Dear NAEYC Members,

In a sweeping bipartisan negotiation, Congress passed, and the President signed, a major budget deal that will provide an additional $5.8 billion to the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) over two years—an increase of $2.9 billion per year! This is the largest increase in federal child care funding in history, and, with up to 230,000 children benefiting, an exciting step towards our shared goals of significant, sustained public investments in high-quality early childhood education.

There are children who will be in higher quality settings, parents who will have access to child care assistance that will allow them to go to work, programs that will receive higher reimbursement rates, and early childhood educators who will have the opportunity for wage increases.

It happened because of you!

You, who called, sent letters, joined sign-ons, visited offices, sent emails, worked with partners, and tweeted, asking your Senators and Representatives to #DoubleCCDBG. And we are particularly grateful to NAEYC affiliates throughout the country who mobilized quickly and worked in partnership with us and other advocates in their states to get this historic deal over the finish line.

Your work worked, and not just on child care! The budget deal also:

• Eliminated the caps that made increased funding for our priorities so challenging
• Extended funding for CHIP for 10 years (instead of the previously agreed-upon six years)
• Reauthorized the the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program for five years
• Provided an additional $4 billion for higher education; $6 billion for opioid and mental health treatment; $7 billion for community health centers; $20 billion for infrastructure; and $80 billion in disaster relief

For us, and for children, families, and educators around the country, these are critically important steps towards the fulfillment of a vision in which all of our children birth through age 8 have equitable access to high-quality, developmentally-appropriate early learning, as envisioned in our Strategic Direction and brought forth in the legislation introducing the Child Care for Working Families Act.

Even as we celebrate, however, we see and stand with many of you who fought and continue to fight for the DREAMers; NAEYC’s own support for them is rooted in our vision, values, and position statements, and we continue to stand with them and all of our immigrant families, children, and educators.

Because the deal is done—but we are not!

There will be more need for your voices ahead. We look forward to welcoming hundreds of you to the 2018 Public Policy Forum. We encourage all of you to use our advocacy resources to connect with and thank your legislators who worked to make this happen, now and during the week of February 18, when your Congressional delegations will be home.

For more information and to stay connected, make sure you are signed up to receive our weekly America for Early Ed emails, filled with information, tools, and resources to help you be the best advocate you can be for kids, families, and educators.

We thank you for talking to your Congressional delegations—and we thank them for listening. Many of them made investments in high-quality child care a priority—and that means that our children, families, and communities were made a priority today as well.

Onward.