Moving Forward on Appropriations
Senators and Representatives are back in your communities for their October recess, providing you with another great opportunity to reach out about how CCDBG and Head Start funding impacts children, families, and providers. Don’t back off now: your elected officials need to keep hearing about how important it is for them to #FundChildCare as they move towards final FY 2020 appropriations bills! So what can you do?
Utilize this toolkit that many national partners put together to access…
- talking points
- state-specific data
- sample social media posts and shareable graphics
- videos (such as this one!)
- relevant Twitter handles
- template invitation letters for member visits
- template coalition letters
- sample action alerts and scripts
- PLUS: op-eds from around the country
…and take action today!
Need more inspiration? Federal spending on children has dropped to an all-time low of 7.2% of the federal budget, according to this report from First Focus on Children. Tell your elected officials we can and must do better!
Moving Forward on Electoral Advocacy
Way to celebrate last week’s National Voter Registration Day! From Arizona, California, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and more, YOU came together with actions in more than 20 states to help more than 200 individuals take their first step to register at americaforearlyed.org/register.
Moving Forward on Equity
As part of the release of NAEYC’s new Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education position statement, NAEYC has launched Equity in Action, an occasional blog series exploring the many ways we can bring this statement to life in practice and policy. Thanks to Hannah Matthews, Deputy Executive Director for Policy at CLASP, for kicking off the series with a guest post sharing tools and resources to help early childhood educators support immigrant families with young children.
PLUS, check out Child Trend’s new guide to incorporating a racial and ethnic equity perspective throughout the research process.
Moving Forward on Preschool Development Grants
Your states are on it already, so make sure you’re getting involved as stakeholders in the new B-5 Preschool Development Grant opportunities! Check out the PDG B-5 Initial Grant information here and the renewal grant information here. Everything is due by November 5!
Moving Forward on Preschool Development Grants
The Department of Agriculture recently proposed a rule that would take SNAP/food stamps away from 3 million people and jeopardize more than 500,000 children’s access to free school meals. Last week, NAEYC submitted these comments in opposition to this proposed rule, joining tens of thousands of organizations and individuals who did the same.
NAEYC also endorsed the Access to Healthy Food for Young Children Act of 2019, introduced on September 18 by Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), aimed at strengthening the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). To learn more, check out Senator Casey’s press release; FRAC’s fact sheet; and use these sample newsletter blurbs with calls to action to help spread the word.
Moving Forward to End Child Poverty
Increasing equity is directly tied to decreasing poverty and the first step towards ending child poverty in the United States is to establish a national child poverty target, which would provide a tool to hold our government accountable. If you are a national or state organization, join the Child Poverty Action Group and sign-on to our statement supporting a national child poverty target.
PLUS, if you’d like to know and do more, check out this webinar recording on Child Poverty Census Data and the Current Policy Landscape, which dives into the new numbers on child poverty from the Census Bureau and offers recommendations for action.
