Health

The City and Borough of Juneau is considering a program that could increase the quality and availability of child care in the community.

The lack of child care in Juneau is notorious, says JEDC’s Meilani Schijvens.

“There’s a joke here in Juneau that if you wait until you think you might be pregnant you’re probably too late to sign up for child care, if you want an infant spot,” Schijvens quips. “You need to sign up when you think you might be in love.”

A recent study by the Juneau Economic Development Council indicates about half of children under age six in Juneau are in unknown child care situations. That means they are either cared for by parents splitting shifts or by unlicensed providers.

The turnover rate among licensed child care providers in the capital city is nearly 20 percent higher than the state average.

According to JEDC, the pay is so low that qualified child care providers quickly move on to other jobs for better wages and benefits.

The Association for Education for Young Children, or AEYC, has posed a solution, called the HEARTS program.

It stands for hiring, educating and retaining teaching staff. The program is similar to others around the country, which offer incentives for child care providers so they can earn credentials in early childhood education, increase their earnings and stay in the business.

AEYC’s Nikki Morris says the HEARTS program would award each licensed child care provider more per hour based on their level of education.

“They can see that as they increase their training there is compensation that goes along with that,” Morris says.

The HEARTS program also would offer providers incentives to stay in business by helping to offset costs like first aid and CPR certifications. It would waive some fees and taxes for licensed child care providers.

AEYC Executive Director Joy Lyon says the incentive program would result in better child care options in Juneau as well as provide working parents with the assurance that their young children have a quality day-care experience.

The HEARTS program will be reviewed by the CBJ Assembly Finance Committee. It would cost the CBJ just over $143,000 a year. Click here for the HEARTS Initiaitve.

Dov Gartenberg will be the first year-around Jewish Rabbi in Juneau.

He says Dov is pronounced like the bird or the past tense of dive – and he goes by either.

“In Hebrew it’s pronounced Dov. If anyone reads the book of Exodus, it’s one of the main characters; but Dov means bear. In moving up here I’m in my natural habitat,” Gartenberg says.

Juneau’s Jewish community did not call Gartenberg to be its rabbi, though he’s been a practicing rabbi for years. Instead, he moved to Juneau because his wife has taken a position at Bartlett Regional Hospital. The congregation, which has only had temporary rabbis for special holidays, convinced Gartenberg to become the year-round spiritual leader of Temple Sukkat Shalom.

“The word ‘rabbi’ means teacher in Hebrew. A rabbi is someone who teaches Torrah. It literally means ‘instruction,’ but is the Jewish scriptural tradition – which is different than the Christian tradition,” Gartenberg explains. “We share with the Christian tradition the Bible, at least the Hebrew Bible, but we also have what we call rabbinical literature. We are interpreters of that tradition to the Jewish community and to the broader world, whether the rabbi is in Juneau or Jerusalem.”

Jewish congregations are autonomous and not part of any hierarchy. Gartenberg says he has no plans to overhaul Juneau’s Jewish community practices. The congregation has had a religious school and year-around programs for many years and acquired its own building in 2005.

“What I will do is strengthen what they already have, and bring some rabbinical leadership that they haven’t had year around,” Gartenberg says.

Temple Sukkat Shalom is located at 211 Cordova Avenue in West Douglas. It is the only synagogue in Southeast Alaska.