Sheila Ater Capestany’s role as Chair of the Start Early Washington Community Advisory Committee is guiding the organization’s strategy to address the need for more equitable and just systems for Washington’s children, particularly those from underserved communities.
Background: Founding Open Arms Perinatal Services and Pioneering Maternal Health Equity
Sheila’s journey as a social justice advocate began with her experiences as a doula, where she provided compassionate support to families throughout the childbirth and early parenting process. This work revealed to her the critical gaps in care for low-income families and families of color. Driven by the belief that every parent deserves access to a safe, supported birthing experience, she helped found Open Arms Perinatal Services in 1997. Open Arms offers free to low-cost perinatal and early parenting support services to meet the needs of each family through highly qualified, culturally matched doulas, lactation support peer counselors, childbirth educators, and resource navigators, helping thousands of families receive culturally relevant care and empowering them to have healthy birthing experiences.
Open Arms has become a model for perinatal support, addressing social and cultural factors impacting maternal health outcomes and reducing disparities in maternal and infant mortality. The organization’s impact has extended far beyond the Pacific Northwest, inspiring similar initiatives across the country and proving the significant effect of culturally responsive care on parent and child health.
Best Starts for Kids: Shaping a Promotion Approach to Community Health
When King County, Washington voters approved the original Best Starts for Kids Levy in 2015, Sheila took the helm to help lead the cutting-edge initiative. Grounded in the idea that when communities invest in a future where all children, youth and young adults are happy, healthy, safe, and thriving, these strong starts in a child’s earliest years can be sustained through adulthood. By investing in early childhood development and youth resilience, focusing on promotion and prevention rather than just reactive responses, Best Starts for Kids is focused on more equitable allocation of resources to improve health, education, and socio-emotional outcomes for children and families facing systemic inequities, providing a pathway to long-term stability and well-being. Her work with Best Starts for Kids has not only improved lives but has also become a nationally recognized model for addressing the social determinants of health and supporting family resilience.
In 2019, Sheila helped establish King County’s first Children, Youth, and Young Adults Division and became it’s first Director, where she continues her work toward social and health equity.
Collaborating with Start Early and the Start Early Washington Community Advisory Committee
Furthering her advocacy for equitable early childhood education and development for children and families of color, Sheila joined Start Early Washington’s inaugural efforts in 2020 providing leadership as a member of Start Early’s national Board of Directors. As Chair of the Start Early Washington Community Advisory Committee, she has been instrumental in guiding the organization’s strategy to address the need for more equitable and just systems for Washington’s children, particularly those from underserved communities.
When the advisory committee launches in early 2025, it will bring together community leaders, parents, and advocates to provide insights that shape Start Early’s programs and initiatives. Sheila’s contributions emphasize the importance of culturally relevant, community-based approaches that acknowledge and address the unique challenges faced by families from diverse communities.
I believe deeply in the concept that disability rights organizers gave us - ’nothing about us without us’. It is critical for programs, initiatives, and policies to be shaped and defined by and with the communities who are impacted by those efforts. I am excited for the work of the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) to shape and guide how Start Early moves forward with our work.
Sheila Ater Capestany, Chair of the Start Early Washington Community Advisory Committee
Commitment to Systems Change in Public Health and Education
Sheila’s holistic approach across maternal health, early childhood education, and community advocacy has made her an influential voice for systems change, challenging institutions to better serve all members of the community.
Throughout her career, she has consistently advocated for systemic changes to support equitable social, health and early education outcomes. Sheila understands that policy changes and resource reallocation are necessary to tackle the root causes of inequity, especially for women, families, and children from marginalized communities. Her leadership has helped reshape community approaches to health and early education, making them more inclusive and equitable, and she has inspired policies that incorporate trauma-informed and culturally competent care.
Inspiring Future Leaders and Advocates
By focusing on the needs of marginalized communities and building support systems rooted in equity and compassion Sheila’s pioneering work has transformed maternal health support, early childhood education, and public health policies, setting new standards for equity and justice. As we launch our Community Advisory Committee, we look forward to Sheila’s partnership in our efforts to understand how we can best help families feel more empowered and a part of the process to create more equitable systems and support for children and families.
Learn more here about Best Starts for Kids and Open Arms Perinatal Services.
Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your preschooler will collect and sort leaves by different characteristics to practice early math concepts.
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Materials Needed:
- Bag or box to collect leaves
- Leaves
- Paper (can be a newspaper, paper bags, magazines, notebook paper, etc.)
- Pencil or something to write with
Developmental Goals:
- Promote the use of problem solving and inquiry
- Practice classifying objects
- Provide practice counting and quantifying objects
- Promote conversation and teamwork
In the Future:
- The ability to classify objects by different characteristics is a stepping stone for understanding the math concept of one-to-one correspondence which will eventually build into simple addition and subtraction.
- The ability to generate guesses in an investigation is the skill of making hypotheses in the scientific process.
At-Home Activity:
- Go outside with your child on a leaf hunt and collect a variety of leaves in their bag.
- Next, look at all your leaves and decide how to sort them. You might ask, “How should we organize these leaves? What things are the same and different about these leaves?” to get your child thinking about the different characteristics. For example, they may choose to sort by color, by size, or by how many points on the leaves.
- Once your child has chosen a characteristic, have them sort the leaves accordingly, helping as needed.
- Together, count each pile and assist in writing the number. Then, pose the question “Are there more green leaves or brown leaves? Which number is bigger? How many more?”
For younger preschoolers and toddlers: you can stop at collecting leaves and just talk about how they look and identify characteristics instead of sorting.
For older preschoolers: you can see if your child can count each category that has been sorted and then compare which category has the most? Which category has the least? You could challenge them to figure out how many more one has over the other? Or how many less?
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As our team plans for the 2025 National Home Visiting Summit set for February 12-14, 2025 in Washington, D.C., we’re inspired by the lasting impact of what attendees across the home visiting field learn and take back home each year to support systems change across programs, research, and policy.
The plenary sessions, workshops, and poster presentations at the Summit create opportunities for learning and connection. They also spark many attendees to share key takeaways and describe actionable steps to use their learning to transform home visiting at a systemic level from where they are in the field. For me, the Summit offers an opportunity to see the work I do in home visiting in Illinois as part of a wider system supporting families. The Summit enables me to bring home innovative ideas to support the field in my role providing training and technical assistance. My team and I have observed that other attendees at the Summit also share the inspiration and call to action I receive at the Summit.
Register Now
Registration is now open for the 2025 National Home Visiting Summit. We hope to meet you there and learn how you’re “taking the Summit home” to advance home visiting.
Here are some perspectives from other 2024 Summit attendees that stood out to my team and me:
Feeling Seen and Valued by Summit content
Direct service providers shared:
I felt a huge takeaway from this year’s Summit is the redefinition of the word ‘professional’ in relation to home visiting. We’ve always acknowledged that families are their children’s first (and best) teachers, but at the same time we’ve not necessarily appreciated or translated that into the professional domain.
“Aha” Moments
Funders, systems change leaders and researchers remarked:
I really liked learning how others conceptualize home visit quality and how it should be understood in context based on community and family needs.
It is possible to offer flexibility and adaptability to the program, to services for families that can lead to and or be sustainable, especially for retention of the workforce and families.
Plans to “Take it Back Home”
Systems leaders in all capacities, from parents and providers to funders and researchers made plans to act based on Summit learning and connections:
I plan to take away the resources provided for funding. I will also work to improve staff satisfaction.
I will also be using the tool to disaggregate data to deepen my understanding of the story data is telling.
The Summit got me thinking about our data collection and how we might be able to restructure the collection and/or analyses with more of an equity lens.
Info on practical in-community advocacy workforce well-being considerations are things I will be applying to my work immediately.
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Chicago is home to a robust mixed-delivery system for early childhood education that allows families with young children to choose the school- or community-based program that best meets their needs. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the Board of Education (BOE) play a pivotal role in upholding this system and ensuring every child in Chicago has access to high-quality early childhood services from before birth through age five. By state statute Chicago Public Schools receives 37% of the total amount of the Early Childhood Block Grant, this coming school year that means about $280 million reserved for children age 0-5 in Chicago. CPS then grants out 40% of these funds to the Department of Family and Support Services, which is then sub-granted to organizations across the city to serve children ages 0-5 in community-based settings. Since community- and school-based settings both use this funding to support their programs, they all must meet the same robust evidence-based programs standards, including requirements for curriculum and teacher qualifications.
