Trivia!

Which entity makes decisions about new construction and improvements of public buildings, including the Washington State Capitol Campus?

(I know this is a dry trivia question, but I promise the answer contains really cool and interesting information!)

Legislative Committee Days

This week, the Senate and House of Representatives met for virtual Committee Days where legislative committees received updates on items of interest in advance of the 2022 legislative session.

Two work sessions of note include the Monday Senate Ways and Means Committee and the Wednesday Senate Early Learning and K-12 Committee.

Senate Ways and Means Committee. The Senate Ways and Means Committee received a number of updates. Of particular interest was the Office of Financial Management’s Assistant Director for Budget Nona Snell’s presentation on COVID-19 response funding.

In total, Washington state governments, businesses, nonprofits, and individual citizens received $87 billion (billion with a “b”) in COVID-19 relief funds. As a frame of reference, the state’s two-year biennial budget for 2021-23 totaled $59.1 billion.

State government received $14.1 billion from the six major federal stimulus packages. The state dedicated its funding to areas such as economic support, local government, public health, government operations, child care, medical, food assistance and long-term care.

Washington state received $4.4 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), one of the largest federal stimulus packages. The dollars were allocated as follows:

• 2021-23 Operating Budget: $1.7 billion (37%)
• Unappropriated (still available to spend): $1.3 billion (29%)
• 2021-23 Transportation Budget: $1 billion (23%)
• 2021-23 Capital Budget: $400 million (9%)
• 2021 Supplemental Operating Budget: $103 million (2%)

REMINDER: Start Early WA prepared a detailed analysis of how Washington state allocated federal COVID-19 funds toward early learning priorities.

Senate Early Learning and K-12 Committee. Wednesday’s Senate Early Learning and K-12 Committee focused on early learning issues and opened with an update on the implementation of the Fair Start for Kids Act from Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) Assistant Secretary of Early Learning Nicole Rose.

The linked PowerPoint contains a treasure trove of rich information and I will be hanging onto it for data points and summaries of key Fair Start Act components.

Following Rose’s presentation, Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal and Secretary of DCYF Ross Hunter opened the next panel focused on integrated pre-K. (Side note – I’ll also be keeping this PowerPoint as a reference – more good data). OSPI and DCYF discussed their efforts to integrate various pre-K options, noting that the passage of the federal Build Back Better Act would dramatically change the trajectory of this work.

Overall, the House work sessions focused less on issues related to early learning. However, the House Appropriations Committee received a fiscal outlook for 2022 during its Thursday afternoon meeting. The fiscal outlook document contains a great overview of the state budgeting process and factors impacting budget writers’ decision making.

Redistricting

For the first time since its authorization, the Washington State Redistricting Commission failed to adopt final Congressional and legislative maps to send to the Legislature prior to the midnight, Nov. 15 deadline. As a result, the drawing of maps goes to the Washington State Supreme Court who now have until April 30 to come to agreement on the final maps.

Redistricting is the process wherein Congressional and legislative district boundaries are reviewed and adjusted to reflect the latest census information. This year, release of the census data was delayed due to COVID-19. State legislatures in most states oversee redistricting, but Washington voters approved a state constitutional amendment in 1983 to assign that duty to a bi-partisan Redistricting Commission. The Commission is comprised of two Republican Commissioners, two Democratic Commissioners and one non-voting Chair. Due to COVID-19, this Commission has met virtually throughout its entire tenure.

Monday night’s virtual meeting had its share of drama with the commission members spending most of the evening in caucuses (the two Republican Commissioners meeting together and the two Democrats meeting together). There was an attempt at a vote before the midnight deadline, but they ran out of time. Because the meeting was on Zoom, it was unclear if a deal had been struck and if the Commission had met the deadline until the next morning when the Commission Chair issued a statement confirming the deadline had been missed.

Late Tuesday night, the Commission released its approved maps. The maps drill all the way down to specific neighborhoods. It is yet to be seen how closely the Supreme Court will follow these recommendations.

