The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the ground beneath us. It has illuminated the injustices that have existed in our communities for generations, from access to health care to affordable housing. And it has magnified stressors for our youngest children and families — disproportionately families of color — who are experiencing homelessness, food insecurity, lack of child care or financial instability.

Born in Englewood, an under-resourced community on Chicago’s South Side, Marina got an early start to her education at Educare Chicago, a program operated by Start Early, as a precious 6-week old. Her mom wanted her to develop her love for learning at a very young age. Since then, she became a student leader at Herzl Elementary School, where she graduated Valedictorian in 2017. Now a senior at Northside College Prep, Marina leads her peers as the president of the Yearbook committee and vice-chairman of the Black Student Union. To this day, she continues to embrace her love of learning and looks forward to starting her journey to becoming a psychologist in the fall of 2021. It all began with her mother making the decision to Start Early for her to become a success!

ShaLaya was seeking a more enriching learning environment for her daughter, but she ended up finding her calling. Just two months after enrolling her daughter at Educare Milwaukee, a school in the Educare Learning Network — a partnership between Start Early and early learning champions across the country, ShaLaya joined the staff as a teaching assistant. Once hired, she quickly wanted to do more. She wanted to give her students the same services that the teachers were giving to her child. Her goal was to become an Educare teacher and provide a better life for her family through education and a higher salary. In 2016, she achieved her goal by earning her bachelor’s degree, a teaching requirement at the center. Today, she loves seeing her children grow and looks forward to impacting many more children and their families down the road. She could not be prouder of her daughter, who is currently thriving in her local elementary school, or herself.

Starting early is important to me because I am a dreamer. I have been a dreamer since I was a young child growing up in New York. I dreamed of being a singer, a doctor, a lawyer and eventually an educator. My dreams were nourished by my family, my community, and my teachers. All played such an important part in my world. “Dream big,” my parents would say and “Keep dreaming,” my teachers would cheer. I believe all children deserve the opportunity to dream and reach their full potential. Dreams fuel our goals and a quality early childhood education provides the means for us to attain those goals. Now I am an educator and can cheer on young children and their families to dream big and look beyond.

In 1993, Lori was living in poverty with her husband and young children when she had the opportunity to enroll her family in Head Start. The program gave her the skills, support, and confidence to succeed. She gained a new perspective of herself, from “just a mom” to a leader and champion for early learning. After being served by Head Start, she decided it was her turn to serve. Nearly 30 years later, Lori has dedicated her life to helping parents change their lives for the better through early learning. In 2013, she was honored as a White House Champion of Change for her vision of and commitment to Head Start and elevating parent leadership and voice. Lori is currently the Early Learning Policy and Advocacy Advisor at Educare Seattle, a school in the Educare Learning Network — a partnership between Start Early and early learning champions across the country, Puget Sound Educational Service District, the Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP Parent Ambassador Program Director, and co-chair of the Educare Learning Network’s Policy Workgroup.

In 2019, Start Early, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Early Opportunities hosted the Harnessing Community Momentum Convening, which brought together early childhood leaders from across the country to discuss the urgent need for better collaboration and real-time connection across the early childhood field. As a result of the convening, work began to co-create a suite of essential tools for the early childhood movement, including the development of an online community: Early Childhood Connector.

Watch & Learn More About Early Childhood Connector 

To build the original version of Early Childhood Connector, state and national partners gathered to establish a shared vision for the design of this online community. More than 40 local, state and national partners gathered to establish a shared vision for the design of this online community. The goal was to create a public good — a space that promotes meaningful connections to peers and experts, access to knowledge and ways to capture, curate, and share knowledge in real time.

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, Start Early recognized that the need for real-time connection and collaboration across the field was even more urgent. Early childhood partners needed a place to navigate the implications of the global health crisis together. To support this, Start Early as the sponsoring organization for Early Childhood Connector led the launch of the initial platform months ahead of schedule.

Early Childhood Connector quickly brought together early childhood partners in a simple, judgement-free online community to connect with each other, share ideas, curate best practices and elevate work happening at the local, state, and national level in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The group provided a neutral location to host the most up-to-date COVID-19 resources and information including emerging community, state and national strategies.

The value of and the need for this platform was immediately clear. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, a child development director from Arizona asked fellow members to share their strategies on how to best support child care workers adopt guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on wearing protective face coverings while balancing concerns for how this might impact day-to-day interactions with children. Responses from members across the country poured in, offering ideas of the different types of masks she could investigate and giving the director a sense of validation and connectedness. Ultimately, the director learned of masks with clear mouth coverings that are now in use in her pre-K classroom to better support children in reading their lips when speaking.

This is just one of many connections that resulted in an improved practice on the ground across our country. As we continue to build on the success of Early Childhood Connector, we are excited about the potential this initiative has to accelerate knowledge sharing and spread promising practices across early childhood partner networks to improve outcomes for children and their families.

From the whole Start Early team (formerly known as the Ounce), our sincere gratitude for joining us for our Annual Luncheon. We were honored to share “Tomorrow’s Hope,” which was generously created and produced by the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation. Thank you to our event’s presenting sponsor Peoples Gas, our many other generous sponsors and the Zaentz Foundation for helping make our in-person event possible during these uncertain times.

We hope the film provided inspiration and reassurance as you witnessed how unwavering resilience, parent engagement and early learning experiences can make a difference for every child, especially in times of adversity.

Thank you to our 2020 Annual Luncheon
Presenting, Champion and Premier-level Sponsors!