The Board of Education plays an important role in this process and is getting a new face in calendar year 2025. For the first time, Chicago voters will elect candidates from 10 districts across the city on the November 5th ballot; Mayor Johnson will appoint the other 11 members for this cycle as the city moves toward a fully elected, 21 member board in 2028. Mayor Johnson has already appointed 6 members and the other 5 appointments will come before the end of the year. The new Board of Education can best serve Chicago children under age 5 by working with community-based partners to improve the city’s early childhood education system by addressing the following priorities.
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Stay up to date on early childhood policy issues and how you can take action to ensure more children have access to quality early learning and care in Illinois.
Increase equitable distribution of funds across Chicago Public Schools and community-based programs and increase supply of slots from birth to age 3.
As the fiscal agent for the city’s share of the state Early Childhood Block Grant, CPS should increase the amount of this funding that is available to community-based programs to serve children ages 0-3 so they arrive at pre-k and kindergarten ready to learn.
The need for increased funding for community-based programs to meet the true cost of serving children ages birth to 3 before they reach preschool age continues to rise. Further investment in these services is even more important now that CPS has turned its focus to Universal Pre-K for 4 year-olds and community-based programs have had to shift their program model to serve increased numbers of younger children who come with higher expenses.
Invest in the Chicago Early Learning (CEL) infrastructure, including the hotline and community collaborations embedded in the communities and conducting outreach on the ground to understand families’ needs.
The CEL infrastructure assists tens of thousands of families in navigating the array of available early learning options that they can apply to using a centralized application, hotline and targeted community outreach conducted by local community collaborations. This infrastructure needs adequate funding to fill empty slots, reduce waitlists and address inequities.
Families depend on the CEL universal application system to identify programs in their neighborhood that meet their family’s needs. It is critical that this infrastructure receives the necessary investment to continue making strides toward equally representing available community- and school-based programming and supporting application navigation via the hotline. Community collaborations are another part of the CEL infrastructure that needs additional investment; accessible, community-level engagement and promotion ensures community-identified challenges can be surfaced and addressed.
Increase investment in the Chicago Early Learning Workforce Scholarship (CELWS).
The City of Chicago is experiencing an early childhood workforce crisis that predates-but was also greatly exacerbated by-the pandemic. A direct way to create accessible pathways for new educators is to increase funding for CELWS, which needs approximately $15M more to meet the demand for scholarships for new early childhood educators.
There are over 182,000 children under age 5 that live in Chicago, almost 100,000 of whom are Black and Latino children. In a city as diverse as Chicago, with continually shifting language and cultural dynamics, the early childhood workforce needs to be representative of the children and families it serves. Support for this scholarship program is a direct way to create accessible pathways for highly qualified early childhood educators at a time when our workforce is in critical need. Funding for this program comes from the DFSS allocation of the ECBG and supports approximately 600 students each year. For the CELWS to fully meet the need of their continually growing student body at 100%, their budget would need to be $19.9M in total, which means there is a gap of $14.9M. We encourage the Board to exert their influence over the allocation of the ECBG to increase funding for the CELWS to close this budget gap.
Ensure Chicago Public Schools honors the legal rights of children with IEPs to receive services in the least restrictive environment, including when they are enrolled in community-based early childhood programs.
CPS is legally responsible for guaranteeing the right to a free, appropriate, public education in the least restrictive environment for all children ages 3-21, regardless of where they are enrolled to receive services, The current model for ensuring children in community-based settings receive special education services leads to delays and gaps in services, but CPS and Chicago’s community-based Head Start programs are partnering to develop a new model which needs greater investment and long-term commitment from CPS leadership to ensure that children can receive their services in their least restrictive environment.
Children with disabilities continue to face an onslaught of barriers to receiving special education services in the least restrictive environment in the district’s current model, including lack of transportation, delayed school assignments, and workforce shortages in special education staff that are felt throughout the city. CPS and the city’s Head Start grantees have been collaborating to develop a new model of community-based early childhood special education service delivery that preserves family choice between school- and community-based programs, maintains a child’s legal right to receive their special education services in the least restrictive environment, and minimizes harmful disruptions to a child’s day. The new Board of Education should make a long-term commitment to scaling a model of service delivery that upholds the legal rights of children with IEPs.
Amid the recent and many transitions the Board will undergo in the coming months, it is imperative for young children and families to have representatives that are ready to support children across school- and community-based settings and improve the system by addressing these priorities. Our system is complex. That is why Start Early and our partners are inviting Board of Education members and candidates to join us on October 29 for a 90-minute Chicago Early Childhood System Overview to learn more about Chicago’s mixed-delivery system and how it currently functions to support all children age 0-5. Register now to join us!
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Playing pretend with your child might seem silly at times, but it’s actually pretty serious business when it comes to learning. Whether you’re new to playing dress up or having a pretend concert in your kitchen, or you are looking for more ways to spark your child’s imagination, we have tips for you!
We asked our Start Early experts for advice for parents and caregivers on the best ways to support your child’s learning and development through imaginative play, and they delivered.
Check out what Melissa Spivey, Teacher Assistant at Educare Chicago, a program of Start Early shared when it comes to making imaginative play a fun part of your everyday routine.
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Check out Melissa's tips:
What is Imaginative Play?
Imaginative play is playing pretend. Imaginative play is important for young children, as it not only builds character, but also helps adults understand children’s perspective and how they view and take in the world around them. When caregivers understand a child’s perspective, caregivers can be a better resources for them.
Why is Imaginative Play Important?
Many times, adults thinks that imaginative play is just for the children, when in fact it is for everyone. During imaginative play, you get to be anyone, anything, be any place and experience life outside of reality. During imaginative play you get to be free.
Through imaginative play children learn critical thinking skills, how to follow simple directions, build expressive and receptive language, increase social skills and learn how manage their emotions.
While children can handle exploring imaginative play alone with their thoughts and experiences, caregivers can play a key role in helping scaffold a child’s development. For example, imaginative play might begin with you and your child and just a baby doll. The caregiver plays the role in adding words or actions to the play such as do you think your baby is hungry? That will prompt the child to feed the baby. Now we have a baby and food. Next, the caregiver might say, the baby made a mess with the food, what do you think we should do? This question prompts the child to think whether to clean the baby by washing the baby or just changing the baby’s clothes. Another example, the caregiver can say, “I think I smell something, could it be your baby?” This will prompt the child to smell the baby and change. Now we, have a baby, food and a diaper.
How to Incorporate Imaginative Play at Home?
Incorporating imaginative play into your routine at home helps promote the parent-child relationship. Since bath time is already a routine for children, caregivers can add imaginative play to bath time. Adding imaginative play to bath time can be done by simply adding items such as a baby doll, small cars or cups from the kitchen. Washing the baby can help children identify different body parts and understand the difference between clean and dirty, while adding vocabulary words such as wash, soap, towel, water, clean, dirty. The same as washing the cars, children get a sense of how cars are changing from dirty to clean. For the cups, children can experience filling and dumping the water in and out of the cup. Adding vocabulary words such as filling, dumping, full, and empty. Remember imaginative play can be planned or spontaneous.
Easy Activities for Home
- Singing Concert
- Materials needed: any safe objects like wooden spoons or pots and pans to use while you and your child sing and dance to their favorite song.
- Baby doll playtime
- Materials needed: a baby doll or soft stuffed item.
- Bus stop
- Materials needed: a chair, the couch and paper to use as money.
Tips for Halloween
When it comes to celebrating Halloween, children have the opportunity to live out their imaginative play fantasy by dressing up and becoming their favorite tv character. When picking costumes this holiday season, caregivers should become knowledge of the character that their children pick so that they can ask questions to keep the playing and learning going.
If you are going trick or treat, remember before leaving the house to give your child rules that they must follow while out in the public so that they can play safely. Giving your child the rules before leaving shows you are trusting them to be responsible. For example, caregivers can use character as the example on how following rules is important. For example, “I am expecting you to be a responsible superhero.” Or when the child is doing something outside of the rules, caregivers could say, “I wonder what will Spiderman do if his mother saw him doing that?
