In her inauguration speech, State Senator Robyn Kennedy talked about the importance of investing in early childhood programs. She also appeared earlier this month on Strategies for Children’s 9:30 call as part of our “First Year Tour” meet-and-greet with newly elected legislators. Click on the white arrow below to hear her speech or read her tweet.
Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, Funding, MA Legislature, Strategies for Children | Tagged #ChildCare, #mapoli | Leave a Comment »
This week, in her testimony at the Revenue Committee hearing in the State House, Amy O’Leary shared a vital message with Massachusetts legislators:
Families with young children need economic relief. And Massachusetts can help by passing the bill An Act to establish a Child and Family Tax Credit, H.2761/S.1792, into law.
“Across Massachusetts, families are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of food, housing, and childcare. At the same time, those earning the least pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes than higher-income families. That’s unfair,” O’Leary, the executive director of Strategies for Children said in her testimony.
O’Leary drew on work done by the Early Childhood Agenda, which solicited feedback from across the state and created a roadmap for improving children’s lives. One vital goal that emerged in the Agenda’s work is to help families become financially secure.
The strategy for achieving this goal is Solution #3 on the Agenda:
“Provide a guaranteed minimum income for MA families and ensure we have an adequate safety net—expand the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), create a robust and inclusive Child and Family Tax Credit (CFTC) and raise cash assistance grants.”
Governor Maura Healey has already called for a new family tax credit for residents “who are struggling to get by as the cost of living continues to skyrocket past them.”
Continue Reading »Posted in Family engagement, MA governor, MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns | Tagged #mapoli, #TaxCredit | Leave a Comment »
Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children
Are you ready to advocate for early education and care funding?
The House Ways & Means Committee will release its FY’24 state budget proposal in a few weeks. Now is the time to contact your own state legislators in support of high-quality early education and care.
Click here to email your state representative and state senator today!
Our collective “ask” was developed with sponsoring organizations of Advocacy Day 2023 for Early Education & Care and School-Age Programs. Click here for the full ask sheet and here for more advocacy materials. Feel free to customize and personalize your message to legislators.
Stay tuned for more budget advocacy in the weeks and months ahead.
Posted in MA Legislature, MA state budget, Massachusetts Cities and Towns | Tagged #Advocacy, #mapoli | Leave a Comment »
This video features highlights and interviews from the official release of the Early Childhood Agenda at the State House in January.
As we’ve blogged, the agenda is “a unified plan that draws on many voices to improve early childhood programs in Massachusetts.”
There’s more to come: the many advocates and providers who support the Early Childhood Agenda will reconvene on March 29th. To join us, please RSVP for either the 10 a.m. or the 6 p.m. session (which will have Spanish interpretation). Check out our Agenda Events page for links and information.
To get involved with the implementation phase of the Early Childhood Agenda, email info@earlychildhoodagenda.org.
Posted in Child care, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten | Tagged #EarlyChildhoodAgenda | Leave a Comment »
Leea Cooley has been interested in working with children for a long time. As a child growing up in Indiana, she liked to play school. As a teenager living in Agawam, Mass., – where her family moved for her father’s career – she loved to babysit.
But it wasn’t until she was a newly divorced mother of two children talking to her divorce attorney that she thought about weaving her interest in children into a profession.
“My lawyer told me that she thought a good career for me would be family child care. She saw the way that I cared so much about children. So I pursued my license, and I got it. And my lawyer put her two children in my program. Along with my children, they were my first customers. And since then, I’ve been running my family child care business for 25 years right here in my house.”
It’s a career that has been full of joy, generosity, and hard work. And one that has led Cooley to join Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network, so she can formalize the work that she has been doing for parents for decades.
“One of the main lessons I’ve learned,” Cooley says, “is that parents need help. They need advice. They need guidance. They’re working full time jobs and then they’re going home and caring for their families, and they don’t always have time to access the information that they’d like to have.
“Over the years, my biggest aha moment is I need to be that resource for families.”
Continue Reading »Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, English language learners, Family child care, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Professional development & preparation, Social-emotional development, Standards and curriculum, Strategies for Children | Tagged #Advocacy, #EarlyEducators, #FamilyChildCare | Leave a Comment »
We’re proud to announce that the 9:30 Call turns three years old this week.
Launched in the chaotic early days of the pandemic, the 9:30 Call began as a response to a global emergency. The Call helped early childhood providers across the state connect and keep up with evolving Covid policies.
Since then, the 9:30 Call has grown into a powerful advocacy tool for managing the pandemic and making policy progress for children and families. 9:30 callers have heard from their colleagues as well as from elected officials, policymakers, researchers, advocates, and academics.
Whether you’ve joined the call once or many times, we want to thank you and invite you to join us this week.
We are spending a few minutes at the start of each of this week’s calls sharing reflections and memories about past speakers and topics.
