Back in May, a delegation of Strong Start coalition members, along with staff from the Santa Clara County Office of Education and Board Trustees, headed to Sacramento for our annual advocacy day. From the raft of early care and education (ECE) legislation that had been proposed, we highlighted five bills to discuss with lawmakers. With […]
Governor Newsom has signed a bill placing a $15 billion bond for schools’ construction and renovation, that includes funding for district operated preschool facilities, on the March 3, 2020 statewide ballot. The “Public Preschool, K-12, and College Health and Safety Bond Act of 2020” will require a two-thirds majority vote to pass. The measure includes […]
AB 776 (Kalra) has passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously as it continues through the legislative process. The bill, co-sponsored by the Santa Clara County Office of Education and Children Now, was included in Strong Start’s advocacy day agenda in Sacramento in May. It requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to develop a process […]
Governor Gavin Newsom’s first budget has passed the legislature, and includes many – but not all – of the pieces of the May Budget Revise proposal. The record $215 billion budget expands the state’s Medicaid program – MediCal – to cover undocumented young adults, makes supplemental payments into the state’s public employee pension systems, spends […]
One of the first blog posts we wrote was on last year’s Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count data book. The 2019 version has just been released (https://www.aecf.org/resources/2019-kids-count-data-book/) and, just like last year, it paints a mixed picture for California’s children. The state has made essentially no progress – moving from 36th to 35th overall […]
Today marks the release of the National Institute for Early Education Research’s (NIEER) 16th annual State of Preschool report. The NIEER State of Preschool 2018 yearbook is the only national report on state-funded preschool programs, tracking enrollment, spending, and policies to support quality since 2002. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the state preschool […]
The annual County Health Rankings – a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – were published last week, along with a report emphasizing the importance of affordable housing on overall health. As is typical for these kinds of reports, Santa Clara County looks great – ranked third in California behind Marin and San Mateo […]
Last week, the California Assembly Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on Early Childhood Education published its draft recommendations after a two year process of hearings and feedback. (Written comments on the draft will be accepted until March 20th.) The draft report makes a lengthy list of recommendations in nine key areas: Governance and Administration, Family Engagement, Access […]
You may have noticed the State of Babies Yearbook: 2019 show up in your social media feeds in the last week or so. The yearbook, an effort of Zero to Three and Child Trends, is an example of a growing focus in the ECE policy field on issues affecting children younger than preschool age. (Then […]
In 2016, the Education Commission of the States released “K-3 Policymakers’ Guide to Action: Making the early years count” discussing the importance of improving quality in the early elementary grades. The report highlighted twenty five policy steps in six key areas including “quality full-day kindergarten and mandatory attendance-age requirements”. The suggested policy steps in this […]