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Back to School Means Coming Home for a Hurricane Helene-Displaced Head Start program

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The day marked a homecoming and a chance to reflect on the program’s long-running impact on the community.

Published

6 months ago

August 29, 2025

Oakland Post

By Liz Bell, EdNC

Nearly a year after Hurricane Helene left more than 4 feet of water inside the halls of Quaker Meadows Generations in Morganton, North Carolina, the child care program’s staff welcomed students and families back to its building for a new school year. The day marked a homecoming and a chance to reflect on the program’s long-running impact on the community. “Seeing those little faces walk in and how excited they were, especially the kids that were here before the hurricane, to just walk in and their little eyes see the new playgrounds and the new equipment. It was just — it closed the circle,” said Tina Kyes, family and child development director at Blue Ridge Community Action (BRAC), the child care program’s parent organization.

Parents, children, and staff posed under an arch of balloons throughout the day to celebrate the 60th birthday of BRAC, which operates three childcare programs and provides community services for families, individuals with special needs, and elderly residents across several counties in the region. The organization’s administrative offices, as well as its adult day center, were also displaced by the storm. After Helene, programs were relocated into five different locations, said Cheryl Leonhardt, director of Quaker Meadows Generations. The child care center’s classrooms, funded through Early Head Start, Head Start, NC Pre-K, child care subsidy, and private tuition, moved to a Burke County public school, Salem Elementary, and a local church. “That was our big thing — making sure that our employees were good, and that we could still give services to our families and provide them with what they needed,” Leonhardt said.

Recently, community members and Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt gathered for the site’s grand reopening. “Thank you” signs for all the organizations and individuals who supported the program’s recovery were staked in the front lawn. “There are still people that, even though they don’t know you, they want to reach out and help you and do things for you,” Kyes said. “We’ve all been kind of amazed that we were able to get up and running so quickly.” Across the region, 148 licensed child care programs with a little more than 5,000 enrolled children were impacted by Helene, according to a presentation in August from Laura Hewitt, Child Care and Development Fund coordinator at the Division of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE).

At the end of July, three programs were permanently closed due to storm damage, two had serious damage but were going to reopen, and four programs remained temporarily relocated. The state legislature allocated $10 million in childcare recovery funding to the North Carolina Partnership for Children, $2 million of which had been expended on Aug. 4. At Quaker Meadows Generations, staff worked overtime last week to set up each classroom in a brand new, bright, clean space. Multiple teachers described the feeling of being back in a new and improved facility as “overwhelming.”

Recovery amid larger uncertainties

Leonhardt asked Hunt to visit the program after speaking in August to Gov. Josh Stein’s N.C. Task Force on Childcare and Early Education, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, advocates, and other state leaders working on recommendations to address the statewide lack of access to high-quality, affordable early care and education. Hunt has also been on a statewide childcare tour to raise awareness about the importance of early learning for children, families, employers, and communities. Leonhardt told the task force about her program’s needs to recover from the hurricane and to continue serving the community. On Monday, she said that she is hoping to continue advocating, not just for the experiences of her own students and staff, but for the broader early childhood landscape.

One of her biggest hopes is for a sustainable public investment in the early childhood workforce. Childcare stabilization grants, first funded from the American Public Rescue Act for pandemic relief and then partially continued by the state legislature, ended in March. Like the majority of programs that received the grants, Leonhardt said her program used the funds to provide higher compensation to her staff. Because the program is part of a larger organization, she said, they can provide benefits and higher wages than stand-alone private childcare centers. That has helped the program to retain every staff member since the hurricane. They are still not able, however, to pay teachers at the level of public school teacher salaries. The grants ended while many programs in the region were in early stages of recovery, and while Leonhardt’s program was still scattered across temporary sites. Even with the program’s financial stability relative to other centers, it was hard, she said. “When that went away, that hurt,” Leonhardt said.

She said assistance for early childhood programs to retain teachers after future natural disasters is needed, and that supports like the stabilization grants should be available long-term. “There are not a lot of people that right now are going into the field, but if childcare programs were able to pay more, and people that want to be in that field saw that, then I think that would help a lot of programs be able to get more staff,” she said. The governor’s task force released interim recommendations in June aimed at expanding access and supporting the early childhood educator workforce. But the task force alone cannot allocate funding for either purpose. This session, the legislature has not allocated any new childcare funding, despite advocacy from the business community, nonprofits, and providers.

Quaker Generations Meadows offers Early Head Start, Head Start, and NC Pre-K. It also serves children through the state subsidy program and accepts private tuition from some families. Early Head Start and Head Start are federal programs aimed at serving low-income children and families with high-quality early education and family services. “We’re hoping that we help those families break that trend,” Leonhardt said of Blue Ridge Community Action’s mission to lift families out of poverty. Both through Head Start and other programming, BRAC helps families set and meet educational and financial goals, connect with other community resources, and “obtain and maintain self-sufficiency,” according to its website.

