How San Francisco Is Graduating More Black Early Educators — and Why It Matters

Why ‘Black Grads Matter’

San Francisco is trying to fix the broader early education workforce issue by using a local business tax to both pay teachers higher salaries and to lower child care costs for families. But in order to see that pay bump, teachers have to meet certain criteria: They must be trained to offer high-quality care and teaching to young kids, and agree to serve lower-income families.

The problem is only 10 out of 287 family child care businesses that meet those requirements are Black-owned, according to the city’s Department of Early Childhood.

“That number is too low,” Carey said.

The disparity underscores the need to diversify the workforce, she said, because all children, and especially Black children, benefit from having Black role models in the classroom.

Research shows that Black students who have even one Black teacher during elementary school are more likely to graduate high school and enroll in college and less likely to be removed from the classroom as a form of discipline.

“There’s something about affirming a child’s culture when there is a teacher that represents them in a classroom … that understands their experiences, their family … there’s something around that that has impacted Black children’s success,” Carey said.

The hope is that having more Black early educators will help narrow persistent educational disparities in San Francisco. The most recent data from San Francisco Unified School District (PDF) shows only 43.8% of Black children were deemed ready for kindergarten, compared to nearly 70% of white and 67.6% of Asian American children.

Kindergarten readiness is a major concern among education advocates and policymakers because research shows children who enter kindergarten behind are likely to stay behind throughout their educational careers (PDF). At SFUSD, Black students graduate high school and attend college at lower rates than the district’s Asian American and white students.

A panel of early education experts formed by the Children’s Council concluded in a 2021 report (PDF) that the city’s early education systems weren’t supporting Black children enough.

Because 90% of a child’s brain develops during the first five years of life, the report said, Black children need high-quality early education and care because it “can serve as a positive intervention that allows a child’s brain to overcome the stresses of poverty, hunger, violence, housing instability and economic racism.”

The onus falls on Black early educators, then, to nurture these children and chart their social-emotional, cognitive and physical development to ensure they have the foundational skills for kindergarten, said Dr. Patricia Sullivan, who taught most of the classes to this year’s program cohort.

‘I found a passion that I didn’t know I had’

Like some of the students in the cohort, Sullivan started out providing child care out of her home before she went back to school to obtain degrees in developmental psychology and early childhood education.

The importance of being a Black teacher in the classroom, and being the first in her family to graduate to college, isn’t lost on Sullivan.

“For some students in classes that I teach at [San Francisco State University and City College], I’m the first Black professor they’ve ever seen,” she said. “For this group, it was really important to not only show them that someone could be in higher education and be Black, but that, you know, this stuff is not as hard as you think.”

Besides teaching 12 core units of child growth and development to the cohort, Sullivan facilitated discussions about the Black experience and how to respond to and care for children who have experienced neglect, abuse, violence, family separation, racism and other traumas. Emerging research has found that toxic stress from these types of trauma can disrupt children’s brain development and undermine their ability to learn.

“First, we talked about how we got this way. And then, how do we find a way to make sure that when we’re helping kids grow, that we are avoiding some of these dangerous pitfalls, barriers and situations that could cause trauma and how could we get around them? And then if we can’t get around them, how do we help people get past them?”

Among this year’s cohort is Djimon Asberry. The 25-year-old said those lessons validated her decision to become an early educator. Asberry had plans to become a nurse after graduating from a historically Black college in east Texas two years ago, but a summer job caring for babies and toddlers at a daycare made her realize that she could make a difference in a child’s life.

“I found a passion that I didn’t know I had,” she said.

In the pipeline program, Asberry said, having a Black professor and an all-Black cohort created a supportive environment where everyone pushed each other to do their best.

“It’s not ‘no, you’re not going to finish,’ you’re going to finish, you’re going to be successful,” she said. “Because they understand everybody has a life, everybody goes through things but they still push and encourage you and check on you every month to make sure your mind and mental [health] is correct so you’re able to finish.”

Asberry recently got a job as a substitute teacher at a Head Start program, but she’s thinking of taking more classes so she can one day open her own daycare.

Another student was Sullivan’s own 35-year-old son, Matthew, who had been helping out at his mother’s daycare, Baby Steps Nature School, for years before enrolling in the pipeline program. He said although he went to art school and has a bachelor’s degree in Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, he wants to one day run the family business.

“I just think that there’s value in doing this kind of work,” he said.

The infants under his care “make this worthwhile because I get to see them grow. I get to see them go from being little sprouts to tall giants that can actually change the world.”