|
|
This site will look much better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
white
The Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 required Governors to establish, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (typically referred to as the "stimulus package") included funding to support, State Advisory Councils on Early Childhood Education and Care.
The notion of a statewide early childhood advisory body was not new to New York State. In 2007, New York established a Children's Cabinet chaired by the Deputy Director of State Operations. Currently, the Deputy Secretary for Education serves as the vice chair, and Cabinet Members include the commissioners and directors of 20 state agencies and several staff from the Governor’s Office. To assist the Cabinet in its efforts, a Children's Cabinet Advisory Board a small and diverse group of experts from outside New York State government, was also established.
To respond to the federal requirement to establish or designate Early Childhood Education and Care Councils, the Children's Cabinet decided to reorganize its Advisory Board and establish a new body— the Early Childhood Advisory Council— that will include current members of the Advisory Board with early childhood expertise and representatives of early care and education, health care, child welfare, and mental health programs, advocacy organization, parents, foundations, higher education, unions, state agencies and others involved in the provision of comprehensive services to young children and their families. This group will focus on addressing the structural issues that have impeded the development of a comprehensive system of early childhood supports and services.
While the creation of an advisory council is not unique, the opportunity for federal funds to support planning, data collection and other system-building efforts is quite new. Indeed, in mid-May of this year New York learned that our federal allocation for the Early Childhood Advisory Council is $5.42 million over three years. These funds require a 70 percent in-kind and/or cash match.
BUILD’s work and its vision of comprehensive early childhood development systems is at the center of an emerging and vibrant state-based policy movement in the early childhood development field. BUILD is a national initiative created in 2002 by the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative (ECFC), a consortium of private foundations. The ECFC provides networking, information sharing and strategic grant making opportunities to its members. Through its work, the ECFC recognized that current programs, policies and services for young children and their families often operated in isolation, at cross purposes, or without enough resources to meet critical needs. In response, the ECFC created BUILD to invest private funds to stimulate public investments in early learning to foster greater coordination of comprehensive programs, services, and policies for young children.
BUILD helps states construct a coordinated system of programs, policies
and services that responds to the needs of young children and their families. BUILD’s
work with organizations and agencies that set policies, provide services
and advocate for our youngest children to make sure that they are safe,
healthy, eager to learn and ready to succeed in school.
BUILD states are leaders in a national movement to innovate
effective comprehensive services to children and families. Currently,
BUILD works with eight states: Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New
Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and New York. As part of
its work with the states BUILD offers a combination of services including
evaluation coordinated by the Child and Family Policy Center, technical
assistance liaisons and professional development opportunities.
The goal of New York’s Early Childhood Advisory Council is to develop a comprehensive system of supports and services for young children and their families. The framework for this work can be found in three planning documents: