The Montgomery County Children's Alliance partnered with School Readiness Consulting (SRC) to lead an intentional and community-driven planning process to design the plan. That process involved creating The Foundational Action Plan to provide a set of clear actions for the Montgomery County Children's Alliance to focus on and organize around. It is meant to build on the ongoing work and momentum that exists in order to address the real and big challenges young children and families face every day. It offers a road map to highlight important next steps for the Alliance to contribute to creating a stronger and more equitable early childhood system.

The city of Seattle has a history of investing in its youth and has funded education-based initiatives since 1990. In response to the growing understanding of the benefits of preschool for children and communities, the Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) launched a demonstration phase of the Seattle Preschool Program (SPP). This initiative aimed to meet three goals: (1) increase access to full-time preschool for three- and four-year-old children across the city; (2) ensure that the preschool program is one of high quality by using a research-based curriculum and offering culturally responsive, engaging, and nurturing adult-child interactions; and (3) eliminate the racially disproportionate kindergarten readiness gap. DEEL contracted with SRC on two occasions to conduct process evaluations of the SPP. Efforts informed a series of case studies and reports (2019 and 2021) that were developed to share findings and recommendations focused on improving SPP and advancing early learning opportunities for all children in Seattle.

In order to better understand the landscape of the ECE workforce, the state’s Child Development Division (CDD) and the Vermont Head Start Collaboration Office (VHSCO) contracted School Readiness Consulting (SRC) to conduct the Vermont Early Childhood Wage and Fringe Benefit Study. The intent of the study was to define key positions in Vermont’s early childhood workforce and examine wages and fringe benefits of the workforce across program types and funding streams, including center-based (Head Start, universal pre-K, and private), home-based (universal pre-K), after-school, and Children’s Integrated Services (CIS) programs. This work culminated in a report describing the current state of ECE workforce compensation and outlining recommendations for maintaining workforce data and considerations for developing meaningful compensation packages across the early childhood workforce.