The Village In Action: Looking Back at One Year of SF’s Stay at Home Order
By Maria Su, Psy.D., Executive Director of the SF Department of Children, Youth and Their Families
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure? Measure a year?
I would not call myself a superstitious person, but the events that transpired on Friday, March 13, 2020 made me question whether there is substance to the widely held belief that ‘Friday the 13th’ is cursed. My staff and I were in our office — together for what would turn out to be the last time in over a year — taking calls from the Mayor’s Office and the SFUSD Superintendent, receiving media requests from every outlet in San Francisco, and fielding inquiries from parents, our grantees, and other stakeholders, all of whom were justifiably frightened that COVID-19 would spreading rapidly in our community, and desperately trying to plan for and seek information about what San Francisco’s response would be. The calls, requests, and inquires continued throughout the weekend to Tuesday, March 17, when a historic decision was made, one which will have repercussions for a long time to come: the first Stay at Home Order was put into effect for the City & County of San Francisco and neighboring counties, and the SF Unified School District halted in-person learning for their 50,000 students.
During the 365 days since the first official day of Shelter in Place — when hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies disappeared from shelves; schools, workplaces and businesses deemed non-essential were forced to close; and life as we knew it came to a full stop — I’ve had the opportunity to see firsthand why they call San Francisco “the City That Knows How.” As Mayor London N. Breed shared last year, “San Francisco has overcome big challenges before — and we will do it again, together.” We took brave steps and immediate action in order to protect public health and keep our community safe from the coronavirus. We sheltered in place, starting with the initial three week period, then the three month extension, and onto a full year. And together with our grantee, City, and other partners, DCYF came to the aid of our City’s children, youth, and families in historic and heroic fashion. Reflecting on this one year anniversary, I’m in deep awe of how our City and Community partners and our youth development and educational first responders rose to the occasion serving on the front lines of the pandemic. It truly takes a village.
Now, a full year after San Francisco’s first major pandemic-related measures were put in place, I feel it is time to reflect on what has transpired since those fateful days in March 2020.
Spring 2020: Serving Families on the Front Lines and Pivoting to Meet San Francisco’s Needs
In those early, uncertain days of Stay at Home Order, the beginnings of a wide-ranging coalition sprang into action.
DCYF staff joined the ranks of an overnight army of Disaster Service Workers (DSWs)that were activated to deploy SF’s pandemic response. Our staff took on new responsibilities — becoming food packers, PPE suppliers, distribution network drivers, and emergency operations specialists — fulfilling the essential core of their mission as public servants.
Deeply rooted in the communities they serve, DCYF grantees pivoted their programming to adapt to the new world of remote learning that the children and youth they work with had to transition to, and to meet the real needs emerging in the context of the pandemic and citywide shutdown. The City leaned on our community-based organizations (CBOs), and our CBOs leaned in: they distributed printed classroom curriculum and digital learning devices to SFUSD students, conducted wellness checks, distributed meals and groceries, and innovated ways to meet the basic needs of the children, youth, and families they serve.
In order to support our grantees during this time of flux and adjustment, DCYF instituted policies and procedures that made our grantees’ lives easier and allowed them to focus on what is most important. We ensured continuity of payment, eased reporting requirements, and worked with our Technical Assistance and Capacity Building providers to alter their professional development workshops in a way that would support the new realities our grantees were confronting.
Amid this flurry of new essential services, citywide school closures left our frontline workforce without one essential service in particular: child and youth care. Acting quickly to meet this urgent need, DCYF, the Recreation & Parks Department, the Office of Early Care and Education, the Public Library, the Department of Emergency Management and a group of DCYF grantees banded together to launch the City’s Emergency Child and Youth Care (ECYC) program. ECYC sites were established at 63 locations throughout the City, and served 715 frontline healthcare workers and City employees that were activated as Disaster Service Workers. Children and youth enrolled in the ECYC program attended free, all day, in-person programming at safe, professionally supervised sites that provided free healthy meals and opportunities for children to safely play and learn together. The ECYC program allowed frontline families to focus on their heroic efforts to test and treat patients in their care, and to strategize and implement the City’s efforts to combat and control the spread of COVID-19. While the majority of the ECYC sites transitioned to other services in June 2020, five are still in operation today and continue to serve the children of COVID-19 first responders. We didn’t know it then, but the ECYC program laid the foundation for a coalition that would take the lead in meeting the needs of our children, youth, and their families throughout the pandemic.