On top of hurricane recovery, operating child care programs out of temporary sites, and the end of stabilization grants, the program also experienced uncertainty due to proposed federal cuts to Head Start by the Trump administration. However, those cuts did not make it into law. “It was scary there for a while when we didn’t know if the money would come,” Leonhardt said. Though the school is back with full retention of its staff, an additional one-year-old classroom, and stable funding, recovery is not over, program leaders and teachers said. Children and families are still processing the emotional and mental toll of the storm. “That’s such a traumatic experience for them,” said Kelly Sylvester, a pre-K teacher. She said a recent trauma-informed training has reminded her of the mental health needs of children and staff. Kyes, who has been with BRAC for 40 years, said she is hoping for “no floods, no disasters, no catastrophes” this school year. “Even with things going on in childcare, I think we just want to get back to whatever normal is,” she said. “It seems like it’s been forever since we were normal.” Though establishing routines in a new and improved space will take time, Kyes said, it felt like the hard work of the program and larger community had paid off. “We’re home now,” she said.

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Back to School Means Coming Home for a Hurricane Helene-Displaced Head Start program

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

3 days ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

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PRESS ROOM: NBA Hall of Fame Nominee Terry Cummings Joins 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to Launch Victory & Values Initiative

NNPA NEWSWIRE — NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th.

Published

6 days ago

February 27, 2026

admin

Cummings becomes an honorary member, joining other role model sports stars

NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings has officially become an honorary member of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County, marking a powerful new chapter for the 100 Black Men and youth development across the region.

Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th. The moment signified more than membership — it marked the launch of the organization’s transformative new platform, the Victory & Values Initiative.

The Victory & Values Initiative is a groundbreaking youth development program designed to empower elementary and middle school students through a dynamic blend of sports, mentorship, and STEM exposure. The initiative focuses on building health, discipline, character, leadership, and access to opportunity — creating pathways for long-term academic and personal success.

“This is about more than sports,” said Cummings during the ceremony. “It’s about using the platform of athletics to teach life lessons, create access, and build the next generation of leaders.”

The induction ceremony also featured notable guests including NASCAR’s newest Star Driver, Lavar Scott and NASCAR Director of Athletic Performance, Phil Horton, who joined Cummings for a powerful Victory & Values Town Hall discussion. The Town Hall was moderated by renowned Sports Emcee John Hollins and focused on leadership, resilience, discipline, and the importance of mentorship in shaping young lives.

A “Day at NASCAR” for 75+ Youth

Cummings wasted no time getting to work. On his first full day as an honorary member, he joined his new brothers of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to host a “Day at NASCAR,” escorting more than 75 youth to a once-in-a-lifetime experience at EchoPark Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

The youth participants received behind-the-scenes access including: an exclusive tour of Pit Row, access to the Garage Area and exploration of the interactive Fan Zone.

The experience culminated with a surprise meet-and-greet and Q&A session with NASCAR Superstar Bubba Wallace, who shared insights on perseverance, preparation, and breaking barriers in professional sports.

The day served as a living example of the ‘Victory & Values’ Initiative in action — exposing youth to new industries, expanding their vision for the future, and connecting them directly with high- level mentors and role models.

Building Leaders Through Access and Mentorship

The 100 Black Men of DeKalb County – a chapter of the largest, national mentoring organization in the county – continues to expand its footprint with programs focused on academic excellence, economic empowerment, leadership development, and health & wellness.

The launch of ‘Victory & Values’ represents a strategic expansion of the organization’s impact

intentionally integrating athletics and STEM to engage youth at an early age while reinforcing core principles such as integrity, accountability, teamwork, and perseverance.

“Our mission has always been to mentor the next generation,” said Vaughn Irons, President-Elect of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County. “With Terry Cummings joining the brotherhood, along with partners in NASCAR and professional sports, we are creating unprecedented access and exposure for our youth. Victory & Values is about turning inspiration into structured opportunity.”

By connecting elementary and middle school students to professional athletes, executives, STEM professionals, and community leaders, the initiative aims to:

Increase youth exposure to careers in sports business, engineering, and performance science
Strengthen mentorship pipelines
Promote physical wellness and mental resilience
Build character-driven leadership at an early age

Open Invitation to Youth and Families

All youth are invited to participate in the Victory & Values Initiative, along with the other countless, impactful programs offered by the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County.

Parents and guardians seeking mentorship, leadership development, academic enrichment, and transformative exposure opportunities for their children are encouraged to connect with the organization.

As NBA Legend Terry Cummings’ induction demonstrates, Victory & Values is more than a program — it is a movement designed to build champions in life, not just in sports.

For more information about the Victory & Values Initiative or to enroll a student, contact: 100 Black Men of DeKalb County at Phone at 404.241.1338, info@100bmod.org or Tee Foxx at 404.791.6525,