Crosscut’s Melissa Santos provided constant updates on Twitter throughout the evening and early morning hours to help the public understand what was happening. She is a trooper! She also produced an informative story the next day capturing all of the palace intrigue. @MelissaSantos1 on Twitter is my go-to for all Olympia information.

The entire redistricting process is fascinating (to me!). Look for more information in future newsletters.

State Revenue Update

The Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council will meet to receive the latest revenue report from the state’s Economist, Dr. Stephen Lerch at 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 19. This meeting will be televised on TVW.org.

This important revenue update will inform the Governor’s proposed 2022 Supplemental Budget which should be released mid-December.

Earlier this week, the Senate Ways and Means Committee received an update on the caseload forecast. This information also informs the state budget process because it identifies major cost drivers such as Medicaid caseload and K-12 enrollment.

The Caseload Forecast Council Executive Director Elaine Deschamps noted that the forecasting could be less accurate due to COVID-19, the impacts of passage of major legislation and recent court action.

For early learning, the forecast report showed a 7.4% decline from the June forecast for Working Connections Child Care (with the caseload projected to drop by 1,723 to 21,602 in Fiscal Year 2022) and a projected 16.3% decline from the June forecast for the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program – ECEAP – (down by 2,313 to 11,847).

For fiscal year 2023, the Working Connections Child Care caseload is projected to grow to 26,887 and ECEAP’s to 14,890.

Resources

Perigee Fund “Parent Voices Study.” This week, the Perigee Fund and the Ford Foundation released findings from a Parent Voices Study. The study focused on parents and providers in seven communities and sought feedback on their experiences participating in programs like home visiting and infant mental health as they shifted to technology-based services during the pandemic.

The study found that flexible options made possible by technology worked well for both families and providers with 67% of parents and 68% of providers saying they would like to continue some level of service remotely. Technology also helped with family and provider retention.

Check out this great study and share the findings with your networks.

Crosscut Child Care Piece. Joy Borkholder of Crosscut wrote a powerful piece “The Real Costs of Child Care” that ran on Nov. 9. The author did a great job outlining the fiscal challenges of child care – for families who pay a huge portion of their paychecks for child care as well as for providers who too often earn extremely low wages.

City of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s 2022 budget, which was approved by City Council last month, aims to take advantage of a “once in a lifetime opportunity to transform” the city.

One such transformative change to celebrate is the decision to invest $25 million of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to scale the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Family Connects Chicago, an in-home nurse service for families with newborns over the next three years. Family Connects offers a universal approach to supporting families directly following the birth of a child and demonstrates the critical importance of care during a child’s first few weeks of life.

Yet, other early childhood programs and services continue to be woefully underfunded, as reflected in the latest approved budget. Compounded with the reality that families with young children and the programs that provide them with essential services are recovering from the pandemic, the early learning field needs adequate support and investments now more than ever before. Given the circumstances, it would seem to follow that the city’s budget would reflect a greater investment this year in other early childhood services. Yet, the budget line that represents local funds committed to the Children Services Division within the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) was level-funded with last year’s appropriation of approximately $13 million. To put that in perspective, the city allocated roughly the same amount of local funds for rodent control this year. Additionally, while the city’s early childhood programs will receive $6.5 million in ARPA funds, investments pale in comparison to the $213 million in ARPA funds that DFSS has allocated for serving older populations.

It is important to note that DFSS saw a budget reduction of roughly $100 million this year as a result of the federal government’s redistribution of Head Start funds. While those funds will now be received by other agencies who will continue Head Start services for children and families, the reduction for DFSS means a loss of funding for the citywide Chicago Early Learning infrastructure of supports – including the parent hotline, application and community outreach – which assists tens of thousands of families with accessing early childhood programs each year. It also means a loss of funds for the Chicago Early Learning Workforce Scholarship during an early childhood workforce crisis that predates but was greatly exacerbated by the pandemic. Despite the estimated need for 3,000 new early childhood educators across the city by 2024, this scholarship program is currently only able to serve around 130 new students each year, turning away over 500 others who apply due to lack of funds.

