Over the past two years, the women’s caucus has helped restore more than $500 million into these programs, reinstating child care and preschool for more than 45,000 children.
Even as we are making progress, it is remarkable how far we still have to go. When policymakers mention states doing groundbreaking early childhood education work, Oklahoma and Georgia are often lauded. California may be the world’s seventh-largest economy, but we are serving less than a quarter of all eligible children through state-supported child care.