Greetings,

We welcome your engagement in efforts to harness and align our collective assets to advance local, regional, and state action in service of a re-imagined early childhood care and education system. 

With this newsletter we aim to educate and inform our community - from Greater Green Bay to Oshkosh - about the need for systems change and collectively engage in advocating for action.
Federal support for child care providers.  Members of this Alliance supported a plan from Governor Evers and the Department of Children and Families to utilize $148 million in federal child care funds from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. This plan has been approved by the Legislature. As a result, there will be two more rounds of the proven, effective Child Care Counts: Emergency Payment Program that has helped child care providers to stay open, keep staff employed, and safely serve children throughout the pandemic. For more information, see here.
State budget advocacy.  As vital as one-time, emergency federal funds have been to helping child care providers to stay open and weather COVID-19 pressures, they cannot take the place of sustained state investment in child care. State investment is necessary to take the child care sector from surviving to thriving. 

Now’s the time to raise your voice to ensure that state legislators invest in child care in the 2021-23 state budget. To make your voice heard:

  1. Tell your story to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, which you can do by submitting comments via an online form here or sending an email directly to Budget.Comments@legis.wisconsin.gov
  2. Let the state legislators who represent you know that you shared your story with the Joint Finance Committee. You can find who represents you, and get their contact information, here.
Do your advocacy by April 28, which is the date of the Committee’s final public hearing on the budget. 

To support your advocacy, we’ve created talking points that you can use in addition to your personal story here.

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