Despite the puzzling lack of investment of local and ARPA funds, the announcement last year of Every Child Ready Chicago, a public-private partnership led by the Mayor’s Office in partnership with Start Early suggests that this administration recognizes the need to improve the systems of care that support families in Chicago when their children are young. The initiative seeks to “build the early childhood systems infrastructure needed for thousands more children to enter kindergarten ready to learn.” The timing could not be better, with the state having announced in April their intent to establish early-childhood planning councils in communities across the state. The opportunity to align these initiatives – as well as the redistribution of Head Start funding in the city – creates an opportunity to bring more voices with broader representation and broader reach across communities in Chicago to the forefront of efforts to improve the system of supports that families can access in their children’s early years to ensure they enter kindergarten healthy and ready to learn. Perhaps the influence of a strong coalition focused on this goal will be what Chicago needs to ensure that the city budget reflects the appropriate dedication to children and families in 2023.

As Congress continues to push historic reforms to early childhood education towards the finish line, Start Early president Diana Rauner joined Drew Furedi, president and CEO of Para Los Niños and Alejandra Barraza, president of HighScope Educational Research Foundation for a conversation about early childhood development moderated by Mark Oppenheim.

All families need support

The panel also spend time talking about how every family needs foundational supports. Discussion included how families have never raised children by themselves—they’ve always relied on friends, supports and family to help them during this exciting and exhausting time.

But not every parent and caregiver has these supports, and children shouldn’t be punished. In our full-employment society, we must find a way for all children to be cared for in quality educational settings regardless of their location — be it a church basement, a child care center, an in-home provider or a preschool — so that parents can choose from developmentally appropriate, affordable and quality options.

Investing in what works

The panel ended with a great sports analogy by Drew Furedi, who shared that sports teams spend millions of dollars on scientific approaches that train and develop individual athletes. If we applied the same approach to develop each young person, we could gain so much—and we’re not talking millions of dollars per child.

We know what works. We have the answers. We just need to do it.

Breaking News – Potential Agreement on Build Back Better

On Thursday, Oct. 28, the White House announced a negotiated agreement on the Build Back Better Framework. The agreement contains sweeping investments and policy changes for child care and federal universal preschool. As we go to “print” at 7 p.m. Thursday night, it does not appear that a vote is imminent, but that could change. We will continue to closely monitor this situation and provide further details when they are available.

Trivia!

As we are likely approaching a second “unusual” legislative session (see more on that below), I got to thinking if there were points in history when the typical legislative schedule was adjusted to reflect world affairs. Specifically, I wondered whether the Washington State Legislature had a disrupted legislative session during World War II. Did the Washington Legislature make any adaptations during the Second World War?

Policy Updates

Transitions. Typically, resignations and retirements by elected officials tend to happen at the end of a two-year legislative session. However, this year is an anomaly, with several announcements. This week, Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman announced her resignation as of Nov. 19 to join President Joe Biden’s Administration as his Senior Election Security Lead. Governor Jay Inslee will select someone to fill the vacancy and, in November 2022, the voters will choose a candidate to finish out Secretary Wyman’s term which ends in 2024. According to an Oct. 26 tweet by NPR’s Austin Jenkins, the last time a statewide office appeared on a ballot during an “off year” was in 1975 due to another vacancy.

In the past few weeks, Senators Jeannie Darneille (Democrat, Pierce County) and Ann Rivers (Republican, Clark County) announced their resignations. Senator Darneille moved to the Department of Corrections to serve as the Assistant Secretary for the Women’s Prison Division and Senator Rivers accepted a position with the City of Longview to serve as its Community Development Director. Their respective County Councils will select both Senators’ replacements from the top three nominees chosen by local Precinct Committee Officers. Senator Darneille served as the Chair of the Senate Human Services, Reentry and Rehabilitation Committee, so a new Chair for that committee will be identified shortly. Finally, Senator David Frockt (Democrat, King County) announced he will retire following the 2022 legislative session. Senator Frockt has served as the Vice Chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, where he oversaw the Capital Budget and was instrumental in securing funding for the Early Learning Facilities Fund.

