Letter from the Leadership - June 2025

June 3, 2025

Dear Members,  
  
Every day, we have the immense honor of representing you, our extraordinary early learning and care community, who stand as the economic backbone of California, shaping the brightest future for our children and families.  
 
Over the past five years, this truth has transcended words. It has been powerfully demonstrated in plain sight for all to see that early learning and care programs are a driving force, uplifting and transforming our communities. During the pandemic, we stood strong, sustaining the economy, adapting to meet evolving needs, and bridging learning and behavioral challenges for our youngest learners. We have supported children, families, and communities in their most vulnerable moments, offering unwavering stability, often with little recognition for our workforce, and certainly with little investment from state and federal leaders.

We must leverage a movement before us, Rate Reform and the Alternative Methodology, to create real change. Lawmakers must understand how this system directly impacts our long-term success, and how we, as a field, will not accept continued underinvestment from the Governor’s administration. To succeed, we need a united voice, a mixed-delivery system that stands together and speaks up. Your voice is powerful because you live this work every day, supporting children and families across California.

Center-based programs, who do not have a seat at the bargaining table, must demand greater transparency and accountability from those responsible for implementing the Alternative Methodology. This methodology is our opportunity to finally operate based on the true cost of care, to end the cycle of unfunded mandates, and to ensure our workforce is paid the living wage they deserve. We appreciate the continued work of Child Care Providers United (CCPU), our partners fighting for cost of care models.
   
Despite our repeated requests for access to the cost of care grids, working documents, data, and rationale, despite asking for a seat at the table to ensure rate reform reflects your voice, your needs, and your costs, our calls have been ignored or rejected. Our organization, alongside dozens of hours contributed by dedicated volunteer focus groups, has developed detailed documents outlining the factors that must shape the true cost of care. And still, these critical insights have been almost entirely excluded from the state’s early proposals. 

At this moment, rate reform is at risk of becoming yet another check-box exercise, a way for the state to claim they engaged with the field while continuing to underfund our programs and workforce based on flawed assumptions and incomplete data.

We need your voice today. Lawmakers and state leaders must understand just how vital it is for the success of rate reform to truly reflect your programs, your realities, and your needs.

Some things you can do today:

• Please complete this survey today, we will use your words to advocate for your children, families, workforce and community: SURVEY

Call your state lawmakers HERE, tell them what will happen if the hold harmless ends, and no alternative methodology for increasing funding is in place. Tell them what this will mean for your staff, your classrooms, your programs, your children and families.

Thank you for the work you do every day,  

Adam North
Director of Professional Development and Innovations