Black Press

Military Child Care, a National Model, Faces Limitations

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE —

Published

4 months ago

June 22, 2026

BlackPress of America

By Liz Bell, EdNC.org

Rachel Nelson has worked in child care since she was a 19-year-old college student at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. She worked for two decades across multiple states, including several years in Onslow County, North Carolina, providing technical assistance to increase program quality. Nelson thought she had seen it all — a child care program in a warehouse without walls, a program in a converted auto repair shop, mom-and-pop programs, and large chains. Then she went onto a military base.

In 2013, Nelson took a child care job on Camp Lejeune, the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast, in Onslow County. It was a whole new world. “I had a wish that all child care had the resources and supports that installation child care has,” said Nelson, now the deputy director of the Marine and Family Programs Division, which oversees eight child development centers (CDCs) on base.

The military child care model, established by Congress in 1989, is widely considered to be the best publicly supported system in the country, with the Department of War (DoW) investing about $1.8 billion annually as of 2024. Even still, families’ needs are outpacing the model’s capacity.

In Onslow County — home to Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station New River, and several training schools — the on-base and off-base child care systems stand in stark contrast. A worsening off-base child care crisis, local leaders say, is threatening both the local community’s health and workforce and, as military families’ needs evolve, the country’s military readiness. The country’s biggest employer-sponsored model — amid a desert

Since October, local Onslow County leaders, from business to education to government, have been meeting to explore solutions to their unique child care needs. One Place, the local Smart Start partnership, launched a task force to bring ideas across sectors to the table. “No one’s coming to save us,” said Dawn Rochelle, CEO of One Place, at a meeting in February.

Off-base, the community has lost 32% of its licensed child care sites in the last decade, according to One Place. In the time since the local child care task force started meeting, six programs have closed, with another center closure expected this summer, One Place staff said. Programs are serving about 3,000 children, 200 fewer since October.

Licensed care in Onslow County is meeting roughly 45% of the potential need, according to a national analysis from the Buffett Early Childhood Institute at the University of Nebraska. The average annual cost for infant care in the county is $12,168, according to a task force presentation.

Providers, as is the case in the child care industry across the country, are stuck. They cannot pay their teachers competitive wages and keep care affordable for families. “This is not an issue that (we) can wait any longer to solve,” Rochelle said.

On-base, eight CDCs are serving about 1,452 children, according to a local meeting presentation. With the military’s investment, teachers receive higher pay than their off-base peers and are offered benefits, including free child care for their own children. Parents pay on a sliding scale based on their family’s total income. Priority is given to children based on their parents’ rank and working status.

The investment translates into kinds of access and quality that are often difficult to provide in private care, Nelson said. For example, CDCs can offer more care for infants and toddlers, which is particularly difficult to come by in the private industry because of its low ratio requirements. At one of the larger CDCs on base, Nelson said eight of its 24 classrooms serve infants. Twenty out of the 24 rooms are for children under 3 years old.

“You don’t see that (off-base) because the cost of care is so expensive when you have those smaller group sizes and ratios,” Nelson said.

With the military’s investment, CDCs are also able to hire personnel outside of classroom teachers to meet children’s needs. Centers have child care health consultants and behavioral health staff, for example, which helps serve children with special needs. “Military child care is able to support, in many cases … children that programs out in town would really struggle with supporting — special medical needs or those emotional regulation needs — and not because the folks out in town care any less, but because they don’t have those additional supports that are so helpful,” Nelson said.

As of 2015, 97% of CDCs were nationally accredited, according to a 2020 report from the Congressional Research Service, compared to about 9% of civilian centers. Raising quality all comes back to fairly paying and investing in people, Nelson said. On top of higher pay and benefits, Nelson said the on-the-job training CDCs provide to teachers through online modules removes barriers to entering the profession.

“Quality doesn’t come from the store,” Nelson said. “Quality comes from the people. And so when you invest in the staff, in the workforce, that’s how you increase quality.” ‘I’m always conflicted. Do I do it for the staff? Do I do it for the families?’

In off-base community-based programs, providers are trying to do just that with limited resources. Without the kind of consistent and robust outside investment that military programs receive, they are often bending over backwards to pay teachers and keep care affordable for families. It’s a math problem that has become harder to solve since the end of pandemic stabilization funds, providers told EdNC. Stabilization grants were first provided to child care facilities by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and then extended at a lower rate by the state legislature through March of 2025.

“It’s much more challenging now — much more challenging,” said Gina Shepherd, director of New Beginnings Child Care, which owns three child care sites and one private K-12 school in the area. The program was able to raise base teacher pay by about $4 while receiving stabilization grants, Shepherd said, which administrators have maintained. Without that outside funding source, the budget is tight month to month, she said. And finding quality staff who will stay has gotten harder.