If the weather is too hot/cold/rainy for Trick or Treating this Halloween, you can still incorporate dressing up and imaginative play in other ways to still enjoy Halloween:
- District Park Halloween party
- Neighborhood Truck trick or treat
- Family Bowling night with character
- Family party at home (dress up)
- Movie night with the family watching Halloween movie
- Cooking with family
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For over 40 years Start Early has worked tirelessly to advance quality early learning and support for children and families. We know that starting early has the biggest impact on a child’s development and that Head Start and Early Head Start are an essential part of our work to help all children thrive.
In honor of Head Start Awareness Month, we spoke with Diana McClarien, our vice president of the Early/Head Start Network, to share how our relationship with Head Start began, the benefits of the program and our hopes for the future of Head Start and Early Head Start.
Invest in a Child’s Earliest Years
The first five years are a critical window to shape lifelong success. Act now to ensure children have the best start in life through quality early learning.
Start Early & Head Start
Start Early’s partnership with Head Start began in 1985, coinciding with the launch of the Beethoven Project, a groundbreaking program developed to provide wraparound services – including early education options – to families in Chicago’s Grand Boulevard neighborhood. Initially starting off as a grantee of Head Start funding, Start Early has since developed a deep, decades-long relationship with Head Start, that has culminated in a Start Early, Early/Head Start Network, two directly operated programs, and the aligned goals of delivering equitable access to high-quality early learning and care for children and families in the areas in which we operate.
As our network now stands, we partner closely with several local community-based agencies, including our two directly operated programs – Educare Chicago and Healthy Parents & Babies – delivering not only early learning services but also crucial components like doula, home visiting, nutrition, family, health and wellness services. With Black and Hispanic children representing a disproportionate share of children living in disinvested areas, Head Start programs also play a crucial role in addressing opportunity gaps in school readiness for children facing systemic barriers.
Looking to the future, we will continue working in tandem with Head Start to best meet the needs of the families we serve and continue centering family and early childhood education provider voices and expertise in all areas of our work. We are also working to expand our network reach by partnering with new agencies to deliver Head Start services throughout Chicago and our surrounding suburbs and are actively expanding our efforts to address the teaching shortage in the early education field. Through this approach, we hope we can continue providing the best-in-class early education and services so that our children and families within our communities and programs can thrive.
In the 2023-2024 school year, Start Early served over 3,300 children through our Head Start and home visiting programs.
Head Start 101
Learn more about Head Start’s crucial role in promoting early childhood education, school readiness and comprehensive support for children and families across the country.
What is Head Start?
Head Start (HS) is a nation-wide, federally funded compensatory preschool education program. Head Start and Early Head Start (a division of Head Start specifically focused on children aged zero to three) are designed to promote school readiness in infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Head Start also serves pregnant women with a range of prenatal supports and postpartum educational opportunities.
Since 1965, Head Start has long been considered a premier model for early childhood programs (Ramey & Ramey, 2010), and has aimed to foster development and school readiness skills for children from primarily low-income communities.
With Black and Hispanic children representing a disproportionate share of children in poverty, Head Start programs act as a lever to address longstanding racial and ethnic gaps in school readiness outcomes.
Children that participate in Head Start programs make tremendous progress in the areas of language, literacy, and math, and achieve average scores related to letter-word knowledge by the end of their first year (Aikens et al., 2013; Bloom and Weiland, 2015).
The benefits are even more robust for children enrolled in Early Head Start, with higher kindergarten readiness scores and increased social-emotional, language, and cognitive development than children who never attend a Head Start program. (Love et al., 2002)
Head Start as a Model
Head Start programs are typically located in high-poverty areas and provide comprehensive services that address the needs of the whole child, including their physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development.
Many Head Start and Early Head Start programs are located within nonprofit organizations. These nonprofit organizations are uniquely positioned to help identify child care needs and develop workable solutions for families. They can also connect families with additional services through their network of local partners, who are able to leverage alternative sources of funding.
Invest in a Child’s Earliest Years
The first five years are a critical window to shape lifelong success. Act now to ensure children have the best start in life through quality early learning.
Celebrating Head Start Awareness Month
As part of Head Start Awareness Month, our Early/Head Start Network will launch a Child Development Associate® (CDA) program for parents that have children in Start Early and partner sites. The CDA Credential™ is an important credential for early childhood professionals, as obtaining it allows them to take the next step in their career.
