We as child care center educators, directors, owners, parents and staff stand UNITED and unwavering in our call for the SAFETY of our children and ourselves. Child Care Providers of SEIU 925 are speaking in solidarity and have signed onto this petition to demand the creation of a channel for Law Enforcement to immediately alert nearby Child Care Centers of dangerous and hostile incidents in their area.

We are teachers, students, mothers, fathers, professionals, and community members taking proactive steps to ensure the safety and security of the children we have promised to protect. We sign in response to several incidents of having been left in the silence of Law Enforcement to learn of dangerous and threatening situations outside our doors second-hand through social media, and in other cases by looking outside our centers’ windows. This is a preventable and unnecessary risk that Elementary, Middle, and High Schools do not experience. Necessary procedures have been built to ensure that schools within a radius of threat will receive a notice so that they can safeguard the students they teach.

It is time for Child Care Centers to be afforded that same right and respect, too!

The creation and implementation of a channel for Law Enforcement to alert Child Care centers of nearby threats will allow us as caretakers to decide an appropriate course of action before the situation escalates. We see no alternative but to act now and create this channel.

The safety of the children we protect and the schools we’ve built are too important for Law Enforcement and DCYF Licensing not to prioritize.