Dear Essential Provider,
As you well know, we are in a pivotal moment for child care and early learning. With conversations about Universal Preschool and Child Care taking off across the country, there is a lot of energy (and admittedly, anxiety) from providers. We want to ensure this energy is directed in a meaningful way so that strategies are aligned, messaging is coordinated, and our overall message on the need for mixed delivery is heard by policymakers.
For this reason, we have teamed up with the Early Care and Education Consortium (ECEC) on a new initiative, Champions for Mixed Delivery. This will be a series of biweekly check-in calls to share and receive updates about key proposals, coordinate messaging and talking points, and share resources for advocacy. Most importantly, these meetings will be open to all interested provider groups, including state and local child care associations.
Please sign up to get started. The bi-weekly meetings will begin on Wednesday, June 16th. We encourage you to join in this effort to ensure that we build a united voice across the child care industry. We believe that advocating to become part of a mixed delivery system can be more successful than trying to shut it down. There are states that have been UPK for several years. No doubt they will be used as examples that it can be done. The three I am most familiar with are Georgia, Oklahoma, and Florida. They all have a mixed delivery system but none that we would want to fully endorse. There are bits and pieces that we could take from each one of them to build a better system that includes the current industry owners and operators. PLEASE plan to join this conversation and feel free to share this email and invite with anyone in your network who may be interested. The more voices we have the better.
Thank you and let us know if you have any questions.
Cindy Lehnhoff, Director of the National Child Care Association (NCCA)