The Agenda Priorities

The Early Childhood Agenda began with conversations that led us to focus on action areas of early childhood. Exploring these areas led to the creation of the Early Childhood Agenda, a list of 10 priorities for building a stronger early childhood system over the next two years.

  • Financially Secure Families
  • High-Quality Experiences
  • Thriving Early Childhood Workforce
  • Robust System Infrastructure and Local Partnerships
  • Healthy Beginnings
Download The Agenda Priorities (PDF)
1. Strengthen early education and care
DETAILS
Improve family affordability, establish a career pathway for the workforce, and modernize the financing mechanism to address the broken business model.
House Bill | Senate Bill

Financially Secure Families Thriving Early Childhood Workforce

LEAD ADVOCATES: Common Start Coalition

JOIN this established coalition!

2. Advance workforce compensation
DETAILS
Explore options and organize around a specific course of action to ensure early childhood professionals have access to competitive wages and benefits.

Thriving Early Childhood Workforce

WORKGROUP FACILITATOR: Strategies for Children | Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at University of California—Berkeley (CSCCE)

JOIN our emerging workgroup!

3a. Support tax credit fairness
DETAILS
Increase financial resources for working families and make filing taxes easier by streamlining two existing credits.

Financially Secure Families

Senate Bill (combined) | Senate Bill (EITC) | House Bill (EITC) | Senate Bill (CFTC) | House Bill (CFTC)

LEAD ADVOCATE: Healthy Families Tax Credits Coalition

JOIN our established coalition!

3b. Establish an adequate safety net by raising cash assistance grants
DETAILS
Lift kids out of deep poverty by raising cash assistance grants.

Financially Secure Families

Senate Bill | House Bill

LEAD ADVOCATE: Lift Our Kids Coalition

JOIN our established coalition!

4. Support developmental monitoring, screening, referrals and delivery of services
DETAILS
Plan to increase system capacity to support greater dissemination of publicly available tools related to developmental monitoring, universal screening, evaluations, referrals, transitions and timely delivery of services.

High-Quality Experiences Healthy Beginnings

WORKGROUP FACILITATORS: United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley and Massachusetts Act Early

JOIN our emerging workgroup!

5. Build on quality improvement infrastructure for programs and services
DETAILS
Create a roadmap that articulates the development of comprehensive quality improvement infrastructure—investigate the feasibility of local quality hubs, expansion of Early Childhood Support Organizations (ECSOs), shared services, cross-sector and coordinated workforce preparation system, and evaluation of quality measurement tools and systems. Ensure infrastructure supports adults and young adults across a variety of settings and sectors. Articulate standards of high-quality programming and plan to incentivize participation in quality improvement through state funding streams.

Thriving Early Childhood Workforce

WORKGROUP FACILITATOR: Neighborhood Villages

JOIN our emerging workgroup!

6. Local infrastructure and partnerships
DETAILS
Build on landscape analysis of local efforts and consider best practices while developing a comprehensive plan to create local infrastructure for early childhood.

System Infrastructure and Local Partnerships Thriving Early Childhood Workforce

WORKGROUP FACILITATOR: Edward Street

JOIN our emerging workgroup!

7a. Improve state governance: Create a children’s cabinet
DETAILS
Create a children’s cabinet within the Executive Office of the Governor to promote interdepartmental collaboration and program implementation so that services are planned, managed, and delivered in a holistic and integrated manner. Icon(s): Financially Secure Families and System Infrastructure and Local Partnerships.

Financially Secure Families System Infrastructure and Local Partnerships

Senate Bill | House Bill

LEAD ADVOCATE: Child and Adolescent Health Initiative

Join this established alliance by contacting Greg Hagan at ghagan@challiance.org!

7b. Improve state governance: Establish a common application for public benefits
DETAILS
Establish a common application for public benefits.

Financially Secure Families System Infrastructure and Local Partnerships

LEAD ADVOCATE: Common Application Coalition

Chapter 174 passed! This recommendation is going to be a reality for children and families. Stay tuned for implementation updates.

8. Develop public education campaign
DETAILS
Develop a comprehensive public education campaign to establish community-wide recognition of the importance of high-quality experiences for young children’s optimal growth and development in early childhood.

High-Quality Experiences

WORKGROUP FACILITATOR: Boston Area Reggio Inspired Network (BARIN)

JOIN our emerging workgroup.

9. Strengthen the links between health and early childhood systems
DETAILS
Expanding access to and developing a vision for specific roles that work at the intersection of these two sectors.

Healthy Beginnings

WORKGROUP FACILITATORS: Reach Out and Read | Child Health Equity Center

JOIN our emerging workgroup!

10a . Universal school meals.
DETAILS
Ensure universal school meals.

Healthy Beginnings

Senate Bill | House Bill

LEAD ADVOCATE: Feed Kids Coalition

School Meals for All included in FY24 state budget language! This recommendation is going to be a reality for children and families. Stay tuned for implementation updates.

10b. Join our new workgroup focused on early childhood hunger
DETAILS
Identify a comprehensive solution to address early childhood hunger starting at birth considering a variety of mechanisms.

Healthy Beginnings

WORKGROUP FACILITATOR: Project Bread

JOIN our emerging workgroup!