Idea in Brief
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The lack of an easily understandable local government entity, like school districts or city/county government, holds child care back from becoming a public good and hinders efforts to create an effective system.
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Creating a new type of local infrastructure – early childhood districts – can unlock an entirely new way of delivering and financing child care, as well as other early childhood services. All child care programs within the district boundaries would have the option to join, and the district would combine existing assets with new offerings to create a proactive system designed to help both parents and programs, all while learning from the inequities that plague K-12 public education
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There are concrete steps advocates and policymakers can take now to begin the process of developing enabling conditions and piloting early childhood districts in their states and communities.
In a new white paper, policy expert Elliot Haspel proposes “early childhood districts” which he envisions as the counterpart to public school districts for children five and under, but adapted to the early childhood context, and learning from the inequities found in the K-12 system. This construct may offer a key for unlocking many of the tricky doors blocking our progress towards an effective early childhood system.
This paper is presented first as a discussion draft. Input from experts and the general public may be submitted directly to Elliot Haspel.