At the time of EdNC’s visit in March, Shepherd had an empty 2-year-old classroom and was waiting to find a qualified teacher to open another NC Pre-K classroom. “I can say with certainty that staffing has never quite been the same,” Shepherd said.

At Quality Childcare and Preschool, with locations in Sneads Ferry and Holly Ridge, owner and director Shannon Pope said she is balancing the same math problem. Pope is continuously looking for grants and extra funding to support and retain teachers. “The margins are tight,” Pope said. “If you want to treat your staff well and make sure that the morale is high and they stay with you, that is where your entire budget goes, is to your staff.”

The program participates in the TEACH scholarship program, which covers teachers’ tuition to go back to school. Pope also signed the centers up for the early childhood apprenticeship program to allow teachers to work while earning credentials. She, like Shepherd, also increased teachers’ wages with stabilization funds. She provides health insurance and paid time off, unique benefits in the field. It is a constant struggle to find the funding to support staff and not price out families, she said.

“I’m always conflicted. Do I do it for the staff? Do I do it for the families?” she said. “Well, if we didn’t have families, I wouldn’t be able to pay my staff and wouldn’t have staff. But if I don’t have happy staff, then I have angry families. I don’t know what to do.” “I want us to thrive, and not just, you know, tread water all the time,” she said.

Shannon Pope, owner and director of Quality Childcare and Preschool, shares her workforce strategy at a January roundtable discussion for child care providers, convened by One Place. ‘We need to tap into community-based child care’ Despite consistent investment and high quality, the military has struggled to keep up with families’ demands for care, running out of space on installations. In recent years, branches have launched new programs that utilize community-based providers to meet families’ needs.

In the last two years, commanders across North Carolina’s bases have raised child care as one of the top quality of life concerns, said Joseph Speranza, a retired senior chief corpsman and member of the North Carolina Military Affairs Commission. When Speranza was in the service, his spouse stayed home to take care of their children. They were able to survive on one income, which is not the case for most military families today.

“We always had issues; however, I think they’re getting worse,” said Speranza, a member of the local task force. In a 2025 survey from national nonprofit Blue Star Families, 68% of military family respondents said having two incomes is “vitally important to their family’s financial well-being.” Respondents listed child care as one of their main challenges, with 86% citing high costs, 67% citing long waitlists, and 52% citing concerns with the quality of care.

In Onslow County, a relatively low cost of living, older on-base facilities, and Hurricane Florence damage have all factored into many families’ decisions to live off base in recent years, Speranza said. That also impacts families’ care preferences. “So what … more of the military service members do is they end up flooding our local communities,” Speranza said.

In some cases, a lack of child care leads to military families making tough decisions, like choosing for a spouse to juggle work and care or drop out of the workforce. When Shannen Downing’s husband was stationed as a pilot at Marine Corps Air Station New River in 2022, she had already struggled to find care for her first child in Texas and Florida. She wanted to return to the classroom as a teacher as soon as she could, so she and her husband sped up having children. “Family planning wise, (we thought), ‘Let’s have our children closer together so that I can get back into the workforce faster,’” Downing said.

In Onslow County, things didn’t get any easier. Downing, who was living on base at the time, checked out the CDCs and found waitlists between six and nine months long. She took a remote job and tried to work full-time and care for her children. When she had her third child in the summer of 2025, she decided it was time to try to find care again. Though her family was no longer living on base, she tried the installation’s CDCs, putting her children on waitlists at each one.

“I couldn’t get child care reliably enough to accept a position,” Downing said. When she did find off-base care, it was a larger monthly expense than her family’s mortgage. With space limits and growing demand, the military has used fee assistance programs as another strategy to connect families with the care they need to serve the country.

“There’s not enough on-post child care, but also it’s not necessarily accessible to where families are living,” said Susan Gale Perry, CEO of Child Care Aware of America, a national nonprofit that administers several military fee assistance programs. “And so that is why, at a certain point, the military said, ‘Gosh, you know, we’re not going to solve this just with on-installation care, we need to tap into community-based child care.”

After finally finding care, Downing heard about the Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN) program, which helps families with the cost of community-based care. Her three children are now all enrolled in New Beginnings Child Care. Her family went from paying $2,300 to $1,600 for two children per month (the oldest child is in a free public preschool classroom).

Each branch provides fee assistance for community-based care, covering a portion based on rank and spouse status, with the family covering the rest. Since 2023, North Carolina has participated in MCCYN PLUS, which allows child care programs meeting a certain level of quality based on state ratings to participate, rather than only nationally accredited programs.

Fee assistance is one of several ways the military model is trying to partner with bases’ surrounding communities to serve families’ needs. Fayetteville’s Fort Bragg, for example, is part of a pilot that helps families with the cost of hiring individuals to provide full-time in-home child care. In Norfolk, Virginia, the DoW partnered with the Armed Services YMCA to open three new centers in the last year for military families waitlisted for care. In other instances, the DoW has bought out slots at other community-based programs to reserve them for children of military families.

A connection to care is particularly important for military families without extended family close by, experts say. Child care can also provide consistency amid change and stress. That’s been the case for Downing and her children, she said. “They are our support system,” she said, speaking about her children’s child care teachers. “They are my shoulder to lean on when my husband is gone, and I’m kind of just holding it all together with a piece of dental floss.”

When her husband deploys, Downing said she notifies her children’s teachers so they can provide a little extra support. “I feel like they’re part of our team, like they’re part of our family team.” ‘All of those puzzle pieces working together’. Even with new strategies, military families’ needs cannot be solved in a vacuum, experts told EdNC. Fee assistance programs, for example, cannot keep community-based providers open or create enough slots.

“Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood is a very important piece of the puzzle; installation child care is an important, vital piece of the puzzle; but child care in our community is another piece of the puzzle,” Nelson said. “And it takes all of those puzzle pieces working together to help meet the overall need. Not one of them could stand alone.” In Onslow County, child care shortages are being felt by commanders, as well as local employers across industries, from education to law enforcement.

Across the local economy, child care shortages are costing an estimated $83 million per year, which is mainly from employee turnover and absenteeism, according to a presentation from Neil Harrington, NC Child’s senior director of policy and research. “Workforce issues at child care centers themselves really drive a lot of these access issues,” Harrington said.

When all is said and done, young children’s learning is also at stake. Teachers are missing out on opportunities to identify problems and intervene early, local K-12 teachers shared at roundtables hosted by the local task force.

“During the task force, we heard from kindergarten teachers from Onslow County Schools,” said Stacey Knox, chief growth officer at One Place. “They know the difference. They see it in the child. They see it in how they are doing when they arrive at kindergarten if they have not been in early learning programs.”

Some families, unable to afford or find licensed care, are instead piecing together half-day programs and informal arrangements. Catie Hollis, a mother of an 8-month-old and a 4-year-old, relies on an unlicensed half-day program at the YMCA and a trusted neighbor. She said she’s noticed parents turning to similar options on Facebook groups.

“We have a lot of families in this community that are in a real desperate pinch that need the care,” Hollis said, “and if they see somebody post on Facebook that they can do it for $150 a week, I think that that sounds more appealing to them than waiting on subsidy or paying $250 a week at a center.”

Onslow County child care providers share their challenges and ideas at a roundtable convened by One Place in January. Liz Bell/EdNC. Local leaders are recognizing the problem as one in need of a systemic solution. In some ways, they are pulling inspiration from the military model. At the final local task force meeting, members discussed cost-sharing models that split the cost of child care among multiple entities, including employers, parents, and local or state governments.

“You can’t fund it without additional funding coming … from outside. It can’t just be parents,” Knox said. Knox said her own family benefited from “probably the strongest share model that came to be, and that was after the passing of the Military Child Care Act of 1989.”

“When you think about sharing the cost, there are ways to do this that make the investment a better outcome for children (and) a better outcome for an employer,” Knox said. Local leaders are also considering a substitute pool to help address staffing instability, a fund that would cover tuition for the children of child care teachers, and pre-built in-home child care models.

One Place staff are spreading awareness about the federal Employer-Provided Child Care Credit (45F), which was made permanent in 2025 and provides tax credits to businesses that help their employees with child care. They are also advocating for flexibility from the state on how to spend their Smart Start funding in order to back local initiatives.

“I believe that we have to always look at what is the money that we have, and how can we spend it differently?” Rochelle said. At the state level, advocates are requesting additional subsidy funding from the legislature to increase the amount programs receive to serve eligible children. Low rates are contributing to staffing challenges and, in some cases, closures, advocates say.

In Onslow County, this would mean programs would receive between $150 and $275 in additional funding per child per month, according to estimates from NC Child. “The bottom line is until we have both supply and demand side investment — and that does mean more public investment — we’re not going to get underneath the fundamental problems,” Perry said.

In April, One Place held its annual State of the Child breakfast in Jacksonville and presented its findings from months of discussions with task force members, child care providers, business leaders, military personnel, and educators. They told community members about challenges of access, quality, and affordability. They shared potential solutions. Then Rochelle, executive director of One Place, turned to the audience.

“What role will you play? What tables will you sit at for our community?” she asked. Nelson told EdNC that child care is both infrastructure and a shared responsibility “in a caring community. Laurette Leagon, president of the Jacksonville Onslow Chamber of Commerce, agrees.