Presenting Sponsor

Champion Sponsors

Nancy & Steven Crown
The Crown Family
Diana & Bruce Rauner

Premier Sponsors

Leslie Bluhm & David Helfand
The Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation
Anne & Don Edwards
The Hasten Foundation
Cari & Michael J. Sacks
Catherine Siegel
Zell Family Foundation

In 2014, Congress addressed the child care crisis by appropriating $500 million to expand access to Early Head Start, which included the creation of a new Early Head Start–Child Care Partnerships program (Partnerships). Tulsa Educare was awarded two of the three Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships grants (rounds 1 and 3) and currently supports six family child care homes and one center, with additional centers set to open in August 2020. One of the child care homes that Tulsa Educare currently partners with is Aunt Jackie’s Family Childcare owned and operated by Jacqueline (Jackie) Evans.

We recently interviewed Jackie Evans along with Brittany Egger, the director of Child Care Partnerships and Quality Assurance at Tulsa Educare. They shared their thoughts on the impact of the Partnerships on the Tulsa community, the challenges they face, and their hopes for the future of infant/toddler care.

1. Tell us a little bit about your relationship/partnership. How did it originally come to be? What does it look like now?
   Jackie and I met after we received notification that we were awarded the [EHS-CCP Partnerships] grant. Unbeknownst to us, Jackie and Caren Calhoun, our executive director at the time, had worked with each other years before. This helped jump-start her trust with Tulsa Educare. We began slowly. The first time I went to her house we just sat at her kitchen table and she told me about her program. I observed the children and did parent engagement events to build trust with her staff and her families.
2. From your perspective, what has been the impact of the Partnerships program across the Tulsa community?
   Family Child Care Homes are an integral part of the Tulsa community. The level of family partnerships and bonding that occurs is hard to duplicate in a center-based program. Jackie has a passion for increasing the number of high-quality family child care homes across her community. With our newest Partnerships grant, we chose to partner with five new family child care homes.
3. What challenges have you faced participating in the Partnerships program? How have you addressed those challenges?
   With any change there are challenges. How are we going to do all this new required paperwork? When do we have time for this in our already busy day? With the staff, are they going to want to go back to school to get their Child Development Associate Certificates? All of these were challenges. However, working together to restructure daily schedules and assign responsibilities to all staff, we were able to easily adjust to the new regulations and demands. Jackie’s staff completed their CDAs within their first year, and have now completed both their Certificate of Mastery and are working on their Associate Degrees. The new regulations were challenging, but brought a level of professionalism to the home that wasn’t there before.
   
4. What is your big, bold hope for the future of infant/toddler care in Oklahoma?
   That all children have equal access to high-quality programs and caregivers have more options for specific infant/toddler training. Additionally, that Oklahoma can bridge the divide between child care programs and public school programs. We hope for these things because we all know that the quality of care, experiences, and opportunities children have in the very early years can predict future success.
   

In 2000, Start Early developed the first Educare school to serve children and families on the South Side of Chicago. At the time, the community was rebuilding after the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest public housing developments in the country.

Since then, we’ve partnered with diverse communities and early childhood champions to build a national network of 25 birth-through-age 5 Educare schools and improve access to quality early education across the country. Our shared goal is to help our most vulnerable children enter kindergarten ready to learn. Start Early serves as the national coordinating office of the Educare Learning Network, providing strategic alignment and functional support to the Network and our partners.

To achieve our goal, the Educare Learning Network builds strong public-private partnerships across the country to create strong schools and longtime champions who will amplify our call for change. We collaborate as a Network to advocate at the local, state and federal levels for policies and programs that advance our mission and support quality improvement and supports for our youngest learners and their families in communities that are under-resourced.

Through our work on the Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (Partnerships) program — created by Congress in 2014 — reaches across policy, practice and research to improve early education nationwide. Through the program, grantees are able to provide local child care programs that agree to meet Head Start Program Performance Standards with a range of supports (e.g., infrastructure improvements, higher teacher pay). Partnerships grantees partner with local center-based and family child care programs and leverage community resources to expand access to high-quality early care and learning for families who are working but earning wages below the federal poverty level.

Currently, 13 Educare organizations in 12 states and the District of Columbia administer Partnership grants with a variety of partners including local child care centers, family child care homes, school districts, nonprofit organizations, homeless shelters, and other community organizations. The number and type of community partners vary by grantee, as do the number of infants and toddlers served (from 60 to over 600), geographic distances covered and the role of the Educare organization in the Partnership.

In addition to Educare organizations administering grants, the Educare Learning Network advocates to protect and expand this program at the state and federal levels and shares our best practices and policy recommendations with the field. In 2019, we partnered with the Bipartisan Policy Center and the First Five Years Fund to put forth a policy recommendation, titled “The Early Head Start – Child Care Partnerships: Flexibility With Accountability,” summarizing our shared Partnerships work across the country and program recommendations. In 2020, we launched an article series called “A Path to High-Quality Child Care through Partnerships,” featuring stories from Educare organizations’ Partnerships across the country and highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on Partnerships grantees, their child care partners and the families they serve. The series and offers our unique policy recommendations to maintain, improve, and grow our nation’s supply of quality infant toddler child care.

Visit EducareSchools.org

While much attention and effort has been directed at addressing the widening opportunity gap in the United States, children growing up in communities that are under-resourced from decades of historical and institutional racism face an equally pervasive and related health gap. By and large, they have markedly worse health than their peers from more advantaged communities. This gap appears early in life and builds over time. Science suggests that adverse early life experiences and environments — prenatally and in a child’s first years — can contribute to the health gap, leaving biological imprints on the child’s developing body and brain that can have strong and lasting effects.

Fortunately, new and current research points us to a critical strategy in narrowing the health gap and giving all children a chance at good health over their lifetime: We can ensure that every child has access to high-quality early childhood programs, including early education and home visiting.