Advocate for Early Childhood Education on April 20th!

For: Parents, Educators, Businesses, & Advocates!

Location: NC General Assembly – Raleigh, NC

Learn more about this event and access the registration link and advocacy toolkit here.

NCDHHS to Extend Compensation Portion of  Stabilization Grant

Grant support to boost compensation for North Carolina’s early care and learning teachers and staff will continue through December 2023, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services announced today.

 Busting the Myths

The NC Institute for Child Development Professionals has created a great resource to help better understand Early Childhood Educators and their important work and break down some of the typical stereotypes and myths about our field.  Check it out!

Potential Changes for the NC Teacher Licensure Model Process

Learn more about the potential changes being discussed for the state’s teacher licensure process.

The Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession

The Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education Profession was developed over the last three years by a task force of 15 leading national organizations, including the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which facilitated this collective effort. Together, these organizations, which represent members of the early childhood field working across states, settings, and age bands, partnered with a diverse range of stakeholders and more than 11,000 individuals to produce the Unifying Framework.  Learn more about the Power to the Profession initiative here.

Your Voice Counts

The NC Early Education Coalition (Coalition) is the only statewide advocacy coalition dedicated to promoting high quality, accessible and affordable child care in NC.

Through research and advocacy, the Coalition builds partners with early childhood educators, early care and education providers, Smart Start, child care resource and referrals agencies, higher education and others to improve programs and policies and/or increase funding for low income families through child care subsidy, scholarships and wage supplements for early educators, NC Pre-K, Smart Start and more.  Learn how you can become involved and become a member of the Coalition.

5 Bipartisan Bills that support Child Care and Maternal Health  Introduced by the Early Childhood Caucus

• HB 342/SB 292: $300M to extend the compensation portion of the Stabilization Grants to support the child care workforce.
• HB 344/SB 291: Temporarily extends the “hold harmless” policies established during Covid to allow child care programs more flexibility on certain QRIS/star rating requirements.
• HB 343/SB 288: Increases the Child Care Subsidy reimbursement rate and establishes a “statewide floor.”
• HB 322/SB 293: Establishes a pilot for a Tri-Share model, which splits the cost of child care between the state, businesses, and eligible employees.
• HB 321/SB 294: Allows for Medicaid coverage of doula services and group prenatal care.

Announcement:  New Salary Scale Toolkit Project

The NC Institute for Child Development Professionals (the Institute) is pleased to announce the receipt of a grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation to take the work that has been done on an early childhood teachers model salary scale, and disseminate a salary scale toolkit and corresponding training modules. In 2007 the  Institute created model salary scales for master teachers, teachers and assistant teachers working in licensed child care settings.  This initial effort recognized different levels of knowledge, skills and experience in order to create equitable wage scales.  In 2021, the Institute, along with other partners across the state, released a revised Model Salary Scale for Early Childhood Education (ECE) Teachers. This scale built upon the early work of the Institute’s original salary scale. The purpose of this current project is to support NC’s child care administrators and family child care home providers to review and analyze their budgets and hiring practices to ensure a consistent and fair approach to ECE workforce compensation.  In addition to early childhood educators, program administrators and owners, training modules will also support NC’s ECE technical assistance providers and NC’s ECE higher education faculty, both of whom work directly with ECE providers in child care facilities. They will be able to assist providers with creating or revising a salary scale to support fairer approaches to workforce compensation.  Long term goals and outcomes of the project are to help programs sustain compensation gains made from receiving NC stabilization grants, and align with the goals of state compensation workgroups and committees and national movements to improve ECE workforce compensation.

Be on the lookout for more information including training opportunities in 2023.  Use the QR code below or sign up here to stay up to date on information related to this project.