Child Care for North Carolina
The Child Care for NC coalition brings providers, parents, and supporters from across the state together to demand that our leaders solve the looming child care crisis. We’re planning a Day of Action on May 16, 2024 and we need YOU! It will take all of us raising our voices to show our elected representatives in the General Assembly what is at stake if they don’t act now. Meet us in Raleigh!
As providers, we know it’s a big ask to close a center or a classroom for a day, but this is a big ask because we have a big problem ahead of us. We have to do everything we can to make child care funding and teacher pay a priority before a looming crisis hits our child care system in June, impacting our children, families, teachers, workplaces, and communities. We are closing for ONE DAY so we don’t have to close centers, family child care homes, and classrooms forever in the coming months.
This funding cliff that will cause shockwaves across our state isn’t inevitable. For less than 1% of the total budget, our state legislators can invest in our youngest learners, our vital workforce, and our future. We have to come together and demand they do.
Register now to MEET US IN RALEIGH May 16, and get the support and resources you need to educate your parents and close your center. Encourage your parents to come to a special info session just for them, and meet us in Raleigh too!
WHERE: Halifax Mall, 300 Salisbury Street, Raleigh
WHEN: Thursday, May 16 at 10am – 2pm ET
SCHEDULE / PROGRAM:
10:00 AM – Registration Opens
11:00 AM – Performance by Takiri Dance Group
11:15 AM – Program begins, featuring:
🖤 Introductions from Child Care for NC Organizers
🖤 Special Presentation — Our Teachers Taught Us
🖤 Parents, providers, & supporters speakout
🖤 Remarks by legislators from the early childhood caucus
12:00 PM – March Around the Legislative Building
12:30 PM – Grab & Go Lunches available**
** You’ll need a button from the registration to get lunch! Swing by the registration table if you didn’t get one!
1:00 PM – Legislative Visits
2:00 PM – That’s a wrap and thank you for joining us! Make sure to sign up for CC4NC action alerts to legislator this session as the child care investment decisions are being made.
DON’T MISS OUT:
🖤 Poster-making and arts & crafts available
🖤 Use one of our templates to write to your legislator – we’ll mail it for you!
🖤 Face painting & Balloon Twisting opens at 10am ET
WATCH THE LIVESTREAM
Can’t make it to the event in person? You can show your support by watching the event on our Facebook livestream, liking and commenting so the Facebook algorithm shows it to as many people as possible, starting at 11:15am ET. To watch the livestream in Spanish, join us on Zoom.
We created an action toolkit where you can find all of the information, options for taking action, messages to share with parents and supporters, social media graphics to share, classroom materials, and educational materials for others all in one place.
Every young child in North Carolina deserves an opportunity to learn, grow, and succeed. But right now, our state’s child care system is in crisis, and too many children are missing out on foundational early care and learning. Families can’t afford the high cost, teachers can’t afford to work for such low wages, and providers can’t afford to keep their doors open. With federal COVID relief funding about to run out, our state has reached a tipping point. It’s time to come together and take action for:
This urgent crisis calls for urgent action, and we hope you will join this statewide movement of parents, early educators, businesses, and advocates who are united in fighting for our future. Please save the date: join us at the NC General Assembly on Thursday, May 16th, 2024, for Child Care for NC: United for Change! Your story, your experience, and your participation is critically important. Together, we can show our communities and our policymakers just how essential child care is for young children and parents, for businesses and employers, and for our state’s economy.
In 2023, child care providers, advocates, community members, parents, and worker orgs came together for child care investment and fought together for wins in ways we haven’t before. Not only did we gather around 400 people in Raleigh on April 20th for a Day of Action on child care investment that got the attention of people across the state, the legislature, and major media; we opened lines of communication and thought about the issues we shared to come up with shared solutions. We didn’t get the $300 million we demanded and needed from the general assembly in the final budget, but we have momentum to build on and we’re not done fighting. We know with the cliff coming up for child care teacher compensation grants, child care investment can’t wait, and whatever happens with child care investment, there will be ripple effects through every other sector.
The Child Care for NC planning committee is a grassroots coalition made up of center-based and family child care home providers, families, and organizations that are committed to long-term policy, program and funding changes to support our state’s early education system, the teachers who make it work, and the young children it serves.