The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) began its hearings–the first step in determining next year’s proposed budget. These hearings provide us an opportunity to help shape the early childhood proposal in the upcoming budget. Please consider participating *virtually* in requesting a 10% increase to the Early Childhood Block Grant for Fiscal Year 2023.
This pandemic continues to add challenges to what children, families and educators are facing.
Children are young only once. We must act boldly and decisively to invest in their futures.
The essential work performed by professionals throughout the early childhood system requires compensation parity for teachers and staff, particularly those in community-based settings.
Learn More How to Participate in ISBE’s Budget Process:
Submit your funding request: Complete and submit ISBE FY2023 Budget Hearing Form. This step must be completed prior to registering to speak at a hearing. Written requests must be received by ISBE no later than October 21.
Sign up to testify or register to listen: After completing your funding request, you can also sign-up to testify at one of the budget hearings. You must sign up if you wish to speak at a hearing so that you can be included in the official schedule for the meeting. You must also register prior to the hearing if you choose to be a “listener.” Registration links are included below.
As educators and parents of three young children, Kapria Robinson and her husband know starting early shapes not only a child’s kindergarten experience, but their entire educational journey.
“We wanted to make sure we provided early learning programs for our own children that supported their academic, social and emotional skills. And where they got to experience joy every day at school; a place where they were happy, knew that they were loved, and would thrive,” she recalls.
So when Kapria toured Educare Chicago on the recommendation of their foster care agency five years ago, she knew she has found the right program for her family. She enrolled her two eldest children, Alexander and Catalina, who were just 16-months and 6-months at the time.
Kapria, Alexander & Catalina
“Our case manager said families who had their children at Educare Chicago were thriving and that they were supportive of the blended foster-adoptive family dynamic,” Kapria remembers. “With the foster care process, they were very open to things like working with biological parents. Also, the smaller class sizes and the student-to-teacher ratio is amazing. To have three adults, working with kids when they’re younger just makes all the work of difference.”
I strongly believe that all children should attend preschool prior to going to an elementary school, just so that they get those beginning foundational skills in a classroom setting.
Kapria Robinson
An Approach Making a World of Difference
Parent engagement and coaching is at the core of Educare Chicago’s approach, which begins before the first day of school.
“Early on, Educare staff wanted to learn what our kids were interested in and what life was like outside of school. In fact, we met the teachers and had already spoke with the family support specialist in our own home by the time the kids began school,” Kapria reflects.
From Kapria’s perspective, “Educare’s approach is years ahead of most other programs. They make sure to ask a lot of higher order thinking questions. They engage the kids in a lot of discussions, they encourage them to, you know, have their own voice and to have their own throughs — and they positively affirm them.”
“Their team made sure that the kids got what they needed. When my son had challenges with separation anxiety, teachers like Miss Danielle would reach out with different stories we could read with him to make that transition a little easier. It has been a wonderful experience for us,” she continues.
Catalina & Alexander
Educare Chicago’s family engagement and parent coaching helped Kapria and her husband stay fully informed about their children’s education and able to reinforce behaviors and learnings at home.
“They would make sure that we understood what our kids were learning. During the parent engagement activities, they really make sure to break down different ways to engage your kids around math, literacy, STEM and art activities,” Kapria shares. “They helped us to truly understand how to engage our children, what questions to ask them, what vocabulary to focus on.
In addition to empowering Kapria and her husband in their role as their children’s first and best teachers, the Educare Chicago community offers a space to meet, engage with and learn from other parents.
“It gave us an opportunity to connect with some of the other parents, which is hugely important in building a community for your children, so that you have other families for them to visit for play dates and that share the same ideas about what is important for their children and their education.”
Ready for Kindergarten and a Lifetime of Learning
Quality early learning and care programs like Educare Chicago help children like Kapria’s enter kindergarten ready to learn. Because early childhood is a time of rapid development in multiple areas — physical, emotional, cognitive and social growth — kindergarten readiness is more than observing a child recite shapes, numbers and colors. A child who is ready for kindergarten is curious, can form relationships and has social interactions with nurturing adults and peers.
Kapria believes Educare Chicago’s approach helped spark an ongoing love for learning within her children that has set them up for a lifetime of success.
