations of $118 million to the three plans, an amount equal to nearly 13% of the entire General Fund budget.  The Mayor's Transition Committee on Pensions estimated that with no substantive pension reform measures in place, that total would grow to $180 million by 2016 and to $350 million by 2026, with no end in sight. These are clearly unsustainable numbers that, if left unchecked, will ultimately lead the City to financial ruin.

That picture became even darker recently when the results of a required periodic actuarial review determined that, because of obsolete and inaccurate assumptions, the City's pension obligation for 2012-13 is actually $44 million more than previously anticipated . The total unfunded liability probably exceeds $2 billion, considerably more than the $1.5 billion that was estimated in 2009.

When the JCCI inquiry was released in 2009, there was little public recognition of the severity of the pension crisis, so there was a corresponding lack of appetite on the part of elected officials to take politically unpopular positions necessary to do something about it.  As the two-year advocacy period unfolded, public understanding and concern grew significantly, as did the realization in the Mayor's office and at City Council that the community could no longer afford to bury its head in the sand and wish the problem would go away on its own.

Mayor Brown has recognized the need for aggressive pension reform, announcing it as one of the top priorities of his administration from the day he assumed office last summer.  Encouragingly, newly-appointed City Council President Bill Bishop has recently said the same.  To date, however, political rhetoric has been the extent of activity relating to the pension crisis, at least as far as the general public can tell.

It's no longer enough to merely talk about pension reform.  The City continues to hemorrhage while we wait for a plan for action, and the longer we wait, the worse the crisis becomes.  No one should be deceived into thinking that arriving at the level of pension reform we need will be easy.  Collective bargaining and negotiating over compensation and future benefits never is.  But for the City to avoid financial calamity, it must be accomplished, and it must begin now.  Hopefully, intensive preparations for pension reform negotiations have been unfolding behind closed doors in recent months, and we can only hope that substantive discussions will soon commence.

Much has been said and written recently about the legalities and potential ramifications of cities in even worse pension-related financial predicaments filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, most recently in Stockton, CA.  The article linked below provides some useful insights on that subject, one all of us hope never becomes a necessity in Jacksonville.

http://www.governing.com/columns/public-finance/col-stockton-californias-debt-problems-may-set-precedent.html

Steve Rankin

Did you know that an infant’s brain cells make 700 connections PER SECOND?  If you attended today’s Children 1-2-3 Inquiry Results Luncheon, you do.  You also know that childhood experiences impact the brain structure significantly.  This is true whether we’re talking about exposure to words via an attentive parent who describes what the baby sees and reads stories or the chronic stress of not feeling a sense of belonging.  Social connection is as important as nutrition when we’re talking about how children have –or don’t have—what they need to thrive.

Dr. Gorski showed brain scan images that showed atrophy, colorless patches resembling an Alzheimer’s patient’s brain, to demonstrate that neglect literally kills off parts of the brain.  The cells don’t connect anymore—or in the first place, and they fade out.

Our long-term health reflects the impact of how cells in our bodies, including the brain, grow and change and become more vulnerable or resilient.  If you are stressed as a child (your parents divorce, one of your parents is incarcerated, or you live in poverty), you are more likely to have heart disease in your fifties than someone with high cholesterol who grew up in a more amenable environment.

Our Children 1-2-3 report reflects the work of volunteers who heard what Dr. Gorski said about how our interactions with children—as caregivers and as family members—literally shape their gene expression and their chances for success.  The committee discussed how public policy can improve its return on investment and make a much more effective impact on early learning, and the Implementation Task Force is raring to go to start addressing the nine recommendations outlined in the report.

Want to see it?  The Final Report of our Children 1-2-3 Inquiry is here!  

You can also pick up hard copies for yourself and organization at the JCCI office at 2434 Atlantic Blvd., Jacksonville, FL  32207.

Want to be involved?  Join the Implementation Task Force!  E-mail Steve@jcci.org to sign up!