Regarding the need for more high-quality and affordable child care, Leagon said: “I don’t know what the answer is, but we’re going to keep trying until we find it.”

Editor’s note: This EdNC article originally appeared at https://www.ednc.org/5-13-2026-with-two-child-care-systems-onslow-county-looks-for-a-way-forward-to-meet-military-and-civilian-needs/.

Support for this article was provided by the Better Life Lab at New America as part of its Child Care Innovation Reporting Project. The lab awarded grants for “solutions-oriented stories focusing on how and why care issues matter to families and children, our communities, and a thriving economy with thriving families.”

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OP-ED: For Us It’s Feel-a-Nomics

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Consumer confidence is at its lowest level since 2014. The median household income in America is $87,460 but it takes a median income of $150,000 to buy a home. Affordable housing is sitting vacant because folks still can’t afford it particularly with the dramatic cuts to SNAP and Medicaid we saw in Trump’s “Big Ugly Bill.”

Published

1 day ago

October 22, 2026

BlackPressUSA Newswire

Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA.

I often refer to the economic conditions we see in our Black community is Black-a-nomics. But that description is truly rooted in Feel-a-nomics: the economy that you can feel.

Feel-a-Nomics gets past the philosophical abstractions you hear about so much on the news that politicians use to paint a rosier picture than the reality you’re facing. Feel-a-Nomics doesn’t care about corporate profits or dividend projections because those earnings don’t trickle down to your wallet. It doesn’t pay any attention to inflated job numbers when we know that it takes at least two of those jobs to earn a living wage.

Feel-a-Nomics is the economy that affects every day of your life.

Foreclosure rates are skyrocketing up 21% for the first half of 2026 and car repossessions were up 43% as of January. That’s Feel-a-Nomics because it’s your home on the chopping block and that’s the car you need to get to and from your job.

Credit card debt is surging as more than half of Americans are forced to rely on credit cards to pay for basic needs like groceries, rent and utilities. Student debt has jumped since the Trump administration reversed course on Biden repayment and forgiveness plans. This unconstitutional war has brought us record high diesel prices and fertilizer costs along with 16 unnecessary American deaths with a Feel-a-Nomics impact of higher prices at the pump and the grocery store as it costs our farmers more not just to grow our food, but to send it to us too.

Consumer confidence is at its lowest level since 2014. The median household income in America is $87,460 but it takes a median income of $150,000 to buy a home. Affordable housing is sitting vacant because folks still can’t afford it particularly with the dramatic cuts to SNAP and Medicaid we saw in Trump’s “Big Ugly Bill.”

The MAGA healthcare cuts are piling on new premiums and high deductibles. High inflation, particularly at the gas pump and the grocery store, is cutting our legs from under us. The value of our dollar is shrinking at every turn and it doesn’t matter anymore if you want to get a second or third job because, according to another piss poor jobs report, the work just isn’t out there.

According to the Federal Reserve, the net worth of Black households is down 25%. That’s our home. That’s our community. Those are our families! That’s Feel-a-Nomics and, here in the Black community, it hurts. So let’s turn that pain into progress.

After gutting the Voting Rights Act and more, President Trump and the MAGA Congress has done everything they can to cripple Black progress and Black communities. They’ve picked our pockets and our bodies to the bone. But there’s something we can do about it.

The economics of voting are undeniable and, try as they might, they can’t keep us out of the voting booth. That’s why we have groups like State Voices, Repairers of the Breach, Common Cause, No Kings and more coming together to drive voter mobilization and participation. That’s why Repairers of the Breach is organizing 1,000 marches to the polls across the South and battleground states like North Carolina where 201,609 voters cast their ballots on Thursday’s first of early voting.

That’s a 46.7% increase in early voting from 2022. That’s huge! But it’s just the start.

We need a generational, Presidential year-type turnout if we’re going to turn this ship around and find the Feel-a-Nomics relief we need in our communities. That means we all have to do our part from the streets to the suites.

We need everyone from the PhDs to folks who don’t have a GED. We need the farmers and forklift drivers, college students to life students, front line workers for everyone who works on the line.

We need everyone.

We’ve all felt the impact of MAGAnomics and Trumpism. We’ve all felt the pain whether it’s that empty feeling looking at bills you just can’t pay no matter what you cut or the cramp in your stomach because you’re skipping meals trying to keep the lights on.

We’ve all felt the pain of these Feel-a-Nomics. But the good news is that we have an opportunity right now to do something about it. We have the opportunity to make a change at the ballot box.

But it’s going to take all of us to make it happen. It’s going to take every shoulder against the wheel to push back on the big money holding us down. It’s going to take all of us but we’ve done it before.

Are you ready to do it again?