Legislative Committee Days will be Virtual. Due to continued uncertainty with COVID-19, November committee days will again be virtual, with the Senate convening for committee work sessions on Nov. 15-17 and the House on Nov. 18-19.

Committee work sessions of note for early learning include:

• Senate Ways and Means on Nov. 15 at 3:30 p.m. Topics include revenue and caseload and COVID-19 response funding.
• Senate Behavioral Health Subcommittee on Nov. 16 at 1:30 p.m. The agenda includes an overview of the report and recommendations from the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Workgroup.
• Senate Early Learning and K-12 on Nov. 17 at 1:30 p.m. The focus of this work session is early learning and will include an update on the Fair Start for Kids Act implementation, integrated preschool and early learning opportunities for children with disabilities.
• House State Government on Nov. 18 at 8 p.m. Work session includes a focus on the creation of the Office of Equity.
• House Appropriations on Nov. 18 at 3:30 p.m. Topics include a preview of the 2022 legislative session fiscal issues.

Each work session will be available for viewing on TVW.org. Remember that if you miss the sessions live, you can always replay them using TVW’s archives tab.

2022 Legislative Session. The 2022 legislative session will be here before we know it, with the short, 60-day session scheduled to start on Monday, Jan. 10. The top question I get is whether the 2022 legislative session will be in-person, virtual, or hybrid. The short answer is – we do not know yet. We expect announcements from the Senate and House in early November and we will report on their plans in the next Notes From Olympia.

State Revenue Forecast. The state’s revenues continue to outpace projections, with the Major State General Fund dollars for the Sept. 11 – Oct. 10 period coming in $152.7 million above the September forecast. This represents an 8.2% increase. The next quarterly revenue forecast will be on Nov. 19 and that figure will inform the Governor’s proposed Supplemental Budget that he will release in mid-late December.

On Oct. 1, the Governor’s Office of Financial Management announced an agreement with the state employee union to provide $412.2 million ($241.7 million General Fund) in pay increases for state employees. This agreement will provide for a 3.25% pay increase beginning July 1 2022, as well as a graduated lump-sum payment, with workers making lower wages receiving a larger lump-sum. Like with all collective bargaining agreements, the Legislature cannot alter the agreement; they either can approve or disapprove the terms.

Fair Start for Kids Act Updates/Resources

The Fair Start for Kids Act was a significant piece of legislation with many components. So many that I have trouble keeping all the details in my head. Here are some great resources to explain what the Fair Start for Kids Act contains, the various funding amounts and when provisions go into effect.

Our friends at MomsRising developed an amazing toolkit designed as a resource for families navigating the child care subsidy process. It contains Frequently Asked Questions, describes the new co-payment structure and, importantly, outlines the materials that families will need to apply. This is a resource to share far and wide. It is currently available in English, but they expect to offer it in Spanish shortly.

The Department of Children, Youth and Families has a webpage dedicated to Fair Start for Kids Act details. Additionally, the agency has information on Child Care Stabilization Grants available in English, Spanish and Somali.

Licensed child care centers, family child care homes, school-age providers and outdoor nature-based care providers with open licenses in good standing are eligible for Child Care Stabilization Grants. License capacity determines the grant amount. Providers are eligible to apply for one stabilization grant and applications will be accepted through June 2022 with applications reviewed and paid out monthly.

Finally, Start Early WA has developed the following budget and policy analysis pieces:

1. Allocation of Federal COVID-19 Relief for Early Learning: see how the state allocated the federal COVID-19 relief dollars (CARES, CRRSA, ARPA, and CRF) to support early learning priorities.
2. Summary of 2021-23 Operating and Capital Budget Investments for Early Learning: an overview of Washington’s investments in early learning for the current biennium.
3. Summary of Key Provisions of the Fair Start for Kids Act: a summary of the main elements passed in the Fair Start for Kids Act.

Start Early WA is on Twitter!