Chris Arab, Ana Arnaiz, Tim Ballentine, Kris Barnes, Sherri Brown, J.F. Bryan, Chris Buckley, Betty Burney, Charles Cline, Jim Crooks, Kay Earhart, Bill Gates, Carolyn Girardeau, Warren Grymes, Donna Hulsey, Janice Hunter, Deon Johnson, Sylvia Johnson, Kathe Kasten, Marcia Lebold, Levander Lilly, Amy Lingren, Jesse Murray, Marsha Oliver, Rachel Raneri, Cheryl Riddick, Etoile Graves-Smith, Connie Stophel, Louis Venson, Linda Wilkinson, Jim Williams, Rhonda Williams, Andy Sikes, Barry Heath, Betsy Miller, Dave Bailey, David Boyer, Doris Marlin, Eric Smith, Guy Anderson, Jan Duggar, Jeanne Chappell, Jerry Spinks, Jill Johnson, Jim Overton, Jimmy Orth, John TenBroeck, Ken Wilson, Linda Burnette, Lisa Rowe Rinaman, Lucy Cortese, Lynette Self, Melody Bishop, Mike Barile, Quinton White, Ron Gay, Susan Caven, Ted Pappas, Ted Stumm, Teresa Monson, Adrienne Conrad, Thomas Bryant III, Paula Chaon, Daphne Colbert, Meg Folds, Mary Gebhart, Nancy Georgion, Helen Jackson, Joanne Kazmierski, Sandra Lane, Candace Moody, Steve Nix, John Otterson, George Palmer, Scott Sanborn, Kathy Sandusky, Karen Shelley, Carlton Shelton, Elise Sloan, Glenda Washington, Don Anderson, Sarah Boren, Denise Bunnewith, Cara Connolly, Bruce Doueck, James Geller, Gabe Hanson, Mike Hartman, Mary Hayford, Wayne Hogan, Jennifer Holbrook, Karen Kempf, Berdell Knowles, Bill Larson, Marci Larson, Athena Mann, Mark McCrainie, Mike McCarthy, Dave McLintock, Quilla Miralia, David Norse, Chris Rogers, Vince Seibold, Scott Skinner, Eric Smith, Paul Steinbrecher, Allen Tilley, Peg Tilley, Christi Veleta, Susan White, Jay Worley, Vicki Abrams, Tempie Alexander, Wakilah Augustus, Shakera Bailey, Steve Baker, Dale Bell, Blair Blackard, Kathy Bowles, Vanessa Boyer, Carol Brady, Joy Burgess, Anthony Butler, Tom Rodgers, Meredith Chartrand Frisch, Dawn Clarke, Alton Coles, Sandy Cook, Cleshawn Cooks, Helen Crawford, Rae Davies, Melodie Dove, Lawrence DuBow, Dawn Emerick, Donna Ghanayem, Jeff Goldhagen, Etoile Graves-Smith, Loretta Haycock, Toni Herndon, Sarah Holdstein, Kathy Ingram, Beverly Legree, Casey McConnell, Janet McDonald, Bobbie O’Connor, Deborah Parsons, Julia Pickren, Tala Reynolds, Rhonda Santos, Steve Sepe, Karen Smithson, Wilma Starks, Carol Synkewecz, Jackie Thompson, Lowrie Ward, Patricia Washington, Julia Watkins, Delphia Williams, Karen Wolfson, John Anderson, Tony Bates, Danny Berenberg, Dana Ferrell Birchfield, Anne Borngesser, Joan Carver, Jack Caulkins, Sheila Caulkins, Richard Cohee, Matt Corrigan, Logan Cross, Dan Curran, Jill Dame, Richard Danford, Bobby Deal, Jack Diamond, Randy Evans, Greg Frazier, Pat Hannan, Abel Harding, Alberta Hipps, Bill Hoff, Sr., Bob Johnson, Jerry Knowles, Michael Korn, Kenneth Lathrop, Helen Ludwig, Conrad Markle, Jay McGovern, Mickey Miller, Steve Naso, George Owen, Linda Perry, Mary Alice Phelan, Ray Purvis, Jean Pyle, Jim Rinaman, Alicia Somers, Bill Sulzbacher, Lucy Talley, Ray Van Landingham, Dorcas Tanner, Cleve Warren, John Welch, John Zona, Tom Patton, Renae Sweeney, Harry Corbett, Gary Dallero, Marilyn Feldstein, Tamera Hudnell, Les Krieger, Frank Pearce, Stephen Pollan, Margaret Winter, Jonathan Cantor, Marcel Dulay, Dorette Nysewander, Jim Sylvester, Mark Tumeo, Nancy Garcia, Jeff Green, Kenneth James, Colleen McFarlane, Michelle Tappouni, Jack Manilla, Lad Daniels, Janice Donaldson, Carey Hepler, Andre Higgins, Steve Marro, Jackie Perry, Clive Ricketts, Deborah Thompson, Cathy Chambers, Laura Maloney, Catherine Christie, Heather Hughes, Carol Kartsonis, Joan Kramer, Karen Landry, Lavetta McCoy, Natasha Parks, Karen Rieley, Cassie Sager, Katie Salz, Cecil Williams, Lisa Wright, Susan Cohn, Elizabeth DeJesus, Jennifer Hewett-Apperson, Valerie Feinberg, Jennifer Graham, Eric Lindstrom, Carol Gilham, Jacqui Lowe, Truitt Moreland, Jose Rivera, Cathy Webb, Jocelyn Turner, Cheryl Gaston, Susan Masucci, Gozi Chuku, Elexia Moss, Patricia Knight, Laureen Husband, ReShawndia  Mitchell, Temisha Hill, Rose White, Karen Coleman, Dana Fields-Johnson, Sherri Cheshire, Chris Lester, Laura Bailet, Amy Buggle, Joy Burgess, Anne Claridge, Johnna Cooper-Daniels, Skip Cramer, Megan Denk, Rocelia Gonzalez, Judy Rodriguez, Derrick Smith, Cynthia Harpman, Becky Henderson, Bryan Hensley, John Hirabayashi, Connie Hodges, Melanie Patz, Ray Holt, Eva Jenkins, John Kabat, Joy Korman, Linda Lanier, Susan Main, Susan Mankowski, Susan Mattox, Mary Nash, Judy Poppell, Ginger Preston, Laurie Price, Nicole Randall, Vickie Robinson, Geoff Selhorst, Christine Stephens, Lucy Wells, Jeanne Dillard, Nancy Kuhn, Robert Littell, Paula Ruffner, Samantha Lawson.