“Educare’s approach to involving parents in their children’s education journey and constantly getting feedback has been a huge part of why our children are so successful and driven to keep learning,” she says. “They not only taught the preschool curriculum in ways that were engaging, but they also expanded it to include skills or concepts we were interested in our children learning and based on their assessments of what our kids were ready to learn.”
Today, Kapria’s two oldest children have graduated Educare Chicago and are thriving in Chicago Public Schools. Alexander is in first grade and Catalina is in kindergarten, and both recently tested into gifted and classical programs. Her youngest, a 2-year old, is currently enrolled at Educare Chicago.
“Alexander just completed his first year in a gifted kindergarten program and received straight As, awards for citizenship, being a good friend to his classmates and being helpful. He’s accelerated through the remote learning challenges they provided. I know a lot of that had to do with the competence he had in his skills and the motivation Educare Chicago gave him that if he wanted to do something he could absolutely do it,” Kapria proudly shares.
Given her children’s early education success and her own work in education, Kapria advocates that all children should start early.
“I strongly believe that all children should attend preschool prior to going to an elementary school, just so that they get those beginning foundational skills in a classroom setting. Children just excel when they have the opportunity to interact and communicate with and learn from one another.”
“Who am I?” From the moment babies are born, they are learning about who they are, how to express their feelings and what makes them special. Their earliest relationships with parents and caregivers help develop a sense of belonging and set the foundation for their future learning and success.
Parents and caregivers can help young children along as they grow and learn more about who they are, their feelings and how they fit into this world.
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Check out Big Heart World’s Parent and Caregiver Guides for more fun ideas to support your child’s social and emotional learning in the areas of Identify & Belonging, Feelings, and Similarities & Differences.
The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the latest COVID-19 relief package, provides $1.9 trillion in funding and policy changes aimed at mitigating the impacts of the ongoing pandemic. In addition to the many provisions directly targeting support to the early care and learning system, the relief package also contains important supports for accessing healthcare and economic benefits, such as tax credits.
Start Early and the Shriver Center on Poverty Law are pleased to host a two-part webinar series for early care and learning professionals that will provide an overview of what is currently known about the healthcare and economic supports available through the ARPA and how to access them. The webinar series is intended to help early care and learning professionals understand these important supports so that they can access them for themselves and assist families they work with to access them as well.
Both webinars will be recorded and available for on-demand viewing.
Watch the Recording
American Rescue Plan Act: Economic Supports
Watch the recording of the June 4, webinar. Presented by Jeremy Rosen, Director of Economic Justice at the Shriver Center.
Watch the Recording
American Rescue Plan Act: Healthcare
Watch the recording of the May 14 webinar. Presented by Stephanie Altman, Director of Healthcare Justice and Senior Director of Policy at the Shriver Center.
In support of the Every Child Ready Chicago initiative, Start Early began exploring the creation of a Chicago early childhood research consortium, which would bring together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, families, and community representatives across sectors in a robust, long-term research-practice partnership focused on helping Chicago achieve its vision for a strong early childhood system.
Access to relevant, actionable, and timely evidence and data that can guide the decisions of policymakers and program leaders is critical to the success of early childhood, and any other, systems-building initiatives. For an early childhood system as large and ambitious as Chicago, no one research partner or institution can provide these supports alone; a consortium of researchers and research institutions working together is key. Chicago already benefits from several research consortia, but none focus specifically on the city’s early childhood system.
Our exploratory report presents the findings of the initial inquiry phase: stakeholder interviews with 26 participants from 16 different organizations, including researchers, advocates, practitioners, leaders of community-based organizations, City of Chicago officials and staff, and other experts. The consensus that emerged was clear:
Chicago needs an early childhood research consortium to serve as a long-term, sustainable research partnership focused exclusively on Chicago’s cross-sector, systemwide early childhood priorities.
The research consortium should function as:
A neutral third-party without allegiance to, or conflicts of interest with, any City agency, office or department.
A trusted thought partner and capacity support for City agencies, offices and departments, as well as community and systems leaders.
A “hub” for researchers across institutions and disciplines.
An integrated complement to existing and emerging infrastructure, systems, consortia and partnerships; it should not duplicate or replace them.