Summer 2020: Serving More Families and Helping Mitigate Food Insecurity
When summer 2020 came around, San Francisco was still in a fierce battle with COVID-19. SFUSD students had not set foot in a classroom in three months, families were being forced to make incredibly difficult decisions and sacrifices in the interest of their children’s health and safety, and many people were grappling with unemployment, food insecurity, social isolation, and mental health issues for the first time in their lives. In response, DCYF, our partners, and other agencies stepped up to try to provide as many in-person summer learning programs and services for children and youth as pandemic-related safety measures would allow.
On May 26, DCYF launched a registration tool that required every agency in the City that provided summer programming for children and youth to agree to comply with the SF Department of Public Health’s Directives and Guidance for summer programs. DCYF used the data gathered via the registration tool to create a map of all in-person summer programs in San Francisco, and shared this map with the general public on our website. Summer programming in San Francisco officially started on June 15, and DCYF’s grantees, the SF Recreation and Parks Department, and private programs provided masked up, physically distanced summer program experiences for 6,000 of San Francisco’s children and youth in grades K-12.
During the summer of 2020 and throughout the pandemic, food insecurity increased substantially in San Francisco, particularly among families with children. In response, DCYF and our partners served over 83,000 free, healthy summer meals to children and youth ages 18 and under between June and August. While most of the meals were served at in-person summer program sites, DCYF also coordinated free meal distribution at six additional sites in neighborhoods that were profoundly impacted by the effects of the pandemic. Additionally, DCYF issued funds to non-profit agencies to provide Safeway gift cards to City College of San Francisco students experiencing food insecurity.
No matter what pandemic-related issue confronted San Francisco, DCYF grantees were there to provide services and support. They ran in-person and virtual programs, distributed food in their communities, connected young people to jobs, got their families counted in the census, hosted COVID-19 testing sites, and maintained continuity of service for children and youth whose worlds had otherwise been upended.
While I am incredibly proud of all of the work that DCYF, our grantees, our partners, and every agency in San Francisco put into supporting families with the highest levels of need during the summer of 2020, I will never forget the dismay I felt every time a new report would come my way with more and more data about the myriad ways in which San Francisco’s families were suffering, especially during months that are usually filled with fun, friends, and adventures for our City’s children and youth. I am certain that our efforts supported many families in the City, but I will always acknowledge the profound struggles that many families faced during that time, and continue to deal with today.
Fall 2020: Launch of the Community Hub Initiative
As the first day of school for SFUSD’s 50,000 students drew near, it became more and more evident that in-person learning would not occur, at least not for the first few months of the school year. My staff and I considered this to be a crisis. The pandemic had already illuminated the fact that schools provide so many functions beyond education: they allow working parents/guardians to provide for their families; they are the primary source of meals for many children; they are the primary connectors to services that address physical, mental, and emotional health needs for children and youth; and they are the primary source of integral social interaction that is vital to healthy development. As a department committed to racial equity and healing trauma, DCYF worked together with the Recreation & Parks Department, the Public Library, and our grantee agencies to create the Community Hub Initiative, which officially opened its doors to San Francisco children in grades K-6 on September 14. After the successful K-6 launch, the Community Hubs opened to children and youth in grades K-12 on October 26.
The Community Hub Initiative provides in-person, safe, free, reliable sites for San Francisco’s children and youth to engage with the distance learning curriculum provided by their schools. Every student that attends a Community Hub receives a free, healthy breakfast, lunch, and snacks, and has the opportunity to engage in enrichment activities and interact with fellow students and caring adults.