Follow us at @StartEarlyWA on “the Twitter.” We look forward to engaging, sharing, amplifying – and other positive, active verbs!

Early Learning Facility Fund Grant Application Process is Open

The Department of Commerce has opened the application process for the 2021-23 Early Learning Facilities Funds to establish or expand spaces for ECEAP and Working Connections Child Care. Pre-application responses are due by noon Nov. 16 and the application process closes at 5 p.m. on Dec. 1.

By Michelle Bezark, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Judy Reidt-Parker Director of Early Childhood Systems Consultation at Start Early

Exactly fifty years ago, in the fall of 1971, Congress passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CDA) with a bipartisan vote. The law would have laid the foundation for federally funded universal child care programs “as a matter of right” for all children regardless of economic, social and family background.” The proposed programs would have been locally run and free for families with income below the poverty line, while available on a sliding scale to families making above that.

The proposal appeared popular with the public in the years leading up to the vote. A July 1969 Gallup poll suggested that 64% favored establishing of federally funded child care centers “in most communities,” while only 30% opposed. Supported by Democrats and Republicans, the CDA’s middle-class appeal made the bill seem like a sure thing in the build-up to the 1972 election season. President Nixon was privately ambivalent about universal daycare, but politicians and advocates assumed that given the programs’ broad appeal, he would not stand in the way of Congress.

The CDA’s sponsor, Senator Walter Mondale, formed a taskforce made up of experts and advocates to draft the legislation and get it passed. In an effort to move quickly through Congress ahead of the 1972 election cycle, the coalition — made up of early childhood experts, labor leaders, civil rights activists, and feminists — opted to rely on a group of advocates and experts rather than take the time to mobilize a grassroots movement. This tactic proved effective in getting the legislation passed through Congress but failed when the final bill hit the President’s desk.

Unlike the experts and advocates that supported the CDA, conservative organizations like the John Birch Society and the Mormon Church organized parents’ groups across the country in letter writing campaigns to oppose the bill. Conservatives saw the CDA as an extension of President Johnson’s War on Poverty programs, which they associated with government largess, and worried the CDA would allow the federal government to intervene in traditional family structures. They were so effective that the Health, Education, and Welfare Department’s Office of Child Development fielded as many as 5,000 letters opposed to the legislation — and subsequent bills like it — every week throughout the 1970s.

Conservatives were so vocal in their opposition that by December of 1971, Republicans who had initially supported the law abandoned it. Moreover, President Nixon not only vetoed the bill but condemned federal subsidies for universal child care in no uncertain terms. In his veto message to Congress he criticized the bill’s “fiscal irresponsibility, administrative unworkability, and family-weakening implications” and claimed that signing the CDA would commit the Federal Government to “communal approaches to child rearing over the family-centered approach.” According to one early childhood advocate, the veto froze the issue for decades.

In the end, Nixon made the political calculation that he had more to lose by alienating conservatives than he had to gain by passing popular, bipartisan legislation. Nixon’s veto message, with its praise for family togetherness and critique of “communal approaches to child rearing,” was carefully worded to appeal to right-wing, anti-communist, anti-feminist activists.

No such letter writing campaign came in support of the CDA either before or after the veto. One CDA supporter reflected that the primary lesson to be learned from the bill’s failure was that supporters spent too much time engaged with each other at the expense of mobilizing grassroots support.

The day after Nixon issued his veto on the CDA, he signed legislation that expanded the 1954 child care tax credit to middle-class families. With these two successive steps, President Nixon shaped the early childhood education system we live with today: a failing market-based system where parents are unable to afford high child care costs, providers operate on razor-thin margins maintaining slim profits, and child care workers earn low wages without benefits, which consequently results in exceptionally high turnover. Even the tax subsidies designed to support the middle-income families proved to be not immediate enough to offset monthly costs, as these families juggle when and how to pay for heating, child care, and housing.