The individuals listed above are the members of JCCI’s volunteer advocacy task forces since 2006, the year I joined the organization.  These are people who change the face of our community…thank you to all of them.

Steve Rankin

My baby is a genius.  Don't roll your eyes at me.  You think I'm bragging, and OK, I am, but he is.  He was reading at age two:  no lie, he spelled "hat" with bathtub letters and said, "Hat."  Now he's five and reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  Is he blessed with genius genes?  Of course!  But more to the point, those genes got turned on because he was very fortunate.  In his first three years of life, my job's flexibility allowed us to spend a great many of our days visiting the public library.  We attended children's programs that featured stories and songs, and we checked out the treasures and read many, many books every day.

I have a psychology degree, so I had a basic understanding of my infant's developmental needs, and I am a talker, so it was easy to expose him to many words every day.  I also knew reading to him and sitting on the floor with him during story time was important, but until our Children 1-2-3 Inquiry, I did not give much thought to how our interactions with our children shape their actual gene expression. Because I happen to love stories and am forever a literature major, I kept mild postpartum depression and other impacts of standard new mommy isolation in check by reading hundreds of new books and revisiting cherished ones.  I mostly read for my own pleasure!  It turns out this is one of those parenting moments I can feel good about.  Returning to the titles that got the most babbles and attempts to chew the pages was good for both of us!

As my genius baby grew, he suggested we hit the library when I asked him what we should do with our day.  When my boy was old enough for preschool at the library, we both came to adore Ms. Elaine at the Mandarin branch.  She engaged him, and he literally thought "outside the outline", smearing his shaving cream well past the circles because, he said, his snowman was "taking a bath."  

I grew a book worm, but more importantly, and quite simply, the library gave us the means to lay a solid foundation for literacy.  When my son went through his "I'm going to be a doctor" phase and asked about the bones in the human body, we found a book at the library and learned "clavical" and "scapula" and such together.  When he wanted to know more about snakes, we went to the library to find out that a rattlesnake's rattle is made of the same thing your fingernails are:  keratin.  My kid's favorite book for a time was a 3-D layered alligator book with guts and and a skeleton, a pricey resource I wouldn't have been able to splurge on for our home library.

Now my child is selective about which books we read and whether we will take turns being the reader by the page or by the book, directing me to make the villain voices creepier, the silly characters more exuberant, and the onomatopoeia more pronounced.  If you read with this child, you'll see that literacy has promoted creativity and inspired curiosity.  He's quite the director, because, I'm convinced, books offer entire worlds for him, and he likes to experience them in full.  I believe he will do this with many more experiences in his life. 

Besides being a proud mama, I'm saying all this to emphasize that literacy comes naturally when we reinforce the neural pathways that support it, and libraries are essential for building literacy in our community.  When we were middle class, we bought books, too, but the library was still essential.  When our income dropped dramatically, we leaned on the library more heavily when we needed to mix up our selections.  If we had been living below the poverty line, we might have relied solely on the library for any exposure to children's books and programs.  Even for the wealthy, though, there is no denying that literacy is easier to facilitate when kids are immersed in book-related activities and associate them with good feelings, like social inclusion when singing familiar songs with familiar library buddies and the joy of making a groundhog--who emerges from the ground to study its shadow--out of a cup and craft stick.

