Advocacy & Policy
In 2019, the Ready for K Alliance conducted workshops with community stakeholders to identify institutional, local, state, and federal policy priorities for the Alliance. These priorities serve as a guide for the Ready for K Alliance’s advocacy work and provide the foundation upon which specific policies are being developed and supported.
Healthy Development:
- Ensure adequate and equitable prenatal care
- Ensure access to preventative and comprehensive health care for families
- Increase the use of developmental screenings and referrals
- Increase access and funding for parenting education and home visiting programs
- Improve coordination of services between community-based providers
- Ensure access to safe, affordable, housing and healthy environments
- Ensure access to healthy food and nutritional supports
Access & Quality:
- Ensure programs are culturally and linguistically appropriate
- Recognize early care educators as professionals by increasing training requirements and compensation
- Increase Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) reimbursement rates
- Expand Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) eligibility
- Address facility and funding needs in order to increase the number of full day/full year child care slots
- Connect funding to 5 Star quality rating system
- Create tax incentives, including credits, for businesses to support child care centers
- Allow high-quality private early care and education programs to access state pre-K funds
- Increase collaboration between child care and publicly funded pre-K programs and kindergarten
- Align high quality pre-K curriculum across public and private settings
- Increase public funding for pre-K programs
- Ensure and improve developmental appropriateness of both pre-K programs and kindergarten
Family & Caregiver Engagement:
- Increase adult education attainment
- Improve public transportation systems
- Support family-friendly policies, including paid family leave and income stability
- Create incentives for family engagement
Ready for K Alliance members can make a request for the Alliance to take a position on specific legislation aligned with this collective policy agenda at any time. To ask the Alliance to engage on an issue, please complete this form: