Dear Editor:

I wanted to tell you a little about our protest to Save our SafeCare. We as parents of

children who attend SafeCare were officially notified 8/25/09 that our program had lost

its funding due to State Budget Cuts. The SafeCare program was funded by the Latch

Key Kids grant and by full paying or partial paying parents. As an alternative we have

been offered a program called ASART, it is a program similar to ASES that is currently

run in the Rosemead School District. ASES is an after school program that is by lotto it

does not offer before school care and holiday care like the SafeCare program. ASART

would be combined with ASES however parents would pay $175 a month. The range of

children could be from 80 to 120 where as SafeCare was 35 to 40 students. The parents and children will miss the family atmosphere and extra days that were offered. We are not saying we aren’t appreciative of what the Rosemead School District has offered to us

what we are saying is we want to save our program that has been in existence for 24 +

years. We want to save our teachers jobs we want to “hear” our children when they say

they will be sad to say goodbye to their teachers and program. We are willing to find

ways to help fund this program, I as a parent and others have offered to find and to write

and submit grants. Our children have stated that they will recycle or hold lemonade

stands to save SafeCare. We don’t understand why the parents who are receiving funding

from the Options program to use for ASART can’t use the funds to pay for SafeCare. We

feel like we have been heard but not really, because they will end our program effective

October 31, 2009, and that is why we are passionately speaking out on this subject. We

had a demonstration at the Rosemead School District, on September 3rd and that is why

we had a demonstration at City Hall. We would like them to save our SafeCare

program-not create a new one.

Concern Parent