Policy Platform

The Kids Are Priority One policy platform grew out of a strategic planning process, initiated by the Vermont Community Foundation in 2000, aimed at developing a strategic plan to move us closer to our long-term goal of a more cohesive, adequately funded, unified early care and education system. Since that time, Kids Are Priority One has added several planks to that original plan (indicated by an asterisk). The principal components of a sound early care and education system are in bold, followed by Kids Are Priority initiatives related to those components.

High Quality Across the Board

• Improve quality by continuing to offer annual bonuses for high-quality providers & programs
• Reduce turnover by providing early childhood educators with access to affordable health insurance

• Raise child care subsidy rates over time to reflect the true cost of providing high-quality child care services

• Expand the supply of infant care by enacting paid parental leave to allow parents to stay home with infants or newly adopted children
• Increase support for young children with special needs and the adults working with them, such as funding for one-on-one paraprofessionals to assist young children in early childhood programs*

• Participate in efforts to create a funding mechanism that supplements parents' fees by leveraging increased business and government funding to help stabilize and strengthen our early care and education system*

• Support efforts to provide enhanced services, such as consumer education and recruitment and retention of early childhood educators*
• Bolster efforts at the state and local level to blend funding streams*
• Promote the development of a program to assist with financing capital improvements of child care facilities*

• Support efforts to expand annual data collection, reporting and analysis related to early childhood programs*

For more information about the Kids Are Priority One policy platform, contact Sheila Reed at the Voices for Vermont's Children (tel. 802-229-6377 or sreed@vermontvoices.org).