Since the Virginia Promise Partnership was launched in December 2020, we have pursued three big goals: increasing access and choice, improving quality, and sustaining the workforce. This budget makes a down payment on our bold goal of quality, affordable child care for all Virginia families by 2030 by:
Increasing Access and Choice
The budget includes an increase of $7 million over the biennium to expand the Mixed Delivery Grant Program which would serve more children in private community-based settings by:
- Increasing the number of three and four-year-olds served in the program
- Piloting services for families’ infants and toddlers in the program
It would also serve more at-risk children through expansion of the Virginia Preschool Initiative (VPI) by:
- Permanently expanding the program to three-year-olds, as piloted in FY21
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Expanding VPI eligibility to include all children with disabilities or delays, versus only those under a certain household income threshold
The budget would also expand access to child care subsidies by extending expanded child care subsidy eligibility to families earning up to 85% of the state median income through FY2024.
Improving Quality
The budget would improve oversight of all publicly-funded early education classrooms by:
- Allocating funding for expanded classroom observations to oversee implementation of Virginia’s new VQB5 quality standards
- Expanding Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Program (VKRP) assessments to all publicly-funded classrooms
Sustaining the Workforce
The budget would also reimburse early education programs at rates and in formats that support the costs of quality service delivery by attracting new educators and reducing staff turnover in early education classrooms by:
- Increasing teacher incentives offered under the Early Childhood Educator Grant Program for a total of $10m each year.
The Virginia Promise Partnership thanks our committed partners, parents and providers who advocated for these critical provisions. The budget will now go to the Governor’s desk, and he has until July 1 to make changes. We look forward to working with the Administration to implement these critical first steps in securing quality, affordable child care for all Virginia families by 2030!
