Moving Forward! Early Childhood Updates

As we move into the last quarter of the year, exciting things are happening in our early childhood community!  Read on to find out more and join our movement see these advances add up to lasting change in our Make a Bigger Difference Campaign!

Preschool for All Task Force:

Under the leadership of Commissioner Vega Pederson (and Vice Chair, our own Mark Holloway), the Preschool for All Task Force launched last month! The result of this nine-month effort will be a plan for implementing universal preschool in Multnomah County. The Task Force is comprised of high-level community leaders from the business sector, early childhood, communities of color, and workforce. SVP Community Partners (Albina Head Start Parent Representative, Black Parent Initiative, Latino Network, Immigrant & Refugee Community Organization, KairosPDX, and NAYA) are all at the table.

Latest News:

Two of the four Work Groups that will provide specific recommendations on aspects of universal pre-k implementation also kicked off in September. SVP Partners are bringing their expertise to these conversation as work group participants. The Program & Policy Work Group is focusing on program design and examining data with community needs. In their last session, they discussed family income and child age, which will set the foundation for program eligibility. The Workforce Work Group aligned around the cost-quality-qualifications trilema in their first meeting and will be providing recommendations for how to tackle this issue. The Infrastructure and Financing Strategy & Administration work groups will launch soon.

Culturally Specific Early Learning Advocacy Collaboration:

Five SVP Community Partners, convened originally by Latino Network through an SVP grant, have formed a collaborative to train and organize parents/families of color on public advocacy for early childhood policy, build their organization’s advocacy capacity, and change some public policies that are detrimental to serving their children and families. This Collaborative is especially focused on advancing an Equity Fund in the upcoming legislative session.

Latest News:

The Collaborative have gotten their Equity Fund on the radar with all the key state leaders and have settled on an request of $20 million for equitable funding of early learning programs tailored for children of color. They are also working on getting this request into the governor’s budget, which would be a key win. SVP has been raising money for the collaborative to achieve these goals and have been invited by area foundations to submit requests that total $450k. Several of the Collaborative’s organizations have begun training parents to be advocates as well.

Note: As we move closer to the legislative session, there will be opportunities for SVP Partners to engage in town halls and other advocacy tables, and raise their voices for political investment in early childhood. These will be shared as soon as we have the information.

CCO 2.0:

Beginning in 2020, Coordinated Care Organizations will begin new contracts and focus, with the goal of building on their learned experiences and becoming more effective in serving the community. As the health sector maps out what this entails, they wanted to bring in early childhood advocates and streamline how the sectors can better work together and achieve more upstream health goals.

Latest News: SVP was asked to participate in this conversation from both the early learning and the funder perspective. With support from other funders, we sent a letter of support to Oregon’s Health Policy Board, advocating for improvements to early health and learning outcomes for young children.