The results of JCCI's two recent inquiries, Check It Out:  Independent Library Funding and Children 1-2-3 have seemingly converged as the Jacksonville Public Library promotes its Link Up To Literacy, a site that reflects an awareness of the importance of early interactions and includes a list of milestones and tools for reaching them!  Through the library's on-line links, you can learn how to give your child--or the children in your care--the best opportunities for strong foundations for literacy.  Who knows?  With your efforts, maybe your baby will be the one to spell and define "onomatopoeia" at the preschool graduation ceremony (I'm not kidding!) or ask you to do science experiments with him because he is hungry to learn more about the world.  

Or maybe you will join this community's advocacy efforts for early learning and the library's stable funding, both born from our recent inquiries.  Either way, I hope you will read for twenty minutes a day to the nearest kiddo.  It opens up worlds, teaches vocabulary, and helps brains learn how to learn for better problem solving, social skills, and every other kind of future success.  And there's the bonus geektastic parental pride!

Join the Children 1-2-3 Task Force by contacting Steve Rankin, and enjoy a fascinating talk from Dr. Peter Gorski at our Children 1-2-3 Results Luncheon on June 22.  

You can be confident that your hair stylist, whether at a hoity-toity salon or the nearest strip-mall venue, has, by Florida law, trained for 1200 hours.

How many hours do you think the state requires a child care worker to have trained before he or she can be entrusted to teach, nurture, guide, and protect someone’s child, potentially during the critical window of development when every interaction literally builds brain structures that impact future learning?  Way fewer than your local barber:  480 contact hours.

How can we seriously say we prioritize children’s development when those who care for our children are at the low end of the career ladder, both in professional requirements and payscale?  You can argue both that you get what you pay for and that you get what you invest in.  Is taking care of children an important job or not?  Mother’s Day greeting card commercials certainly seem to say so.  And brain science definitely says so.

So why doesn’t our public policy echo this common wisdom?  And why do we continue to allow this field to be one of low status, low pay, and low expectation?   It’s not that childcare professionals are low performers.  Many dedicated, bright, and engaged child care professionals keep babies warm, fed, cuddled, and babbling, and toddlers often come home reporting that the beloved “Ms. Amber” built an awesomely tall tower with them that afternoon.

Think, though, how much better off families will be when their children have consistently high quality care, when their teachers are well-educated about developmental milestones so they can help parents identify and address lags with early interventions.  Imagine child care as an environment in which the staff is paid a competitive salary so that high turnover is replaced with investment in long-term career pathways.  Would you rather your baby form an emotional attachment to the caregiver or be tossed to whoever emerges through the revolving door? 

Given that secure attachment to caregivers is vital for healthy brain development, especially by eighteen months old, and given that separation anxiety is an issue for many six-month-olds, I hope your answer is that you, like our Children 1-2-3 Inquiry committee, would like to see the professionalization of this role.

Sure, you can end up with crooked bangs or a shorter-than-you-described cut when you pay someone to cut your hair, even with the licensing requirements, and your unlicensed sister might be able to Edward Scissorhands your ‘do to your immense satisfaction, but you wouldn’t want a beauty school dropout near your locks.   Likewise, your expensive publically funded preschool may have teachers who demean or ignore your precious offspring, and your local church preschool may not have licensing and be excellent.  The issue is not whether a facility meets minimum requirements but that our requirements speak to how little we—as a community—value the service.  I doubt, though, that when we think about it we actually devalue the caregiver role.

We noticed in our conversations in the Children 1-2-3 Inquiry that we could probably begin by changing how we speak about the folks entrusted with human beings’ developmental potential.  Rather than calling them daycare workers, we can call them childcare professionals.  Providers can promote continuing education and diminish turnover by incentivizing these professionals. 

The committee has some exciting ideas about transforming the perception and reality that a grueling dead-end job can be a community-impacting, rewarding career, but more importantly, children need consistency and quality, and professionalizing the field can help ensure this.

Learn more about the committee’s good ideas, including what local institutes of higher education can do to be part of this effort.  Please join us for the Results Luncheon on June 22.  Corporate tables and individual tickets are still available.  Join the Implementation Task Force to make an even bigger impact:  e-mail Steve Rankin.