Child care advocates learned the lesson of grassroots mobilization well. They organized large grassroots campaigns in support of federal childcare subsidies in the 1980s. By then, however, most politicians had soured to the idea of universal child care programs based on the CDA’s failure. With so many mothers of young children entering the workforce in the 1980s, members of both parties felt compelled to act on childcare. But, Republicans only supported childcare bills that went through the states and supported the children of the poorest families.

Child care advocates worked tirelessly within these political constraints to increase funding for Head Start, child tax credits, and to pass the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), signed into law in 1990. Today, CCDBG provides block grants to the states to subsidize care for children from families with low incomes.

CCGBD funding has supported many children and families, but it is a far cry from the universal vision laid out in the 1971 CDA. CCGBD has been chronically underfunded from the start. When it finally passed through Congress and President Bush signed it into law, it had less than half the funds the bill’s sponsors originally sought.

While current federal regulations establish parameters for how states can implement the grant, states make policy decisions that impact the quality, supply, and accessibility of child care. Although the recent changes in CCDBG created stronger criteria for health and safety, more consistent payment policies to providers and improved eligibility policies, there is a great deal of flexibility on how states can design their child care subsidy system. For example, many states set the child care subsidy income eligibility significantly lower than the allowed 85%, often only slightly higher than the federal poverty line. Concurrently, although states are recommended to reimburse providers up to the 75th percentile of the child care market rate, many states continue to pay providers in the 40th or 50th percentiles. This leaves many providers questioning the cost-to-benefit ratio of accepting subsidies. Why accept lower payment and a stack of paperwork when there might be another family that can pay the full rate?

The child care sector as it stands today, therefore, may be the only industry in which government subsidy contributes to market challenges, rather than ameliorates them.

Had President Nixon signed the CDA into law in 1971, four generations of children would have had access to comprehensive educational, medical, social and nutritional services. Millions of women would have been able to take jobs, pursue degrees or job training, or start businesses, knowing that they had access to quality and affordable child care programs for their young children.

Things would not be perfect in the early childhood system had the outcome in 1971 been different, but we would be working to solve different and smaller problems — not constantly trying to prop up a system that has been broken from the start. With national program standards in place, it’s unlikely families would be expected to verify their income every six months (as was the norm until recently) or risk losing their child care subsidy if they accept a 50-cent an hour raise. We might instead be tinkering with national standards to make sure they provide universal access to high-quality programs and services. We might be investing in higher education programs to increase the linguistic and cultural diversity of the workforce, instead of hemorrhaging skilled and passionate early childcare workers to lower-skilled jobs that offer higher wages and benefits.

Today, transformational investments in our youngest learners are once again on the table in Washington, D.C., this time preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, supports for families to access high-quality learning and child care, and an extended Child Tax Credit. Once again, voters overwhelmingly support federal investments in child care and preschool, with national polling from September revealing 81% of voters see child care and preschool as a good investment of taxpayer money — including 80% of independents and 66% of Republicans. And once again, claims of fiscal irresponsibility are threatening us from doing something big.

As Congress debates how much to fund different aspects of President Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, let’s not miss our chance to pass this historic early childhood legislation and create a comprehensive system that supports children and families when it matters most. Because if the last 50 years has taught us anything, it’s that cobbling together a set of smaller solutions only gets us a broken system that serves no one well.

Today, President Biden announced the Build Back Better framework. In response, Diana Rauner, president of Start Early issued the following statement:

“The proposed $400 billion investment in child care, universal preschool and families through the extended Child Tax Credit would make high-quality early learning options affordable and accessible for families who need them, increase compensation and professional development opportunities for the early care and learning workforce, and ultimately create a stronger, more stable and more equitable system that can support the needs of children and families during the years when these investments matter most.

“When you give families and children access to quality early learning and care during their first five years, you can change everything. This is an exciting moment for families, for children, for early childhood professionals and our nation, one that has the potential to create a brighter future for generations to follow.

“Start Early urges Congress to quickly pass these transformational investments.

“As we celebrate this moment, we realize the work to build an early learning and care system that prioritizes families and supports them from before birth through age 5 is not done. Start Early will continue to advocate for policies that put families first, most notably sustaining federal investments in early care and learning and creating a national paid family leave policy to help all families begin their journey on a strong foundation of caring, responsive relationships.”

