Advocacy in Action

Kidango is an early learning nonprofit committed to setting every child on a path to thrive in kindergarten and in life. As the largest child care provider in the San Francisco Bay Area, we provide children with safe, healthy and nurturing environments and relationships, fostering the social, emotional, and academic skills they need to learn, grow and realize their potential. From our position at the nexus of practice, policy and research, we advocate for evidence-based early learning and care policies that help close the opportunity and readiness gaps for our youngest learners.

Kidango’s advocacy, policy, and research team is committed to designing and moving forward policy solutions that uplift the voices and perspectives of families and child care professionals. Kidango’s advocacy process is built to involve families and child care professionals at each step of the way. Our budget and policy priorities this year were shaped by focus groups and insights directly from Kidango classrooms and staff, from departments ranging from enrollment to nutrition.

Our state has made huge commitments and policy changes to move towards an Early Care and Education (ECE) field that is professionally and financially supported to create environments where all children can thrive. Our priorities this year are grounded in our strongly held conviction that we must continue this momentum if we are to achieve the transformative system changes California has laid out in the Master Plan for Early Learning and Care. This can be seen in the issues we will advocate for on a state level, as well as our focus on implementing new policies and practices in the most beneficial ways possible for children.

2025 Budget and Policy Priorities

We believe in reimagining classrooms and services that are focused on the whole child, whole family, and whole community.  To do so, we must:

• Design our classrooms for all children by celebrating and supporting the full range of identities and backgrounds of California’s children.
• Empower our families and listen to what they need, want, and believe.
• Recognize and respect the knowledge, value, and capability of our ECE teachers.
• Support continued professional development of ECE teachers through increased compensation, professional learning, and educational pathways.

Accordingly, our Budget and Policy Priorities for 2025 are as follows:

Promote and Expand Our  Whole Child-Whole Family Model for ECE

• Conduct research and pursue legislation that advances a whole child- whole family model of comprehensive wraparound services for infants and toddlers.

• Advocate for the funding to be released for the remainder of the 200,000 childcare spaces promised in the 2021-22 State Budget Act.

Advance Equitable and Anti-Racist Policies to Preserve, Empower, and Build Up the ECE Workforce

• Follow through on the promise of the alternative rate methodology, and ensure the new system reflects all elements and true costs of a whole child-whole family ECE program.
• Ensure that updates to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing Child Development Permit Matrix have equitable and varied pathways for teachers to enter and advance within the ECE field.
• Partner on policy and advocacy efforts to increase ECE teacher compensation to keep pace with any mandated increases in qualifications or specializations.
• Advance legislation gives new providers or providers undergoing conversions two years to meet teacher qualification requirements and exempts providers from being held to any new teacher permit requirements until there is a mechanism in place to pay teachers more for higher degrees.

Identify  Zero-Cost Regulatory Changes to Ease Administrative Burdens for ECE Programs

• Increase the Equipment Purchase Approval Request (EPAR) threshold limit and improve the process itself so that programs can quickly purchase the items and services needed to serve our children.
• Continue to create ease and incentives for ECE programs to expand access to unserved children and families across the state.