The exploratory interviews also helped to specify a set of important strategic questions that remain unanswered. In the next phase of this work, it will be important to bring together potential partners for nuanced discussions regarding these recommendations, strategic questions and additional topics that emerge as this work progresses. We are excited to catalyze these conversations and facilitate this process for Chicago’s early childhood community.
The weather outside may be frightful, but the great indoors beckons. Inclement weather can offer the perfect opportunity to engage in indoor activities with your children that help them build important academic and social skills; skills such as executive functions, memory, self-regulation and teamwork. Executive Function: means your child will develop abilities to remain focused on an activity, complete tasks and be persistent and Self-Regulation: is the degree to which your child can control their emotional reactions.
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Challenge your memories: In addition to working your preschooler’s memory, card matching games will help them hone their concentration and planning skills. Try spicing up the game with variants that promote math or vocabulary skills for added educational value. Bonus: Using your arts and crafts skills or just a working printer, a deck of memory cards is easy to whip up.
Follow the leader: Games like Simon Says or Red Light, Green Light are a great excuse for toddlers to get silly and also burn off some energy. And they require only a little space and some imagination. Children take away a better understanding of the structure of rules, how to follow instructions and focus attention.
Build together: Young children of all ages love to build and create. Piecing together a puzzle or building a block castle is a great way for toddlers and young children to pick up nuances of cooperation. As they work toward a common goal, they learn the value of teamwork and planning, while reinforcing positive social-emotional skills and developing small motor dexterity.
Stretch your imaginations: Build-a-Story and Act-a-Story games challenge your preschooler to help construct or enact a fun, silly or adventurous narrative with others. You may want to start things off, but before you know it the whole group will be rolling as the story twists and turns. Your child may even surprise you with their creativity as they sharpens their attention, working memory and impulse control. Keep a pen and paper or your phone camera handy—you may want to record these stories for posterity!
So until you can get back outside again, enjoy your indoor time playing and learning with your child. It goes without saying that some games will come across as silly—but the simple play belies the critical lessons learned. Through playing and interacting, you are also helping your child develop essential skills and strengthening your bond. It may be Simon Says today, but it will be so much more down the road.
The 2021 National Home Visiting Summit brought together over 1,500 leaders, practitioners, advocates and decision-makers in a collaborative pursuit to advance the home visiting field and systems of care to increase service quality and improve outcomes.
Summit attendees participated in virtual workshops, Communities of Practice and plenary sessions that discussed issues facing the home visiting field today, including innovations in home visiting practices and systems, addressing systematic and structural racism, and improving maternal and child health outcomes.
State Leadership for Strong, Accountable and Equitable Home Visiting Systems
States are leading the way in advancing home visiting services, home visiting finance, and statewide systems with multiple models. Following adoption of federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, with support from the Pew Home Visiting Campaign, more than a dozen states adopted systems approaches, often supported by common, cross-model accountability measures and produce annual reports for their legislatures or governors. Panelists in this presentation walk through how to broaden the audience’s understanding of how to advance a home visiting system, use cross-model funding and measurement and improve equity in home visiting.
Maternal Health Outcomes: Balancing the Scales of Equity
Maternal health and well-being are necessary to the development of healthy outcomes for children and create the foundation for favorable opportunities to build strong parent-child relationships from birth. Yet data and research indicate that women of color have inequitable access to care during and after the perinatal period. In this presentation, moderator Andrea Palmer from the Pritzker Foundation, and panelists Zea Malawa, M.D., San Francisco Department of Health, Angela Doyinsola Aina, MPH, from Black Mamas Matter Alliance and Dr. Michael Warren, MD, MPH, FAAP, Associate Administrator of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, discusses current and desired maternal health outcomes, unintended consequences of policies and practices implemented in existing systems, and strategies to increase positive maternal health outcomes for women of color at the program, community, state and federal levels.
Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences, HOPE
Now more than ever, we have a tremendous opportunity – and responsibility – to fundamentally transform our work by adopting practices that recognize, value and actively bolster positive experiences, those positive childhood experiences that drive health and well-being. Children grow and develop in response to their experiences, beginning at the moment of birth. Experiences of strong foundational relationships, safe, stable and supportive environments, authentic engagement, and opportunities for social and emotional growth can support optimal development and resilience. In this presentation, hear from Dr. Robert Sege, director of the Hope National Resource Center, on this paradigm shift towards Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences – HOPE on the power of positive transformation for ourselves and the families and communities we serve.