We hope to engage with Head Start parents everywhere to elevate their perspectives and gain insights on the best ways to support their children. We know that when teachers and parents are aligned in building a solid foundation, children can thrive.
Join us this October as we celebrate and promote Head Start on social media! Use the #HeadStartAwareness hashtag in your posts to highlight the program.
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Citations
- Bloom, H. S. and Weiland, C., Quantifying Variation in Head Start Effects on Young Children’s Cognitive and Socio-Emotional Skills Using Data from the National Head Start Impact Study (March 31, 2015).
- Love, J. M., Kisker, E. E., Ross, C. M., Schochet, P. Z., Brooks-Gunn, J., Paulsell, D., Boller, K., Constantine, J., Vogel, C., Sidle Fuligni, A., Brady-Smith, C. (2002). Making a difference in the lives of infants and toddlers and their families: The impacts of early Head Start. Volumes I-III: Final technical report and appendixes and local contributions to understanding the programs and their impacts. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation.
The Office of Head Start (OHS) released updated performance standards last month, which focus heavily on the financial and emotional wellbeing of program staff. The new standards require that over the next 7 years, programs must work towards paying teaching staff a salary that is comparable to public school pre-k teachers. This is a monumental policy shift for a workforce that has endured physically demanding work, long hours and low pay for decades. OHS is striving to give the early childhood workforce the recognition and pay parity they so rightfully deserve. We hope Illinois is watching closely.
Similar to other states, wages for child care teachers in Illinois are woefully low, which has led to high turnover. According to the most recent wage data we have available from fiscal year 2023, the median hourly pay for a lead teacher was $16.50 and for an assistant teacher, the median hourly wage was $15.40. With pay hovering around minimum wage and arduous working conditions, our current workforce crisis should not come as a surprise.
Median Child Care Center Wages (FY2023) in Selected Counties
County
Assistant Teacher
Lead Teacher
Cook
$15.25
$17.50
Champaign
$14.00
$16.00
DuPage
$14.57
$17.00
Hancock
$15.00
$15.00
Lake
$14.00
$17.00
Rock Island
$13.00
$15.00
Will
$14.00
$16.00
County
Cook
Champaign
DuPage
Hancock
Lake
Rock Island
Will
Assistant Teacher
Lead Teacher
$15.25
$17.50
$14.00
$16.00
$14.57
$17.00
$15.00
$15.00
$14.00
$17.00
$13.00
$15.00
$14.00
$16.00
Source: Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies
The Department of Human Services (DHS) launched the Smart Start Workforce Grant (SSWG) program over the summer to increase wages for child care teaching staff to help mitigate the state’s workforce crisis. The Department’s goal was to reach as many early educators as possible. With only $110 million to devote to this effort, it meant they needed to strike a balance between program eligibility and wages. Ultimately, DHS set Child Care Assistance Program eligibility parameters to ensure programs enrolling low-income children would be uplifted. SSWG grantees are required to pay teaching staff a salary floor that is above the minimum wage and all of the funding must go toward wages.
Role
Group 1A
Group 1B
Group 2
Wage floor for teachers
$19.25 per hour
$18.50 per hour
$18.25 per hour
Wage floor for assistant teacher
$18.00 per hour
$17.25 per hour
$17.00 per hour
Role
Wage floor for teachers
Wage floor for assistant teacher
Group 1A
Group 1B
Group 2
$19.25 per hour
$18.50 per hour
$18.25 per hour
$18.00 per hour
$17.25 per hour
$17.00 per hour
Group 1A: Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake and McHenry counties.
Group 1B: Boone, Champaign, Kankakee, Madison, McLean, Monroe, Ogle, Peoria, Rock Island, Sangamon, St. Clair, Tazewell, Whiteside, Will, Winnebago and Woodford counties.
Group 2: All counties not listed in Group 1A or 1B
Source: Smart Start Workforce Grants- Gateways to Opportunity
Although the SSWG will increase teachers’ pay, the funding was not enough to reach all early educators, and it remains to be seen whether a few additional dollars per hour will make a true impact in retainment and recruitment. The Office of Head Start made a bold statement by requiring pay parity with preschool teachers in public schools and as a state, we need to act boldly as well. OHS has paved the way and created a roadmap for the remainder of the early care and education field to follow. The $110 million dollar investment in our early educators through the SSWG program should only be seen as a downpayment toward a much larger workforce strategy because our child care teachers simply deserve better. They too, deserve parity.
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Stay up to date on early childhood policy issues and how you can take action to ensure more children have access to quality early learning and care in Illinois.
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The Capitol building on a bright September Day (Photo Credit: Erica Hallock)
September Economic and Revenue Forecast
On September 27, the Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council met to receive a Revenue Review from the State’s Economist Dave Reich.
Before we get to the September forecast, it is important to provide background. At the June Review meeting, forecasted revenues for all funds* were projected to be down from the February 2024 forecast by $477 million in the 2023-2025 biennium and by $189 million in the 2025-27 biennium. This equals a total of $666 million less in projected revenues for the 2023-27 biennia. (Funds included in this forecast are: 1) General Fund-State; 2) the Education Legacy Trust Account; 3) the WA Opportunity Pathways Account; and 4) the Workforce Education Investment Account).
The updated revenue forecast released on September 27th did not see much movement from the June forecast, with overall revenues projected to be another $49M lower in our current biennium of 2023-25 but increased by $79M for the upcoming biennium. This leaves overall growth of $30M in revenue for the 2023-27 biennia since the June forecast, but an overall reduction in revenue of $636M from when the budget was written earlier this year.
Some interesting trends and things to note:
• Sales Tax Revenue is Down. For only the third time in the last 15 years, sales tax revenue is down year over year. Major reasons for this include lower construction and auto related activity. For both the 2023-25 and 2025-27 biennia, sales tax projections are lower in the September forecast than the June forecast. For 2023-25, the September forecast is projecting collection of $63.166B which is $131M less than what was projected in June, and for 2025-27, the September forecast is projection collection of $67.931B which is $53M less than what was projected in June.
• Other Revenue Collections Are Up. In contrast to sales tax revenues coming in lower than projected, other collections are expected to come in higher than projected, including the Business and Occupations (B&O) tax and the Real Estate Excise Tax (REET). These other sources are helping to offset lower sales tax receipts.
• Overall Revenue Expected to Grow from 2023-25 to 2025-27. Despite this slowing, total revenues subject to the outlook are expected to grow from $66.5 billion in the 2023-25 biennium to $71.6 billion in the 2025-27 biennium.
In response to a press question, Forecast Council Member and House Appropriations Committee Chair Representative Timm Ormsby noted that he did not anticipate any major adjustments to the second supplemental budget the Legislature will take up when they return in January 2025. (The second supplemental budget will address changes needed in the current fiscal year/biennium that concludes June 30, 2025.) Representative Ormsby went on to say he expected budget writers will be focused on fulfilling commitments in the underlying budget and responding to caseload and enrollment changes. He emphasized budget writers will “only be able to spend what they have.”
November Revenue Forecast and Caseload Forecast. The next Revenue Forecast/Review is scheduled for November 20. On November 13, the Washington State Caseload Forecast Council will meet to receive projections for the demand for entitlement programs such as K-12 education, Medicaid, prisons and foster care.
These reports will inform Governor Inslee’s final budget that will be released in mid-December.
Start Early Decision Package Summaries
As a reminder, Start Early Washington produced a summary of the early learning related Decision Packages submitted by state agencies to the Office of Financial Management for consideration for inclusion in Governor Inslee’s final budget.
The Capital Budget requests were recently made public, and our summary document has been updated to include that information.
To access the summaries, please visit the Policy Resources section of our webpage. Full copies of the Decision Packages can be viewed at abr.ofm.wa.gov.
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The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is holding three fall budget hearings, the first step in determining next year’s proposed education budget for the state. These hearings provide the early childhood advocacy community an opportunity to help shape the state’s Fiscal Year 2026 education budget proposal. Please consider participating, virtually or in-person, in requesting a $75 million increase in state funding for the Early Childhood Block Grant (ECBG).
Here’s how you can participate in the ISBE budget hearing process:
Step 1: Submit Your Funding Request
- Visit ISBE.net/BudgetRequestForm, and enter your name and contact information.