Start Early applauds Governor J.B. Pritzker for issuing Executive Order 2021-28, which requires all staff working in child care settings licensed by the state to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. We thank the governor and his administration for recognizing the need to protect this essential workforce and the children and families in their care. This policy will bring immunization requirements for staff at child care centers into alignment with those of Early Head Start and Head Start providers, as well as K-12 educators, who are already required to receive the vaccine.

Throughout the pandemic, Start Early advocated to make sure the early childhood workforce was prioritized as part of the state’s vaccine rollout, along with other educators and essential workers. Then when the vaccine rollout began, Start Early and our advocate partners in early childhood and public health have spent many months engaging diverse stakeholders in a coordinated “trusted messenger” campaign to increase vaccination rates among providers. After reviewing results from surveys and focus groups to better understand the concerns of providers, we focused our efforts on synthesizing and improving accessibility of information on the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as providing opportunities to have non-judgmental conversations with trusted health experts about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

As a direct service provider, Start Early followed a similar approach with our own staff. As soon as the vaccine was made available, we pursued partnerships to assist staff in accessing education related to the vaccine, as well as the vaccine itself. We looked to the expertise of organizations such as the Society for Human Resource Management, The Pediatric Infectious Disease Society, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for guidance and adjusted our approach as new information became available. Following guidance from the EEOC, we began providing incentives to get vaccinated over the summer. With this patient, persistent, and respectful approach, we reached a voluntary vaccine rate of over 80%. When we later announced our own vaccine mandate in September, this high rate of voluntary vaccination allowed us to focus individual attention on those who were not yet vaccinated. This allowed us to reach our goal of full compliance with our mandate without any staff terminations. With the dates announced by the Governor, it is not too late for other providers to follow a similar approach. Both broad and individualized outreach, education, and access are key ingredients to achieving our shared goal of the highest possible vaccination rates across our field.

Funders understand it’s past time for the U.S. to create and support a quality early education system. In her latest piece for Inside Philanthropy, reporter Connie Matthiessen takes a look at the Educare Learning Network and Start Early as a model for change, including the Educare model’s focus on parent engagement, the importance of public-private partnerships and providing parents and families with comprehensive, prenatal-to-five supports.

In the piece, Jessie Rasmussen, president of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, calls Educare “an initiative by private and public partners to do two big things: change the life trajectories for the children who come into our care, and change the way America approaches and funds high-quality early care and education. By doing what science tells us we need to do in terms of providing quality, we are narrowing and even closing the achievement gap. By working with peers across the country, we’re showing what it takes to deliver such high quality, including a well-prepared, well-compensated workforce, a reliance on data-driven practice, and care that partners with families and nurtures the healthy growth and development of every child.”

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.

Upcoming Budget Hearings:

Submit your testimony

• Oct. 14, 4-7 p.m. CT
  Registration deadline: Registration deadline: 11:59 p.m., Oct. 11
  Register Now
• Oct. 21, 1-4 p.m. CT
  Registration deadline: 11:59 p.m., Oct. 18
  Register Now

Contact us if you plan to testify or have questions. Thank you for speaking up for children and families across the state!

At first glance, the price tag for the transformative investments in early childhood care and education included in the American Families Plan looks steep: $450 billion. And with the significant federal spending, policy scope and potential for tax increases included in President Biden’s $3.5 trillion economic package, we should be having conversations about whether this is where we want to invest our tax dollars.

This June, economists Jorge Luis García, Frederik H. Bennhoff, Duncan Ermini Leaf and Nobel laureate James Heckman released a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper that demonstrates these investments in early learning and care could produce incredible returns.

The paper returns to the Perry Preschool Project, an intervention in the 1960s where a randomized group of students who received two years of preschool sessions on weekdays and weekly teacher home visits, beginning at age 3. Because the study has followed participants into their 50s, economists can now examine the impacts the program had on the siblings and the children of the original participants, who are now well into their adulthoods.