Catherine Davis | 08.07.2023

Local Communities Are the Engines of Innovation—Their Voice in Policy Development is Critical

When the pandemic hit and all normalcy was stripped away, communities everywhere were left scrambling. Businesses struggling to pivot operations amidst stay-at-home orders; working parents—particularly those who were first responders and essential workers—struggling to find child care due to school closures; and communities struggling to reach their most vulnerable populations to ensure basic needs were being met. In a time of complete uncertainty and unprecedented disruption, local governments and community organizations were compelled to quickly unite, duct-taping together resources and scrappy support structures that could keep as much afloat as possible.

As a result, new social-sector innovations emerged everywhere you looked.  Schools navigated a pivot to virtual instruction; tech hotspots were set up in communities to maintain connection; contactless food and personal supply drives and delivery initiatives were set up, just to name a few.  But perhaps one of the greatest undertakings was ensuring safe child care options for children of our essential workers. Almost overnight, the schools and child care programs shuttered, leaving parents with virtually no back-up options due to quarantine restrictions on friends and family.

In Tarrant County, TX, the response to this challenge was in the form of a single Google survey utilized to gather data on open child care programs and their available seats, which was then used to match first responders with programs nearby that could meet their unique child care needs. A simple, no frills community prototype that solved a potentially debilitating problem. And, there are many other examples of local innovations, in many different communities, designed in response to the child care challenges spurred during the pandemic.

Local Innovations are Driving Statewide Policy Initiatives

Today, many of the covid-era innovations—which were driven largely by grassroots, community-based efforts—have not only taken hold, but have been the catalyst for new policies and systems-level change. That simple Google survey started in Tarrant County. This is now known as the Child Care Availability Portal, a publicly funded statewide data-system serving communities across the entire state of Texas.

This concept wasn’t a pandemic-era only phenomenon. Local communities are often the architects of innovations that ultimately result in widespread policy and systems change.

This is particularly true within early education and care. Take for example the Denver Preschool Program (DPP) in Denver, CO—a citywide preschool program that has funded universal access to preschool in both public schools and community-based child care programs since 2007. DPP was ultimately the model for 2021 legislation, HB 22-1275, in Colorado creating a statewide universal mixed-delivery preschool program.

The Best Place For Working Parents, a public-private partnership focused on supporting businesses with family-friendly strategies (including child care) that help working parents, also began as a local initiative in Fort Worth, Texas that has now expanded to nearly 20 communities across 9 states.  Several of these community-based partnerships have resulted in collaborative initiatives or on-the-ground policies that have later gone on to inform broader state policy.

It makes sense that it plays out like this. Local communities are the first responders in policymaking.  As the ones most proximate to peoples’ needs, they’re often required to respond to challenges in real-time. Local communities are often nimble enough to assemble and execute on solutions quickly, however scrappy it may be to begin with. These are the instances that often set the stage for new policy conversations.

Leaning on Local Communities to Drive Statewide Policy

Coming out of a relatively disappointing legislative session in Texas for child care and early learning, there is significant work to be done in the interim by child care advocates, policy influencers and policymakers to rethink their approach to developing a policy agenda.  The pandemic sparked widespread public attention on the significance of child care and early education, and even generated new political will amongst policymakers to right an obviously broken system. If Texas learned anything from this session, it is that the window to redesign the child care system is here (and has been for some time now), but it might not be here for much longer if policy proposals continue to lack innovation and fail to excite policymakers.

And, if policymakers learned anything about the genesis of innovation throughout the pandemic, it should be that local communities are often where it starts.  Listening to their challenges, learning from the on-the-ground solutions they have already begun to spin up, and asking communities what is standing in their way to be able to do more is the best place to start. Policymakers should consider investing in the existing local efforts that are proving to make a difference in one community, and work strategically to develop policies and pathways for those efforts to scale into new communities.

Local communities are quite literally the heartbeat of our entire state.  Texas has demonstrated it’s commitment, time and time again, to listening to and empowering communities.  As a state that has long been committed to high-quality early education, family choice and economic prosperity for all, how we approach reviving our early care and education system should be no different. Texas must entrust in those most proximate to the needs of young children, working families, and early educators to guide their thinking, and ultimately, to co-create strong policy solutions that work.

The Early Ed Canary

The Early Ed Canary, powered by the Institute to Advance Child Care at Child Care Associates, is a platform dedicated to bridging the gap between local communities and the systems-level leaders and policymakers capable of creating change at scale. It is our goal to bridge policy and practice by bringing voice to new ideas emerging from within the early education and care sector, shining light on important developments impacting the health of the field, and amplifying promising policies and transformative solutions emerging from within our local community and others across the state.

We hope the Early Ed Canary will be a valuable resource for anyone who is interested in re-envisioning child care and early learning, and dramatically improving outcomes for young children, working families and early educators in Texas and beyond. We also invite you to share your own perspective, whether it be spotlighting key issues and big challenges affecting the field; providing a novel take on emerging research; or to calling attention bold solutions in your communities that could serve as blueprints for change.

It is our hope, that together we can move beyond simply imagining a new sector to jump-starting the solutions that could truly create transformative change.

To subscribe to our newsletter, click here: tiny url.com/eecinsider. And be sure to follow us on social media: @earlyed.

To pitch a thought-piece to be published on the Early Ed Canary, email your proposal to krystle.crosby@childcareassociates.org.