 My name is Quenetta Lewis. I am director of a single classroom preschool in the heart of West Oakland. I remember when I first got out of school, they were like, well, what are you going to do with this nice degree you have? And you know, I'm like, I want to go work in West Oakland. And it's mainly because I feel like these children need more. And they need to have dedicated people to help them. See over here? That's a walking sign. You see two people over here? What we found in a study that we commissioned with UC Berkeley is that not only are teachers worried about paying their bills, but many of our teachers are actually just worried about putting food on the table for their own families. 75% of early childhood center-based teachers in the US earn less than $15 an hour. Mind you, more than a third have bachelor's degrees. They might drive for like Uber in the afternoon. They're working side jobs, and then they're still trying to do work that they have to do here. So many times, we're asking teachers to be psychologists and janitors and family navigators. And now we're asking people to do assessments and fill out forms. And just we keep kind of adding more things we want teachers to do. There's a lot of turnover. And teachers don't stay as long. And we know that has a negative impact on the children. I'm trying to figure out how we did it before. Here, I do know it. At least half the teachers, they're being supervised by another teacher. So SQL is a survey tool that we developed here at the center. And it's really designed to capture the voice and perspective of teaching staff. It looks at teacher well-being. And it really provides information about teacher well-being. They together sort of assess their work environment in five different ways. So we're able to make these linkages between teacher well-being and quality of programs that children are in. This information is then used to inform quality improvement, to help us think about policies. If you can't document the status quo, then you can't really challenge it. And people are beginning to understand these are the things that are really preventing them from moving quality. You know, one of the challenges, I think, of working with young children is how people perceive what you're doing as being unskilled, something anybody can do. And so there's a real lack of respect. The dog. I'm keeping together. Oh. And the dog. It's seen as the children are just playing. And how we say yes, they're playing. And when they're playing, they're learning. Their learning is their work. And we are guiding them in their work called play. And so the teachers who come along have to be skilled. And now in our workforce, more than ever, we're requiring that we have at least a bachelor's degree. What teachers of young children need is adequate compensation. They need to feel like they have input on the decisions that are made that affect children. And they really need to also have some self-determination in choosing what kind of professional development path they choose. This issue of teacher pay and teacher working conditions is not some abstract or irrelevant thing. It is front and center to the ability of teachers to function in a professional way and to engage in professional practice. Like, why do we stay? We stay because we love it. But it's been out of sacrifice. That's why I work in leadership now. We got to change this, and we got to keep speaking, but we have to put action to it. I don't want to see scribbling. You guys are going to kindergarten. You should be able to draw your shape. For a lot of the children who come here, this is like Oase is like some place where they can come and feel happy. And that's one of the big things I can say that the teachers and myself, we say I love you a lot around here. And we give them a lot of love and a lot of hugs. And because that's what they need, along with giving them an education. Sorry. I always get really emotional because I love being here with them, but it's just really hard. Because I have my family to think about also.