It takes families and communities to raise a child. In some cases, that community looks more like a broad coalition of parents, educators, employers, advocates and lawmakers willing to go the distance for young children and their families. Or at least that is the key lesson advocates in Maine learned amid a decades-long effort to bolster the early care and education system in the face of a challenging early childhood landscape.
In 2016, the Maine Early Childhood Funders Group and early childhood advocates began having conversations about how to have a broader, positive and meaningful impact on families’ lives. Their solution: get everyone organized and involved.
From these conversations, the Right from the Start Coalition was born. The Right from the Start Coalition is a diverse, bipartisan group of organizations working to ensure that “all Maine children have equal opportunity for healthy development” by “providing early care and education that is accessible and of high quality, from birth to eight, and no matter where families live in our state.”
Today, Coalition members include the Maine Children’s Alliance and early childhood advocacy organizations such as Maine’s Head Start Directors, Maine’s NAEYC chapter, education organizations such as Educate Maine, Maine’s Parent Ambassadors, as well as local United Ways, health care organizations, businesses, labor unions, local chambers of commerce, and the Maine People’s Alliance.
A central component of the Coalition’s work involves forging relationships with lawmakers in both legislative chambers and across party-lines. This has been critical to Right from the Start’s success in a state with a part-time legislature and term limits. In the Coalition’s early days this meant reaching out and educating the large field of 2018 gubernatorial candidates. Today, it means working with bipartisan, legislative champions of early childhood, including the co-chairs of the legislature’s Children’s Caucus.
Another core part of the Coalition’s work is maintaining its diverse membership while also maintaining its focus and speaking with one voice.
“One of the keys to having a successful coalition is having a wonderful facilitator who can help the group think through priorities,” says Rita Furlow, the senior policy analyst at the Maine Children’s Alliance. “And we focus on four cornerstones: family supports; data and finance; the early childhood workforce; and early care and education programs.”
The consensus, in other words, was that if families succeed, Maine succeeds.
Among the Coalition’s challenges has been dealing with limitations in public funding, competing interests and what there is the political will to achieve. This has forced the Coalition to figure out which priorities to stick with and which priorities to set aside and address in the future. Prioritizing and focusing on immediate and achievable needs has been crucial to the Coalition’s success.
Since its formation, the Right from the Start Coalition has secured important victories for children and families, including a historic investment in early care and education programs. The Coalition helped write and pass LD 1726, An Act to Build Maine’s Economy by Supporting Child Care for Working Families, submitting 170 pieces of supporter testimony. Key provisions of the legislation included raising wages of child care workers and allowing more families to access child care assistance. Thanks to sustained support from the Right from the Start Coalition and key legislators, including bill sponsor Senate President Troy Jackson, most of the bill’s proposals were incorporated into the state budget.
“We were proud to stand with others from around the state in support of LD 1726 because we knew that our economic and workforce development goals in Maine could not be achieved without access to high-quality and affordable childcare options for working parents,” Eamonn Dundon said in his testimony. Dundon is the Director of Advocacy of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, a coalition member.
The advocacy paid off and Maine is moving forward with its investment plans. This includes setting up a Child Care Affordability Program to help families pay for care and significant investments in the early care workforce.
Securing transformational policy wins for Maine children and family is only half the battle. The Right from the Start Coalition has also had to be vigilant to protect policy achievements and ensure implementation.
Earlier this year, the proposed biennial budget included significant cuts to salary stipends, child care subsidies for working families and Head Start. In response, the Coalition immediately sprang into action.
Hundreds of parents, providers and members of the Coalition showed up to the State House to protect these initiatives. Action alerts went out encouraging Maine people to contact their lawmakers, urging state senators and representatives to reject the proposed cuts. Advocates wrote letters-to-the-editor, talked to reporters and posed on social media. Perhaps most importantly, the Coalition worked with legislative partners to highlight the importance of investing in early care and education.
As a result, a bipartisan majority of lawmakers on the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee voted to reject cuts to early care and education in their recommendation to the budget committee. Now, Maine is on track to pass a budget that preserves investments in children and families. Should that change, the Right from the Start Coalition is ready to act.
Furlow of the Maine Children’s Alliance says the next steps are crucial. Maine has hired the Center for Early Learning and Funding Equity to determine the true cost of child care.
“Members of the coalition, lawmakers, and the administration need to know the true cost of care if we are going to find the revenue to pay for it and to improve the system,” Furlow says. “This is a critical element for the coalition’s long-term advocacy goal of improving wages to create an early childhood system that will sustain educators and be supportive of children and families.”
Maine is also developing a plan to create a child care system by 2030 that will limit costs to no more than 7% of a family’s income, for families earning up to 250% of the median family income.
Or as Senate President Troy Jackson said last year at the White House Summit on Child Care, “…make no mistake, our work is just getting started.”
