Lt. Governor visits the Social Centers!
On July 20th, we had the honor to host Lt. Governor Karyn Polito, joined by Secretary of Education James Peyser, Commissioner of Massachusetts Department of Early Education & Care Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, CEDAC Director of Children Facilities Finance Theresa Jordan, and more community leaders at our main facility for a very special press conference.
Lt. governor Karyn Polito and EEC Commissioner Samantha Aigner-Treworgy announced$7.5 million in Early Education and Out of School (EEOST) Capital Fund awards to 36 organizations throughout the Commonwealth! These funds will be used to renovate childcare facilities that serve primarily low-income families.
Our executive director Justin Pasquariello opened up the press conference with updates on how the EEOST fund has helped improve our facilities and how it has allowed us to keep our programs running safely throughout this past year.
Our special guests also toured our high-quality facility, spent time with our preschoolers in the Social Sprouts Preschool classroom, as well as with our school-aged children in the OST program while they socialized and learned! Our program success is made possible by all their support!
A big thank you to The Baker-Polito Administration and the Children’s Investment Fund (CIF), with its affiliate the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation (CEDAC) for your tremendous support!
As an organization that serves families and their children from birth to their teen years in Boston and surrounding communities, we are committed to ensuring all youth have equitable opportunities from which they can thrive. That is one of the many reasons why we are proud to be joining the All Children Thrive (ACT Boston) collaborative!
But we can’t achieve this vision in a vacuum. Systems and our leaders have a profound effect on both school quality and who has access to it — and who does not.
And we can’t achieve our vision alone. In a city of talented children, families, and educators, we have an abundance of resources to advance educational equity; we just need to harness the collective power of those resources.
Working alongside more than a dozen other non-profit and community-based organizations, we recognize this year’s mayoral election — in tandem with pandemic recovery — has created a moment we as a city have an obligation to meet on behalf of its children.
Over the coming months, ACT Boston will engage with stakeholders and mayoral candidates to ensure that whomever we choose as our next mayor, there are partners for a vision for equitable outcomes for all children, and accountability for the promises made by leaders and systems.
You can learn more about ACT Boston in our op-ed in Commonwealth Magazine, and you can sign up here to follow the collaborative’s work.