Career Opportunity

9772 (TPV)- Early Childhood Education Specialist, Dept. of Early Childhood

Recruitment: RTF0142110-01127972

Published: February 23, 2024

Apply using SmartRecruiters, the City and County of San Francisco's application portal.

About:

Application Opening: February 23, 2024
Application Deadline: March 10, 2024
Compensation Range: $94,198-$114,556
Appointment: Full-Time, TPV- Temporary Provisional

Appointment Type: Temporary Provisional (TPV), limited to no more than 3 years in duration. This temporary position is excluded by the Charter from the competitive Civil Service examination process. A provisional appointee must participate and be successful in a Civil Service examination for this classification and be selected through an open competitive process in order to be considered for permanent appointment.

About the San Francisco Department of Early Childhood
The Department of Early Childhood (DEC) is a City and County of San Francisco Department dedicated to our young children's healthy development. As the City’s largest funder of early childhood, DEC is committed to creating a system that ensures every child can thrive and learn. We provide public investment, expertise, and leadership to put resources into the hands of those who care for our City’s youngest children. 

DEC results from merging two existing city departments, First 5 and the Office of Early Care and Education. Both First 5 and OECE have long histories of supporting young children and families in San Francisco through early care and education innovations, family support services, and programs to support children’s healthy development. They merged to expand their capacity and funding and to integrate the City’s early childhood services better.

Racial Equity Commitment 
The Department of Early Childhood condemns all forms of racism, sexism, homo/biphobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, and other forms of discrimination. It affirms that all people including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color – have a right to be in our City and have a right to safe and affordable housing, neighborhoods free from pollution and violence, opportunities for educational advancement and wealth creation, healthy births, early childhoods with abundant opportunities to thrive free from the toxic effects of racism, and access to essential services such as parks, transportation, health care, and child care. The Department of Early Childhood is committed to the principles of racial equity and continues to implement new strategies to ensure that every child can learn and thrive.

Role description

Position Description
The Early Learning Division administers core department strategies that advance opportunities in support of teacher preparation and compensation, enhance program quality, and improve early care and education affordability and access; and collaborates closely with the other DEC divisions to form a cross-sector approach that ensures universal developmental screening that promotes access to health and mental health services for children and their families; and that families have opportunities for social and professional connections, linkage to resources, and information on parenting and child development.

The Early Learning Division is building a high-quality early care and education system that improves equitable access to high-quality, affordable early care and education for all children from birth to five years of age to provide the best start in life and enter kindergarten ready to succeed and focuses on:

• Developing and supporting opportunities that achieve continuous eligibility for families and continuity of care for children ages birth to five.
• Using a racial equity framework that creates the conditions that will ensure school readiness experiences.
• Ensures that quality and assessment systems are responsive to the diverse needs of ECE programs and the children they serve.
• Embracing culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate environments across a mixed delivery system.
• Support policies and strategies that enhance coherence and alignment for Universal PreK (UPK).

Under the supervision of the Access and Enrollment Manager in the Early Learning Division, the Program Specialist, in partnership with the ECE Program Officer, will oversee a variety of child-funded enrollment agreements and monitor assigned portfolio of grants for programmatic quality and compliance with funding terms and requirements.  The position will perform the following essential functions:

• Act as the primary point of contact for grantees in the assigned portfolio, assisting them with work the Access & Enrollment plan development, invoicing, contracting, and compliance.
• Coordinate monitoring activities with ECE Program Officer and other ELD staff.
• Responsible for developing site visit plans and monitoring reports.
• Responsible for tracking and generating the appropriate child enrollment reports and sharing with the Access & Enrollment Manager and Deputy Director.
• Conduct site visits to verify child enrollment and provide technical assistance and troubleshooting to participating programs in portfolio as needed.
• Coordinate with other Program Specialists, Data/Evaluation Analysts, and Grants/Contracts Specialists to develop necessary technical assistance plans aimed to ensure participating program’s success in their ELS participation.
• Participate in intra-department strategy planning and development processes by providing relevant information gathered from grantees in the assigned portfolio, the community, and other touch points in order to develop new and refine existing funding strategies and Request for Proposals (RFP).
• Participate in the RFP decision-making process by reading and scoring proposals, discussing potential funding decisions, and providing critical information about program and agency capacity, performance, and experience.
• Manage special projects as assigned by the Access and Enrollment Manager, including developing a scope of work, setting timelines, conducting RFPs, managing grants, contracts, and reporting, convening meetings, coordinating multiple stakeholders, and making recommendations for improvements.
• Provide input at meetings with CBOs, other City departments, and private agencies to support the implementation of programs and projects, represent the department at assigned community events, and develop strong working relationships with contracting agencies.
• In close collaboration with the appropriate CBO’s develop troubleshooting strategies to support families access and enrollment in Early Learning San Francisco participating programs.
• May occasionally require working evenings and weekends, and travel regionally.
• Other duties as assigned.

