Keeping up on Policy
Early childhood education is making some great gains and has even greater potential for funding and developing to enhance public access in 2014. Recently, I received an email from NAEYC Children’s Champions in mid-January with the title: A Big Funding Win for Early Childhood – But We Need to Get it Passed by January 18 !. According to NAEYC, the United States Congress needed to pass appropriation bills for the 2014 fiscal year, and with this came an omnibus ( proposed law covering diverse or unrelated topics from multiple agencies) bill. Within this bi-partisan bill was $1.5 billion increase for early childhood education, post-sequestration levels, investing in access and quality. Some of the highlights from the bill, from the NAEYC website , includes: $1.025 billion increase for Head Start – this includes $400 million for Head Start and another $100 million for COLA, $25 million for re-designation activities, and $500 million for the expansion of Early Head Start and ...