Last month, Governor Charlie Baker signed the Student Opportunity Act into law – enacting a $1.5 billion investment in K-12 schools across the state that provides a badly needed update to the state’s school funding formula.

In addition — as we explain in this month’s Early Education for All update — the new law requires school districts to close the achievement gap through proven interventions. Several options are listed in the law, including “expanding early education and pre-kindergarten programming” by working with community-based organizations.

As the Schott Foundation says, “The new money is intended to reduce disparities between districts across the state and to put communities with larger cost drivers — special education, employee health care, and high numbers of low-income students and English language learners — on a more even footing with their peers.”

This is work that the early education and care field is ideally suited to do. For example:

• A Strategies for Children report says that Massachusetts’ providers can do more to meet the needs of special education students.

• A report from the city of Boston calls on officials to prioritize the needs of low-income families and children.

• And in Springfield, the new Educare Center, which will open early next year, promises to boost outcomes for young children who are English language learners.

And, of course, remind your state legislators how powerful early education is.

Now that the state’s Joint Committee on Education has finished its work on the K-12 funding formula, lawmakers will have more time to focus on early education – making this the perfect time to reach out.

To get more information and learn about examples of preschool expansion in Holyoke, Springfield, and Boston, please watch our webinar on Local Preschool Finance. And contact us with your ideas for local advocacy by emailing Titus DosRemedios, Strategies for Children’s director of research and policy, at tdosremedios@strategiesforchildren.org.

Your advocacy matters!