Visit our 9:30 Call website for additional information about our past and upcoming guest speakers. And sign up for the 9:30 Call to receive the Zoom link for this and future meetings.
You can also find the follow-up materials folder with the chat, slides and attachments from previous calls.
This week’s schedule includes:
Continue Reading »Posted in Early educators, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Strategies for Children | Tagged #9:30Call, #EarlyEducators, #ece | Leave a Comment »
Please join an advocacy effort being led by the national nonprofit Child Care Aware of America by creating a 90-second video about the importance of stabilization grants.
Stabilization grants have had a powerful, positive impact on helping early childhood providers stay open during the pandemic.
But funding for these grants is going to expire later this year!
That’s why Child Care Aware is seeking “perspectives from more child care providers in every state. Can you submit a short video? Sharing your story can help leaders and policymakers hear about the challenges child care continues to face and the difference that additional funding can make for programs and families nationwide.”
Making a video is easy. You can click here to watch a sample video. Then click on the button marked “Start Your Video,” and you’ll see prompts about what to say. You’ll also have to grant the website permission to access your computer’s microphone and camera.
You can also click on the video above to watch highlights of other providers’ videos.
Please join this national effort by sharing your voice and your story.
Posted in Child care, Early educators, National, Pre-kindergarten | Tagged #Advocacy, #ChildCare | Leave a Comment »
The second cohort of Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network is underway, and we’re excited to share the stories of this year’s participants.
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MyHanh Barrette
MyHanh Barrette moved from Vietnam to the United States when she was 11 years old, and her path to advocacy started with figuring out her own strengths and then helping to elevate the strengths of the families she works with.
One tool she uses in her work is love.
“If I don’t love my community, if I don’t love my country, then I won’t want to change anything,” she says. “If I don’t love an organization, if I don’t love my school, I won’t want to improve them.”
Barrette’s professional story began years ago with a practical question.
“My Mom and Stepfather said, Okay, are you going to be a doctor, a pharmacist, an engineer, or a lawyer?”
Barrette made a practical choice and graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a computer science degree – which she never used in her work. Instead, she became a court-certified interpreter, helping families who spoke Vietnamese access the legal system.
“Language was used as a commodity, as part of the power dynamic: You don’t have access to language and I do, so I’m going to assume that because you don’t speak English, you’re ‘less than’ in every other aspect,” Barrette says.
“As an interpreter, I was there to remove the language barrier. When I did that, I saw other barriers that these families faced. But even with these barriers, families were thriving in their own ways. They were facing so much, but they were resourceful, and they were strength-based. I learned so much from them, and I came to see myself as a facilitator, as someone who empowers families.”
In her spare time, Barrette helped lead a co-ed Scout troop, which built on her love of children. She went on to raise her own children, and as they grew, she thought she might want to be a teacher. A trip to the library changed that. A career coach, who was volunteering at the library, listened to Barrette and said, You don’t want to be a teacher. You want to be a social worker.
Continue Reading »Posted in Boston, Family engagement, Infants and toddlers, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Strategies for Children | Tagged #AdvocacyNetwork | Leave a Comment »
Please join us on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, for a reconvening of The Early Childhood Agenda community.
Reconnect and learn about new resources and tools, and hear from lead advocates as we move The Agenda forward together.
Register today to receive Zoom link:
Morning Session from 10am to 11:30am
Evening Session from 6:00pm to 7:30pm
Language translation will be provided for Spanish speakers. Habrá traducción al español.
Both sessions will be recorded and made available on our YouTube playlist.
For more information or assistance, contact: info@earlychildhoodagenda.org.
Posted in Child care, Early educators, Massachusetts Cities and Towns | Tagged #EarlyChildhoodAgenda | Leave a Comment »
Please join us for Advocacy Day for Early Ed & Care and School Age programs – next Tuesday morning, March 14, 2023, in the Great Hall at the Massachusetts State House!
Registration starts at 9:30 a.m.
The program of speakers starts at 10 a.m.
Meetings with state legislators start at 11:15 a.m.
And, of course, there’s the excitement of getting to meet with hundreds of other early childhood professionals.
Check out the RSVP page for more info.
And click here for related materials, including social media hashtags.
In previous years, Advocacy Day has had a celebratory mood, created by early educators who understand the power of speaking as a group and asking policymakers to create more affordable, high-quality early childhood programs for families. You can read more about that in our past Advocacy Day blogs.
Continue Reading »Posted in COVID-19, Early educators, MA Legislature, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Strategies for Children | Tagged #earlyed, #ece, #InvestInChildCare, #mapoli, #MARunsOnChildCare | Leave a Comment »
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Eye on Early Education is a blog of Strategies for Children, an organization that works to ensure that Massachusetts invests the resources needed for all children, from birth to age five, to access high-quality early education programs that prepare them for success in school and life. The blogger, Alyssa Haywoode, comes to Eye on Early Education after a career in journalism. -
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