Art

OP-ED: Is Creativity a Superpower in Early Education?

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — “This is not anything new, knowing that play is so critical to children, whether it’s dramatic play, building play, creative arts play or physical play,” said Hoisington, a STEM expert who taught preschool for decades. “But as soon as they hit kindergarten and first grade, there’s this dichotomy that sets in. Play is something you get to do after you do the learning when, in fact, we know that play is an incredible vehicle for learning.”

Published

1 day ago

October 22, 2026

BlackPressUSA Newswire

By Karen D'Souza, EdSource

Singing the ABC song. Learning the days of the week from a nursery rhyme. Making a finger-painted collage of little handprints.

Arts education has always been center stage in early education because little children are naturally creative, filled with wonder and the burning desire to express themselves. Arts and crafts not only help nurture a child’s natural imagination, they also boost small motor skills, sharpen hand-eye coordination and feed the insatiable need to play.

“Children don’t just play, they learn fundamental skills through play,” said Daniel Mendoza, a California visual artist and specialist in early childhood education art practices. “Children are in a creative mindset all the time.”

While this may well be as true for teenagers as it is for toddlers, there is far more time and space allotted for playfulness in the early grades, when the crucial role of play in particular and creativity in general has long been a matter of common sense.

“Really, I’m just a common-sense professor, and somehow it became rogue,” said Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and an expert in the key role of play in learning. “What if we taught children the way we know the brain learns?”

Bringing joy back into the classroom is also what motivates Cindy Hoisington, an early childhood expert who specializes in reaching out to children from historically marginalized communities at the Education Development Center (EDC), a national education nonprofit.

“This is not anything new, knowing that play is so critical to children, whether it’s dramatic play, building play, creative arts play or physical play,” said Hoisington, a STEM expert who taught preschool for decades. “But as soon as they hit kindergarten and first grade, there’s this dichotomy that sets in. Play is something you get to do after you do the learning when, in fact, we know that play is an incredible vehicle for learning.”

Play, some experts suggest, may be the superpower of the young. A growing body of research suggests that play may even be a way to help close achievement gaps. One report, analyzing 26 studies from 18 countries, found that in communities from Rwanda to Ethiopia, children got higher learning boosts in literacy, motor skills and social-emotional development when attending child care centers that use a mix of instruction and free play as opposed to those focused solely on academics.

“Children are so naturally, intuitively ready with their curiosity, their motivation to explore the world and everything in it, to the point where that’s why the twos are so terrible, because you’re constantly chasing after them,” said Hoisington, who helps evaluate digital media for PBS. “Science, for instance, tends to have a bad rap as this dry body of knowledge that we have to learn, but really it’s a process of exploration that is very much integral with play.”

Tapping into that spirit of discovery with hands-on experiences is often best, experts say. Curiosity burns brightest in the early years, so letting kids loose to investigate the world is part of building a rich, play-based learning environment.

“Where young children are free to investigate by observing, touching and acting on the objects in their world,” said Deborah Stipek, an expert in early childhood at Stanford University. “This is how they learn about the world — for example, that some objects float and some sink. Through their own experimentation and observation, they may even arrive at hypotheses about the qualities that differentiate the two.”

From “The Wheels on the Bus” to “Baby Shark,” kiddos love to sing and love to learn, so why not teach through music? Singing the “Old MacDonald had a Farm” song can be educational, experts say, as well as a ritual for community building. Children can take turns deciding on which animal to pick, which builds vocabulary as well as sharing skills.

“Young children learn best by doing,” said Stipek. “Counting objects is better than counting dots on a worksheet because they can move the objects to help them keep track of how many they have counted. Worksheets are not all bad. They can provide opportunities to practice and consolidate skills. But children don’t develop new skills doing worksheets, and they are typically not nearly as engaging and fun.”

Tracing the alphabet in shaving cream or making tin-foil sculptures may seem like basic exercises, but they often teach sophisticated concepts. Playing make-believe games can teach numerous skills at once. Pretend restaurants need someone to write a menu, calculate a bill and greet diners, fostering literacy, numeracy and special-emotional learning all in one game, Hoisington notes.

Songs are a clever way to remember stuff because they make memorization easy and fun for little ones. Melodies and rhymes make the most of our limited working memory to help children embed basic facts into their long-term memory, bolstering depth of cognition.

“I still sing the ABC song in my head sometimes, if I want to know which letter comes before which letter,” admits Hoisington.

What’s often missed in the discussion of the role of play is that older children also need time for creativity and free play, as well as the arts. While there is much talk about the need to engage students, there is little focus on low-hanging fruit like increasing time for arts, sports and recess. Putting too much emphasis on academic skills in isolation undercuts the love of learning, some warn.

“Kids try to buck it, but certainly by first grade we’ve started to ruin them,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “We pound the curiosity right out of kids.”

Mendoza firmly believes teachers should be guides to adventure instead of taskmasters.

“You don’t have to be a dictator,” as he puts it, “you can be a Sherpa.”

So, why doesn’t the role of play get more respect in education? Why do we emphasize test scores over deep learning?

“We got to this place because people are scared,” said Hirsh-Pasek. “They’re feeling like they’re losing control, and they want to make sure their kid is ahead. We push it younger and younger and younger, and as we do that, we’re creating a situation where our kids are anxious wrecks and the parents are anxious wrecks.”

Some experts suggest that children need more time for play and creativity in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Credit: Lillian Mongeau / EdSource

Too few teachers and parents are aware that play helps build the architecture of the growing brain, experts say.

“Play is not frivolous; it enhances brain structure and function and promotes executive function (i.e., the process of learning, rather than the content), which allow us to pursue goals and ignore distractions,” as an American Academy of Pediatrics report put it. “When play and safe, stable, nurturing relationships are missing in a child’s life, toxic stress can disrupt the development of executive function and the learning of prosocial behavior; in the presence of childhood adversity, play becomes even more important.”

Some experts fear that the laser focus on falling test scores in recent years has led to a decrease in playful learning. They suggest that children need more time for play in the wake of the pandemic, not less. Amid the crisis of chronic absenteeism, engaging students on a compelling level may be more vital than ever.

Creativity is the secret formula, experts say, in a world where machines will always compute faster than humans. Drill and kill won’t help children master high-level intellectual inquiry and conceptual analysis.

“You have to ask yourself, what’s it going to take to outsmart the robots?” as Hirsh-Pasek put it. “We need kids who don’t just memorize and take tests well, which AI will do better than our kids ever will. We need kids to be explorers and problem solvers.”

Black Press

Mayor Barbara Lee Holds Special State of the City Address in Deep East Oakland

Published

5 days ago

October 19, 2026

BlackPressUSA Newswire

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, left. moderated a community chat with (l.to r.) Selena Wilson, CEO of the East Oakland Youth Development Center; Carolyn “CJ” Johnson, CEO of the Black Cultural Zone; Dr. Noha Aboelata, CEO of Roots Health Center and Greg Hodge, CEO of the Brotherhood of Elders.

By Special to The Post

In partnership with Rise East and the 40×40 Council, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee held a special 2026 State of the City East Oakland community conversation on Oct. 14.

The purpose of bringing a State of the City address directly to the community was to celebrate East Oakland, highlight the work underway, and look ahead to what neighbors, local businesses, youth, funders, community organizations, and partners can accomplish together.

Held at the Roots Community Health/Parker Elementary School Campus at 7929 Ney Ave., the event was emceed by special guest Mark Curry, Oakland native, comedian, and actor.

Lee shared how Rise East and the 40×40 Council have brought together the knowledge, relationships, and resources of people and organizations committed to East Oakland.

Residents bring lived experience, community organizations bring trusted relationships and philanthropy, and businesses bring resources and opportunity, she said, then turned to the government’s role: public investment, services and policy.

But, Lee intoned, City Hall has a responsibility to help connect those efforts.

“I am committed to listening to residents, working across departments and sectors, and helping open doors to opportunity. We must connect neighborhood priorities to the decisions we make about housing, economic development, safety, health and our young people.

City Hall “must be accountable for the results,” Lee said. “The measure of success is what families experience: greater stability, more opportunity and a stronger sense that they belong and have a future here.

“Tonight is an opportunity to listen to the leaders doing this work, learn what is making a difference and identify where we can do more together,” the mayor said.

Lee went on to moderate a ‘fireside chat’ on the theme: Building Oakland’s Future Together — From Neighborhood Investment to Community Empowerment with:

Selena Wilson, CEO, East Oakland Youth Development Center
Greg Hodge, CEO, Brotherhood of Elders
Carolyn “CJ” Johnson, CEO, Black Cultural Zone
Dr. Noha Aboelata, CEO, Roots Health Center

Mayor Barbara Lee’s media relations department provided this report.

Black History

Practitioners of African Traditional Spirituality Offer Ancestral Reverence Ritual Oct. 31

The Council for Global Ancestral Reverence will host “Ancestral Souls Rising” from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, featuring a three-day gathering of prayer and discussion. Led by elders and priests across the African diaspora, the seventh annual ritual honors those lost without traditional rites while addressing current social challenges. This year’s event connects ancestral wisdom with contemporary issues, including a two-day conversation inspired by Afro-Beat music focused on Black community solidarity and the sacred importance of voting. Read more for details on the ritual schedule and participants.

