Arnulfo Manriquez
MAAC President & CEO
MAAC started out in 1965. as the Mexican-American Advisory Committee really focused on being able to open opportunities for Mexican Americans that were in the United States, specifically in San Diego. In the 1970s, the name changed to the Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee, and really to let itself be known that it’s an organization that is very inclusive, and it’s open to all.
Our focus with the children is not just a childcare program where we’re taking care of the children, where the parents go to work. It’s a wraparound program for the family as a whole.
Debbie Miller
Teacher
They just seem very happy to have a place to be. They eat lunch with us. We eat breakfast with them. So you know, we’re sharing a lot of things like the families do, too. So we become their extended family during the day.
Jennifer Cabrera
Teacher
The outcomes that I get to see from the children learning, their smiling faces, them wanting to come to school. The parents that come back to me and tell me that I you know, I’ve helped them so much and they’ve helped them to be their children’s advocate.
MAAC President & CEO
Arnulfo Manriquez
MAAC President & CEO
We currently have a shortage of teachers in our preschool classrooms, and prior to that pandemic, we did not have that issue. We identified the issue and we were looking at we need to go raise our salaries of all of our teachers so that we can be competitive. And through that process, we were able to increase the salary from an average of about 24%. Some salaries went up by 35%. And now we are in at the competitive or better salaries in the school districts around here in San Diego County.
Jennifer Cabrera
Teacher
We need more dedication to these kids. We need to give them all the opportunities that we didn’t have when we were growing up… to be that voice for them.
Arnulfo Manriquez
MAAC President & CEO
If you’re a teacher right now and you want to look at an opportunity in a career with our organization, there’s a lot of value in coming in. We operate not only in preschool where we are helping and working with the children. It’s part of an organization that has a mission of maximizing self-sufficiency for families. Once you come in and you’ve been working here for a while, you can go up to about $74,000 for a preschool teacher. And that’s very competitive here in the county of San Diego. It is critical that we get them in as soon as possible so that we can start that development of the 0 to 5, which is the most critical years of learning for children.
Jennifer Cabrera
Teacher
Just having genuinely good-hearted teachers that want to be here, that want to see these children grow and flourish and have the opportunities that they can give them.
Debbie Miller
Teacher
It’s a good program for children that need it.
Arnulfo Manriquez
MAAC President & CEO
The sooner we can get them here, the sooner we can open our classrooms with which are in high demand by the children on the waiting list.