At Start Early, we know that reading is fundamental to a child’s development. As we celebrate Read Across America Day, we recognize the importance of making reading with your little ones a priority every day! By reading with your young child, you are not only bonding and inspiring a love of reading, but also developing strong early language and literacy skills that are key to future learning and success.
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No matter how old your child is — from babies and toddlers to preschoolers — these six tips from our experts will help you make the most of storytime:
Start early. Reading to babies is important for healthy brain development and lays the foundation for language and writing skills.
Make reading a part of your daily routine. Establishing a routine helps ensure that reading is part of your daily schedule, such as before naptime and bedtime. It also creates times during the day that both of you can look forward to.
Try board and cloth books for babies. By age 1, most babies can grab books. Board and cloth books are great options for babies who like to touch things and put everything in their mouths.
Take turns with your toddler. By age 2, most toddlers can hold a book and point at the pictures. Let your toddler turn the pages of a board book, and respond when they point or react to the story.
Ask your child questions. As you read to your child, make the experience interactive by asking questions, such as “What do you think will happen next?” or “What was your favorite part of the story? Why?”
Just keep reading. Reading to your child helps them develop a habit of listening to stories and loving books. This is one of the most important pieces of advice – make sure you are reading early and often.
One of the most important aspects of building early literacy skills is for parents to read to their young children. Through sharing these moments of being together and parents showing their genuine love for reading, children also get excited for reading which sets the foundation for building lifelong literacy skills.
Danielle Jordan, Senior Master Teacher, Educare Chicago
See our expert in action!
Check out how Educare Chicago Senior Master Teacher Danielle leads her class in a lesson on perspective and how you can tell the same story in different ways.
Families living in communities that are under-resourced lack access to the quality early learning and care programs that help level the playing field and close the opportunity gap. With your support, we can provide literacy support for families in greatest need.
Start Early, formerly the Ounce of Prevention Fund, appreciates the steps taken by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and his administration over the past year to support early care and education programs during a global pandemic. We are, however, disappointed that the Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) budget framework offered today proposes cuts in state funding to both the Early Intervention (EI) program and the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). The administration did propose to maintain current funding levels for preschool and evidence-based home visiting programs, however, which is commendable given the significant financial pressures facing the state.
“We strongly support Governor Pritzker’s efforts to make Illinois the best state in the nation for families raising young children,” Ireta Gasner, Start Early vice president of Illinois policy, said. “But now is not the time to cut state funding of services for infants and toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities, many of whom have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. We look forward to working with the administration and the Illinois General Assembly to direct additional state and federal resources (including federal child care funds), as they become available, to the state’s early care and education system.”
The public health crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the needs of families, certainly among those already lacking equitable services and opportunities. It has also brought into sharp relief the essential nature of the work performed by early childhood professionals – workers whose efforts are central to the well-being of children, families and communities. Not only must we preserve the ability of state government to serve our communities left most under-resourced, we must do more to equitably invest in our young children and their families.
Despite these challenging times, the administration is laying the necessary groundwork to ensure the state can capitalize on future opportunities to strengthen our early childhood system. The Illinois Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding is poised to release its recommendations next month on how to fund and structure our state system to ensure all children, birth to age 5, have access to the highest quality care. In addition, Start Early is thrilled that state agency officials and stakeholders came together to create a comprehensive, multiyear plan to improve services and supports for expecting families, infants and toddlers. Together, we will improve the earliest days of a new baby’s life; we will make sure young children with disabilities and developmental delays receive the services and supports they need; and families facing greater challenges will thrive as their child’s first and most important teacher.
To that end, Start Early is eager to partner with the legislature and the administration to implement and retain policy improvements that positively impact young children. For instance, telehealth has been a lifeline for families in the EI program over the last year. Retaining telehealth as an allowable mode of service delivery, even once in-person services return, should be a top priority. In addition, Start Early will continue to partner with the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus to expand the state’s Medicaid program to include coverage for doula services and evidence-based home visiting. Parents deserve access to quality services that keep them and their children healthy, and these kinds of services are key to reducing racial disparities in maternal and child well-being.
Whether your child is a newborn or about to head to kindergarten, here are some great books to read during storytime: