The Alliance’s Child Care NEXT strategy was designed as a multi-year investment in long-term state campaigns, coalition building, and base building efforts to transform child care systems. In Virginia, Child Care NEXT supports the work of the Virginia Promise Partnership (VPP) with both capacity-building multi-year funding and vital responsive support and connections to peer coalitions in other states. Virginia Promise Partnership is led by a team that consists of traditional policy advocacy organizations, grassroots organizing groups, and parents and educators who are most impacted by early care and education (ECE) systems.
And together, they have turned the Child Care NEXT principles and support into a string of wins for children, including, in the 2024 session, an historic commitment by the governor and legislature that means $1.1 billion will be available for child care services for low to moderate income families over the coming biennium (FY25-26).
Early Wins for a Strong Coalition
During the first years of the pandemic (and of Child Care NEXT), VPP made significant progress in cultivating bipartisan political support for their ultimate goal: ensuring all Virginia families have access to affordable, high-quality child care by 2030. In 2021, they began developing a policy roadmap to reach the bold goal—engaging providers, parents, and member organizations in meaningful partnership. So when the November 2021 elections resulted in a shift to Republican leadership in both the House of Delegates and the governor’s office, they were prepared with a broad and diverse coalition, including parents and providers, who cultivated support for ECE from new elected officials. That unity paid off with expanded bipartisan support and helped position child care as an issue that the new governor could (and did) support.
Thanks in part to the strength and influence of VPP advocates, led by the voices and experiences of parents and ECE providers, rather than pivoting away from early care and education because it was a priority of the previous Democratic administration, the new Republican governor instead championed additional early education investments that respond to parent choice and preference in the state budget. In fact, the governor publicly stated his belief that the proposed budget from the legislature in 2022 didn’t have enough investments in ECE.
With support from the new governor, the legislature appropriated more than $130 million for ECE for FY23 and FY24, including $73 million to expand eligibility for child care subsidies and increase payments based on cost of quality methodology, $46 million to expand the Virginia Preschool Initiative, and $7 million to expand the mixed delivery preschool program.
In 2024, a New Level of Cooperation—And Success
In the next few years, VPP worked to further align with the core principles of the CC NEXT initiative and lessons learned from fellow CC NEXT states, especially around building greater collective impact by sharing power and leadership in the coalition. VPP’s leadership structure shifted from one that was centralized in a coalition manager to one of shared power among coalition members and better integration of the Parent and Provider Advisories. This opportunity to examine how leadership and power were distributed within the 30-member coalition resulted in a more engaged, effective, and collaborative effort.
In 2023, VPP convened an in-person planning meeting to proactively and transparently establish shared leadership agreements to ensure that all coalition members, including organizers, parent leaders, and early childhood educators, are engaged in strategy, policy priorities, budgeting, and other crucial elements of the coalition’s work. In the past year, grassroots organizing groups like Virginia Organizing, Save the Children Action Network, and the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy have taken on increasingly significant leadership roles, through subcommittees related to grassroots organizing, parent leadership, provider leadership, , and more. Shared power has strengthened the coalition by empowering members to lean into their areas of expertise in the interest of the common good.
VPP also attributes their strengthened shared leadership to learning from their peers in the Child Care NEXT cohort through technical assistance opportunities and in-person convenings. Modeling an approach taken by Geaux Far Louisiana, VPP’s Parent Advisory is pairing new advocates with more experienced members who can support them before and after advisory and coalition meetings, creating confidential spaces for parents to talk through questions and challenges, and establishing a Group Me chat group to keep parents connected outside of meetings. Learning from their counterparts in Colorado, VPP is creating more equitable, accessible meetings and events by pursuing language justice and engaging a Spanish-language interpreter.
The result? Virginia Promise Partnership has transformed into a diverse, durable, state-wide constituency unifying advocacy efforts for child care that centers the experiences and leadership of those most impacted and drives progress regardless of party or politics.
And that constituency is keeping child care and early education front and center like never before.
During the 2023 legislative session, VPP advocacy helped champion the establishment of the new Commission on Early Childhood Care and Education to focus on the financing of Virginia’s ECE system. The Commission has been instrumental in helping policy makers understand the policies and investments necessary to strengthen Virginia’s early childhood care and education system and ensure access to affordable,, high-quality child care. A former chair of VPP’s Parent Advisory Committee now serves on the Commission.
For the FY23-FY24 biennium, VPP advocacy helped secure the $130million win for child care and early education.
And in the most recent session, a record.
VPP advocacy helped secure more than $366M in FY25 and $461M in FY26 in state general fund support for early childhood care and education services. Combined with the ongoing baseline federal funding, Virginia has committed an historic $1.1 billion toward child care services for low to moderate income families over the coming biennium.
Altogether, this funding will sustain the increased number of families/children the state was able to serve largely with federal COVID relief funding, ensuring every low- to moderate-income working family that currently receives public support continues to have access to early childhood and afterschool programs.
Virginia Promise Partnership is providing powerful evidence that the Child Care NEXT promise that diverse, authentic, power-sharing coalitions will emerge into bold and effective constituencies that can work—and win—no matter the political environment.