Published

5 days ago

October 19, 2026

BlackPressUSA Newswire

Oakland native Nedra Williams writes sacred symbols on the ground in San Leandro. Courtesy photo.

By Special to The Post

The Council for Global Ancestral Reverence (C4GAR), a group of elders who practice African traditional spirituality, will lead a three-day gathering of prayer and discussion from Oct. 31-Nov. 2.

Called ‘Ancestral Souls Rising,’ the council members and 21 priests will lead the prayers from many parts of the African diaspora: Africa, Portugal, and across the U.S. from Maryland to the Bay Area.

Now in its seventh year, the annual ritual began during the 2020 pandemic when hundreds of thousands of people died alone and were buried in mass graves without rites and rituals according to loved ones’ traditions.

This prayer event was and is intended to give peace to the departed and comfort for the living who still mourn. Each year, we gather names of new ancestors from living elders to elevate them into the “Great Hall of the Titans.”

In ensuing years, C4GAR added themes to the prayer gathering that referenced current events. In 2024, before the consequential presidential election, C4GAR called on people to vote, invoking the memory of Civil Rights Movement heroes and heroines like John Lewis, who urged “Good Trouble,” and Fannie Lou Hamer, who famously declared that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

The day of global Prayer on Oct. 31 will be followed by a two-day conversation inspired by “The Blueprint,” an Afro-Beat song by UyiosaEl, to write our new blueprint that supports solidarity and action in the Black community.

“Our elders have, for many generations, known the power of prayer, ritual and breath,” the council said in a statement.

It was and is their intention, then, to use the cultural wisdom, the gift of prayer “and the most sacred thing we have, our breath, to send energy into the world that invokes and honors our ancestors,” the council statement continued.

“Doing this creates a vibration that protects us and employs their ancient wisdom for the well-being of our communities,” the elders said.

The councilmembers, all over the age of 60, recognize that what is now history for so many was once their lived experience. And that history, those joys and sorrows, are now in their bodies.

To them, the uttered prayer and the sacred breath are oaths to an unfolding future that people can still shape.

The council members are Dr. Iyabeji Cathy Royal, Iyalocha Jennifer Dillard, Manbo Charlene Desir (Florida), Nana Sula Spirit (Louisiana), Baba Obafemi Feyemi, Ohen Nedra T. Williams, and Iyalocha Wanda Ravernell-Stewart Emeritus (Oakland).

This year, they also encourage everyone within their reach to VOTE because it is not only a secular and political act, but a sacred one. Remember, the ancestors were denied that right and died for it.

For tickets, go to:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/council-for-global-ancestral-reverence-presents-ancestral-souls-rising-26-tickets-2003127345814?aff=oddtdtcreator

Black Press

It’s Time to Lose Weight Before the Holidays

Licensed internist Dr. H. Geoffrey Watson has joined gastroenterologist Dr. Ralph Peterson at Oakland’s MacArthur GI to address the rising obesity epidemic. With U.S. obesity rates reaching 42.4%, the clinic offers supervised weight-loss programs and screenings for fatty liver disease. Treatments include dietary counseling and various medications, such as GLP-1 receptor agonists, which regulate digestion and appetite. As certain populations continue to be disproportionately affected by chronic health conditions, medical experts are highlighting new tools available to help patients reach their goals before the holiday season. Read more.

Published

5 days ago

October 19, 2026

BlackPressUSA Newswire

Dr. H. Geoffrey Watson. File photo.

By Special to The Post

Dr. H. Geoffrey Watson, a licensed internist, has joined renowned gastroenterologist Dr. Ralph Peterson at MacArthur GI in Oakland to address obesity, provide supervised weight-loss programs including GLP-1 therapy, and screen for and treat fatty liver disease.

The Obesity Epidemic

Obesity is associated with numerous chronic health problems, including hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, asthma, depression, joint disorders, fatty liver disease, and high cholesterol. Its causes include genetics, environment, stress, medication side effects, hormonal imbalances, and other factors.

Since 1999, the prevalence of obesity in the United States has risen from 30.5% to 42.4%. Childhood obesity rates are also climbing, with approximately 19.3% of children and adolescents now affected.

Measuring Obesity: Body Mass Index

Obesity is measured using a formula called the Body Mass Index (BMI). You can calculate your own BMI on most smartphones by searching “BMI calculator” and entering your height and weight. A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is classified as overweight, and a BMI of 30 or greater is classified as obese.

Populations Disproportionately Affected

Obesity affects certain populations at higher rates. Among U.S. adults, obesity prevalence is 49.9% in Black adults, 45.6% in Hispanic adults, 41.4% in White adults, and 16.1% in Asian adults.

Treatment Options

A variety of treatments are available for obesity, including dietary counseling, exercise programs, bariatric surgery, and anti-obesity medications.

