Bangor: Child care providers lauded

While hundreds of child care providers from all over the state were honored at the eighth annual Maine Roads to Quality reception on Saturday for improving their skills, one was selected for special recognition.

The organization named Linda Stec, director of the Starrett Center in Belfast, its 2007 Marcia Lovell Award recipient.

"She’s sort of a mentor, and no matter how old you are she’s there," Denise Pendleton, who nominated Stec, said at the reception.

Stec has worked in child care for 26 years. She became a teacher at the Starrett Center in 1980 and the following year the center’s director.

Pendleton said early childhood education advocate Marcia Lovell, a friend and mentor who died in 2005, believed in exposing children to the arts.

"It opened windows and doors for me," she said. "I think Linda does that as well."

Keynote speaker Susan Arledge told the gathering the main purpose of the recognition reception is to show child care providers appreciation for the hard and oftentimes thankless job they do.

Maine Roads to Quality promotes and supports professionalism in the child care and education field.

In 1992, the Maine Department of Human Services, Office of Child Care and Head Start worked with approximately 100 child care and education personnel on career development for child care providers, eventually partnering with the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. The Maine Roads to Quality: Early Care and Education Career Development Center emerged from the collaboration.

"The center works to promote the quality of early care and education, address the training and education needs of all early care and education professionals, develop multiple ways for professionals to achieve their career goals, [and] increase linkages between training and formal education," the Web site states.

The reception recognized 27 people for completing 45 hours of Maine Roads training, two for 90 hours, one for 135 hours and three for 180 hours.

The group honored three early child care providers for earning master’s degrees, eight for earning bachelor’s degrees, and 17 for earning associate degrees through the Maine Community College System or branches of the University of Maine System.