This community hub has been a lifeline for us. Our son was struggling, and balancing supporting his needs while working full-time would be a challenge even in the best of times. Not only that, he’s thrived. He’s doing well with his school, his social interactions, his communication skills. It’s been honestly amazing to witness his progress. We’ve felt completely secure and safe with the protocols and assistance at the hub. The staff have gone all out to give him support, navigate the countless Zoom calls, and make us feel secure as a family. I wish this was year-round, seriously. It’s been fantastic. And we’re forever grateful.
David, Community Hub Parent, Eureka Valley Rec Center
Since the beginning of the Community Hub Initiative, DCYF has prioritized enrollment for residents of HOPE SF, public housing, and families living in RVs, SROs, and shelters; families that are experiencing homelessness; children in the foster care system; English Language Learners; and low-income families, with a focus on historically impacted communities, including people who identify as African American, Latino/a/x, Native American, Pacific Islander, and/or Asian.
The data DCYF has collected since the start of the Community Hub Initiative really tells the story of the impact the initiative has had on the City’s most vulnerable children, youth, and families.
Winter 2020 and Beyond: Continued Expansion of the Community Hub Initiative and Summer Together Initiative
As 2020 and the first full semester of the Community Hub Initiative came to a close, San Francisco started to hit frightening new milestones: a post-holiday peak in new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations wreaked havoc in the City, bringing about some of the strictest health and safety measures we had been subject to. Data started to emerge from SFUSD proving the veracity of our worst fears about academic outcomes for students, particularly students from traditionally marginalized communities and students with special needs.
While winter felt like a very dark time in San Francisco, there was some light emerging from the outcomes experienced by students enrolled in the Community Hubs. Since the start of the Community Hub Initiative in September, none of the Community Hubs experienced a COVID-19 outbreak (and still have not to this day!). We received reports from Community Hub providers that their students had made the honor roll for the first time in their academic careers. We conducted surveys of families with children enrolled in the Community Hubs, and the results were overwhelmingly positive.
Learning of these outcomes and knowing the herculean effort that went into accomplishing them, despite some of the most intense adversity San Francisco’s children, youth, and families have faced in many decades, has been one of the most gratifying accomplishments of my tenure at DCYF. These outcomes also give me hope for San Francisco’s next major challenge: providing summer programming in 2021 that will work to remediate the learning losses suffered by thousands of San Francisco students during the school year, and supporting children, youth, and families as they make the slow but welcome transition to life after and beyond the pandemic.
In March 2021, Mayor Breed, SFUSD Superintendent Dr. Vincent Matthews, and community organization TogetherSF announced the launch of the Summer Together Initiative, a newly formed coalition of San Francisco community organizations, nonprofits (including many DCYF grantees), businesses, SFUSD, and City departments partnering to offer a combination of free in-person and virtual learning experiences for public school students this summer.
After nearly a year of not being in the classroom, San Francisco’s public school students have fallen behind academically and emotionally. These learning and wellness issues are significantly magnified in African American, Latino/a/x, Pacific Islander, low income, and English Language Learner children and youth: the same populations we’ve prioritized in the Community Hub Initiative. Summer Together aims to help San Francisco students impacted by learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic engage in meaningful, fun, and academically integrated programming and experiences. The program will aim to serve all SFUSD students, with a focus on supporting students and families with the highest levels of need.
I will be forever amazed by and grateful for the flexibility, resourcefulness, creativity, and compassion shown by my staff, DCYF’s partners, and our grantee agencies during the pandemic. Much of our work takes place out of the limelight and can at times feel thankless, but the impact of what we do resonates throughout the community in a way that is impossible to quantify — how do you measure an extraordinary year? To everyone who has contributed in any way to San Francisco’s efforts to support children, youth, and families — before, during, and beyond pandemic times — thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your critical contribution in making San Francisco a great place to grow up.