How to qualify

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

1. Possession of a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university AND two (2) years of administrative/professional experience in community development, housing and/or housing development, workforce development, finance, education, social work, children/youth work, criminal justice or elections related work; OR

2. Possession of a baccalaureate degree from an accredited college or university with a major in one of the following fields: public or business administration, urban planning, government, social work, education, finance or criminal justice AND one (1) year of administrative/professional experience in community development, housing and/or housing development, workforce development, finance, education, social work, children/youth work, criminal justice or elections related work; OR

3. Possession of a Master's degree from an accredited college or university in public policy, planning, social work, public administration, finance, education, criminal justice, or business administration; OR

4. Possession of a Ph.D. or Juris Doctor degree from an accredited college or university.

SUBSTITUTION: Verifiable administrative/professional experience involving community development, housing and/or housing development, workforce development, finance, education, social work, children/youth work, criminal justice and/or elections-related work may substitute for the educational requirement in Minimum Qualification #1 on a year-for-year basis.  

SPECIAL CONDITION

1. 24 months of experience in: Childcare (Day Care) Program Support. Experience in the following areas: Childcare programs at the management level, experience in providing technical assistance to non-profit agencies in site acquisitions, child care programs, program administration and development, board development, non-profit partnerships, computer systems assessment, and program evaluation.

2. Bilingual proficiency in Cantonese
Candidates will be required to pass the oral and written bilingual proficiency test to be considered for this position.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS

• Knowledge and experience in client eligibility and enrollment in education, health and social services, public benefits, and child welfare.
• Strong Familiarity with early care and education and child development systems
• Experience supporting programs, budgeting processes, and staff in a complex environment.
• Degree in social work, child development, education, public health, and/or public administration preferred.

What else should I know?

Verification: Applicants may be required to submit verification of qualifying education and experience at any point during the recruitment and selection process. If education verification is required, information on how to verify education requirements, including verifying foreign education credits or degree equivalency, can be found at https://sfdhr.org/how-verify-education-requirements

Note: Falsifying one’s education, training, or work experience or attempted deception on the application may result in disqualification for this and future job opportunities with the City and County of San Francisco.

All work experience, education, training, and other information substantiating how you meet the minimum qualifications must be included on your application by the filing deadline. Information submitted after the filing deadline will not be considered in determining whether you meet the minimum qualifications.

Resumes will not be accepted in lieu of a completed City and County of San Francisco application. Applications completed improperly may be cause for ineligibility or disqualification.

Additional Information Regarding Employment with the City and County of San Francisco:

• Information About the Hiring Process
• Conviction History
• Employee Benefits Overview
• Equal Employment Opportunity
• Disaster Service Worker
• ADA Accommodation
• Veterans Preference
• Right to Work
• Copies of Application Documents
• Diversity Statement

HOW TO APPLY
Applications for City and County of San Francisco jobs are only accepted through an online process. Visit careers.sf.gov and begin the application process.
• Select the “I’m Interested” button and follow instructions on the screen

Applicants may be contacted by email about this recruitment and, therefore, it is their responsibility to ensure that their registered email address is accurate and kept up-to-date. Also, applicants must ensure that email from CCSF is not blocked on their computer by a spam filter. To prevent blocking, applicants should set up their email to accept CCSF mail from the following addresses (@sfgov.org, @sfdpw.org, @sfport.com, @flysfo.com, @sfwater.org, @sfdph.org, @asianart.org, @sfmta.com, @sfpl.org, @dcyf.org, @famsf.org, @ccsf.edu, @smartalerts.info, and @smartrecruiters.com).

Applicants will receive a confirmation email that their online application has been received in response to every announcement for which they file. Applicants should retain this confirmation email for their records. Failure to receive this email means that the online application was not submitted or received.

HR Analyst Information: If you have any questions regarding this recruitment or application process, please contact the HR Analyst Lynn Tran at lynn.tran@sfgov.org.

The City and County of San Francisco encourages women, minorities and persons with disabilities to apply. Applicants will be considered regardless of their sex, race, age, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition (associated with cancer, a history of cancer, or genetic characteristics), HIV/AIDS status, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, or other protected category under the law.