- You will have the option to select to speak at one of the hearings. If you only wish to submit a request in writing and do not wish to speak at a hearing, select “I do not plan to attend a budget hearing but still wish to submit written testimony”. The final deadline for written requests is October 31st.
- Under the “Add Program Request” drop-down menu select “Early Childhood Education”
- Under the field that begins with “Please provide the Board with a description of your funding request,” you will need to provide further details on the $75 million ask.
- You can also submit attachments and supplemental documentation to isbefy26@isbe.net. If you provide additional documents, you will need to also include your reference number that you receive when the funding request is submitted.
- If you wish to speak at a hearing, proceed to Step 2.
Step 2: Register to Speak at a Virtual Hearing
- On the right-hand side of the registration page, you will need to choose the hearing you plan to speak at.
- October 8th, Springfield 4-7 p.m.
- Must submit a written funding request online by 11:59 pm, October 3rd
- October 10th, Virtual 4-7 p.m.
- Registration deadline is October 7th at 11:59 pm
- October 28th, Virtual 1-4 p.m.
- Registration deadline in October 23rd at 11:59 pm
- October 8th, Springfield 4-7 p.m.
- Click “Submit”
General Tips to Testify at ISBE’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Hearings:
- Draft your talking points!
- Use your time wisely as oral testimony is being limited to three (3) minutes per person.
- Be sure to personalize your testimony with your own perspective.
- Compose your testimony with an introduction, early childhood needs, the $75 million ask and conclusion.
- Use your own words as much as possible, for variety and authenticity.
Contact us if you plan to testify or have questions. Thank you for speaking up for children and families across the state!
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At Start Early, we point to Research, Program & Policy Partnership (RPP) as our guiding framework for data usage among our early childhood programs and services. RPPs consist of collaborations among different teams working toward improvement that is informed by research to understand what works and what does not work, and to allocate resources effectively for the most effective and sustainable progress.
To ensure continuous quality improvement, we recently sought to gain a better understanding of data literacy among Start Early’s Early/Head Start (E/HS) staff and how they currently use data for improving practice. We also recognized this as an opportunity to reaffirm the important role of RPPs in implementing effective changes through data.
Data Literacy: the ability to meaningfully explore, understand, use and communicate with data
The Early/Head Start Network and Research & Evaluation teams collaborated to conduct and analyze the annual Staff Data Utilization Survey from May 2023. This survey measured understanding of and experiences with data from various E/HS staff members across multiple Start Early programs.
Key Findings
95% of the 235 respondents reported that data is an important piece to serving children and families (Figure 1), affirming how important it is that all staff have the training and resources they need to understand and use data.
Figure 1
Our findings also highlighted that many staff, particularly content area specialists and coordinators, family support specialists and home visitors, reported overall high enjoyment, confidence and understanding of data use and management.
Other staff, specifically assistant and lead teachers, expressed less enjoyment in understanding and using data and noted the need for more personalized training in data use and management.
A common hurdle for staff in using data was found to be a lack of time available to enter and work with data, making it essential to find creative solutions that fit into busy schedules.
The Power of Research, Program & Policy Partnerships
Our findings confirmed and emphasized that ongoing training and professional development opportunities were needed. Thus, the Early/Head Start Network partnered with Start Early’s professional development experts, which provides customized professional development trainings for early childhood professionals, to develop a one and a half day training for its E/HS staff later that year.
This training was open to all E/HS staff and focused on breaking down steps in data analysis and utilization, creating awareness and understanding of data terminology, and building confidence in using data to inform practice.
Overall, training participants shared that they learned helpful tools, gained confidence and, as a result, now have a better understanding of data utilization for their work. All participants said this training met their professional development needs and would recommend it to their colleagues.
Conclusion
This example highlights the crucial role that exploring data literacy plays in informed decision-making and enhancing outcomes for children and families. The collaboration between Start Early’s Early/Head Start Network, Research & Evaluation and professional development teams led to a successful training program and demonstrated the value of this ongoing work. We are committed to continue using the RPP framework, showcasing how collaboration can bridge research and practice in data literacy and drive meaningful improvements in programs, policies and practice for children and families.
If you’re interested in exploring how an RPP framework and other tools can drive improvements in your early childhood system, please reach out! You can get in touch with Start Early’s Research & Evaluation team via email at Research@startearly.org.
