At the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, under the leadership of Dr. Faris Sabbah established a weekly virtual meeting with the early care and education community to provide COVID-19 updates, resources, health and safety protocols, testing, and vaccine information. Dr Sabbah created exposure scenario charts and other timely resources that would help the early care programs keep their essential workers, families and young children healthy throughout the pandemic. These ongoing weekly meetings are attended by a large group of child care providers, state and federally funded program administrators and child care center directors.

The Superintendent included the early care community in a number of distributions that provide PPE and COVID home testing kits and needed equipment to ensure that children, staff and families were safe in their learning environments. He also extended the Incident Command Systems Academy training to early care programs so they will be prepared to respond to a variety of emergency or crisis situations.

Although the pandemic and the state of emergency has expired, our County Superintendent is committed to continuing the meetings each Monday to offer ongoing health, educational, wellness and advocacy support to the early care and education field.