We want to engage more directly and deeply with our audience, and to build a sense of community among those working to serve young children and improve access to high-quality early learning.
Why?
Because the learning that takes place in the earliest years of our lives has the biggest impact on our futures.
Because investing in high-quality early care and education is in an investment in North Carolina’s future.
And because EdNC’s Early Bird readers are the early childhood team’s best teachers.
That’s why EdNC’s early childhood team launched a Facebook group last month — to create a new space for news, research, resources, and conversation around early care and education.
The group is for anyone interested in issues that affect young learners and their environments. We invite you to join if you want to stay up to date on EdNC’s latest early childhood work and share your own experiences, story ideas, and local happenings.
The group is an extension of Early Bird, EdNC’s early childhood newsletter, which you can sign up to receive every two weeks below.
Sign up for Early Bird, our newsletter on all things early childhood.
Click below to learn more about the research on the difference high-quality early care and education makes for children, and the difference that sufficient early childhood investment could make for our state.
This fall, EdNC’s early childhood team is embarking on a series of “Learning Adventures,” trips to learn from states that are leading the way in early childhood policy and investment. We just completed our first trip to study a child care model in Michigan that inspired a three-county pilot in our state budget.
Joining the Early Bird Facebook group is a great way to travel with us, and will help you stay tuned in for lessons on how North Carolina can better serve its young children and families.
As we travel, we’ll also be learning about how other states are handling the looming financial cliff as federal funding to support early childhood education runs out. Without further support, the funding that North Carolina used to support early childhood teacher compensation will reach that cliff at the end of June 2024. Some states will run out before then, and others have replaced federal funding with state funds. We’ll let you know how other states are coping and what that could mean for North Carolina.
Sign up for the Early Bird newsletter and join the Early Bird Facebook group for information to make sense of how policy impacts early childhood experiences, how the funding cliff could shape our state, and solutions near and far.
Thank you for serving our students, our state, and our future.