Common oral medications include:

• Adipex (phentermine): A stimulant that works by suppressing appetite.

• Contrave (bupropion/naltrexone): A combination of an antidepressant and an anti-addiction medication that helps control appetite and cravings.

• Qsymia (phentermine/topiramate): A combination of a stimulant and an anti-seizure medication that reduces appetite and cravings.

GLP-1 Receptor Agonist Therapy

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists were originally approved to treat type 2 diabetes. GLP-1 is a hormone produced naturally by the body that regulates digestion, blood sugar, and appetite by communicating with GLP-1 receptor cells throughout the digestive tract. These medications reduce cravings, appetite, and food intake by influencing the hunger hormones ghrelin, which stimulates hunger, and leptin, which signals fullness.

What We Offer

Drs. Peterson and Watson provide FDA-approved tirzepatide injections, a GLP-1 receptor agonist medication indicated for weight management. Each patient receives a comprehensive history and physical examination to ensure the safety and appropriateness of the medication as part of an overall weight-loss protocol. Dr. Peterson also offers ultrasound screening for fatty liver disease.

We look forward to helping you reach your weight-loss goals and feel your best this holiday season.

H. Geoffrey Watson, M.D., runs the MacArthur GI Clinic at 10520 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA. He can be reached at (510) 562-7467.

Black Press

Trader Vic’s Returns to Its Oakland Roots

Trader Vic’s, the internationally recognized brand and birthplace of the original Mai Tai, has officially returned to its roots in Oakland. Originally founded in 1934 on San Pablo Avenue before moving to Emeryville, the hospitality giant has launched Trader Vic’s Outpost at Oakland International Airport’s Terminal 2. The new full-service location offers travelers breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cocktails in a 108-seat space designed to celebrate the city’s status as a top national food destination. Visit the website to read more.

Published

5 days ago

October 19, 2026

BlackPressUSA Newswire

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee cuts the ribbon at the official opening of Trader Vic’s Outpost and Plum Market at Oakland International Airport. She is assisted by U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon as Port of Oakland Board President Stephanie Dominguez Walton, left, and representatives from Trader Vic's, Plum Market, look on. Photo courtesy of the mayor’s office.

By Special to The Post

Oakland has always been a city of innovators, entrepreneurs, visionaries, and world-class hospitality. Trader Vic’s—the birthplace of the original Mai Tai – first opened in Oakland back in 1934 on San Pablo Avenue, long before becoming an internationally recognized global brand.

More than 50 years after it moved to Emeryville, Trader Vic’s is returning to its roots. Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee touts the return as another victory for Oakland.

“My administration is deeply committed to backing businesses like Trader Vic’s and Plum Market—partners who invest in our city, uplift our local workforce, and support thousands of local jobs,” Lee said.

The latest Trader Vic’s – called Trader Vic’s Outpost – is located at the Oakland International Airport in Terminal 2 near Gate 25 and had a soft opening in August.

With 108 dining seats, 28 bar seats and a counter for standing-room customers, travelers from around the world can have a full-service restaurant and bar experience or take-out for those with planes to catch.

Open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., breakfast, lunch, dinner, cocktails will be served.

Trader Vic’s returning to its roots confirms Condé Nast’s decision to name Oakland the #1 Food City in America two years in a row, and just earlier this month, ranked Oakland #6 on their list of Best Cities in the U.S.!

“The opening at OAK is incredibly meaningful for us,” said Rhett Rosen, CEO of Trader Vic’s Hospitality Group, according to the company website. “Trader Vic’s was born in the Bay Area, and this new location gives us the chance to welcome travelers with a taste of that original spirit before they take off. It brings together everything people love about Trader Vic’s — great cocktails, flavorful food, warm hospitality and a little sense of escape — in a place that connects Oakland to the world.”

Trader Vic’s is an Oakland institution and one of the region’s most recognizable hospitality brands, said Port of Oakland Director of Aviation Craig Simon on the web site.

“Travelers are increasingly seeking dining options that are memorable, locally rooted, and uniquely representative of the communities they are visiting. Trader Vic’s delivers all of that while providing a high-quality food and beverage experience for our guests. We are proud to welcome this hometown favorite to Terminal 2,”

The original Trader Vic’s in Oakland:

In 1934, with an investment of $500, Bergeron opened his initially small restaurant at 65th Avenue and San Pablo, serving comfort foods for lunch and dinner and beers and whiskeys. As his clientele grew, so did his restaurant, expanding space and menu options. After visiting this establishment, famed San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen proclaimed that the “best restaurant in San Francisco is in Oakland.”

There were as many as 25 franchises worldwide, including the U.S. Trader Vic’s is now headquartered in Martinez.