Smart Start Conference Spotlight: Exploring National, State, and Local Workforce Supports for Early Childhood Professionals 

“Early childhood is a public good and needs to be invested in”, Teri Talan, Senior Policy Advisor to the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership  Early childhood professionals met at the final 2022 Smart Start Conference Featured Session to discuss...

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Buncombe County Partnership for Children Offers a Pathway for Early Childhood Teacher Workforce Development

Child care is an essential service for North Carolina families, ensuring parents can work while their young children learn and grow. However, the child care industry has been heavily affected by the pandemic. The reality of low pay for...

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Iredell County Partnership for Young Children’s Comprehensive Benefits Plan

by Lisa Familo, Executive Director, The Iredell County Partnership for Young Children The Need COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of our early education workforce, all of which predated the arrival of the pandemic. Early childhood educators are the workforce behind the...

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Elevating the Voices of Child Care Providers

by Amy Cubbage, NCPC President   Along with our partners at The Hunt Institute, Smart Start hosted a roundtable this week with leaders from the White House and the U.S. Department of Education. There weren't TV cameras or microphones; no podiums...

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Model Salary Scale for Early Education Teachers

by Amy Cubbage, President of The North Carolina Partnership for Children (NCPC) Too many of the professionals who care for and educate our youngest children receive wages that aren’t nearly enough to make ends meet. Many work without access to...

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Recognizing Women’s Equality Day 2021

Today is Women's Equality Day, when the nation marks the contributions that women have made to our democracy and progress toward realizing full equality of opportunity. The day recognizes the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, which symbolically...

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North Carolina’s Children and Families Can’t Wait for a Budget

This is an article written by Amy Cubbage, President of the North Carolina Partnership for Children (NCPC) and originally running in the Perspectives section of the EdNC website  North Carolina families are stressed. They are tired. They are worried for...

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Smart Start Featured Panel, Supporting Early Care and Education Professionals.

“Working in ECE begins a route to poverty for many” - Dr. Ashley Williams, Center for the Study of the Child Care Employment. Smart Start conference attendees joined together to explore challenges facing the early childhood workforce, actions being taken by...

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NC Child Care Workers Increase Education Levels

Between 2011 and 2012, more child care center directors, teachers and family child care providers have increased their levels of education, according to a study by the Child Care Services Association. The 2012 North Carolina Child Care Workforce Study The...

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