| All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go: Massachusetts Policy Update |
In Massachusetts, local communities are increasingly demanding state investment in high-quality early education. Between January and June of this year, 13 communities developed strategic plans for preschool expansion, thanks to state-funded planning grants that build off of Massachusetts’ federal Preschool Expansion Grant. Now that the plans are written and communities are organized, what’s next? Unfortunately there will be no state funding in FY17 for implementing the plans. After hearing how local communities will have to wait at least another year for funding, Strategies for Children board president Paul O’Brien remarked “So, they’re all dressed up with nowhere to go.” Read more in our blog post at The Alliance for Early Success. For additional information on the final FY17 state budget, visit our website. |
| Making the Business Case for Early Education |
To build a better workforce, start at the beginning by building better early education and care programs. That’s the argument made by Jay Gonzalez and JD Chesloff in a recent guest column they wrote for the MetroWest Daily News. “The business community has engaged in different initiatives over time to support the work of universities, community colleges, workforce training programs, vocational technical schools and K-12 public schools to improve the quality and supply of our workforce,” they write. “However, there has not been sufficient focus on the point in the workforce development pipeline that can have the biggest impact – the very beginning. "That is starting to change.” Read more. |
 Check out our Eye on Early Education blog for recent stories you may have missed. |
Male Early Educators Share Their Stories, August 18 A New Foundation in Massachusetts Makes Strategic Donations to Early Education, August 16 Boston’s Preschools and What They Do Right, August 11 Vermont is First: The State Offers 10 hours of Universal, Free Preschool, National Funding for Early Education? There’s “Little to Nothing”, August 4 Philadelphia Taxes Soda to Pay for Early Education, July 25 |
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EarlyEducationForAll @EarlyEd4All Aug 17 John King @JohnKingatED Aug 16 FirstFiveYearsFund @firstfiveyears Aug 15 Early Years @EarlyYearsEW Aug 11 ChildrensDefenseFund @ChildDefender Aug 11 |
notes from Amy
The plans are comprehensive, thoughtful, and customized local proposals for how best to expand preschool opportunities to more children. They also reveal several opportunities to better align what exists currently and imagine what could be in the future. We are encouraging, local teams to share their plans locally - mayors, superintendents, funders, educators, parents, school committee members and the public should be aware of the details of these plans. Despite a lack of state funding to implement plans at this time, there’s still an opportunity here to promote early learning and raise awareness of the innovative thinking happening in communities. Local planning teams should also reach out to their state legislators to make sure they are aware of the plans and willing to advocate for increased funding in the state budget and through other potential funding sources. Lastly, there should be a robust state-level conversation taking place. Strategies for Children is committed to promoting the plans on Beacon Hill and within and across our state education agencies. This will be our focus in the fall. While we prepare to refile legislation to expand high-quality preschool, we will be working hard to connect the dots on preschool planning, and help build local and state momentum for increasing young children’s access to high-quality early education and care. Join us in our effort, and thank you for your continued advocacy.
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Here at Strategies for Children, we’ve been doing some summer reading. We’re reading through several of the 
