OUR GRANTS

COLORADO

Partnership Team:

• Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC, Lead Grantee Partner)
• Colorado Office of the Governor
• Colorado Department of Education
• Colorado Department of Higher Education
• Colorado Department of Human Services, Office of Economic Security
• Colorado Department of Labor and Employment
• Office of Economic Development and International Trade

Colorado’s grant-funded activities will include:

• Enhance the Colorado Early Childhood Teacher Salary Increase Pilot by gathering data on compensation parity for early childhood teachers.
• Conduct a study to articulate the true cost of quality child care and design a financing mechanism to ensure that increased funding is passed through to ECE staff.
• Submit a state budget request for a universal salary increase for all early childhood educators.
• Establish new CDEC positions (such as a compensation analyst and project coordinator) and liaison positions across key state agencies.

District of Columbia

Partnership Team:

• Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE, Lead Grantee Partner)
• Office of Budget and Performance Management
• D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority

D.C.’s grant-funded activities will include:

• Implement, evaluate and document the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund through outreach, data systems enhancement, and development of new supports and resources.
• Expand health insurance for early educators through data enhancements, education, and outreach efforts.
• Support continuing education for early childhood educators by reducing barriers to completion and analyzing funding and scholarship sources.
• Explore new funding streams to ensure OSSE is making use of all possible sources.

LOUISIANA

Partnership Team:

• Louisiana Policy Institute for Children (Lead Grantee Partner)
• Louisiana Office of the Governor
• Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
• Louisiana Board of Regents
• City of New Orleans Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families
• Point Coupée Early Childhood Community Network
• Agenda for Children / New Orleans Early Education Network
• Louisiana Association for the Education of Young Children
• For Providers by Providers
• Children’s Coalition for Northeast Louisiana

Louisiana’s grant-funded activities will include:

• Implement compensation demonstration projects in key local communities that can be scaled across the state.
• Collect data on early childhood educators to track their progress and identify what works best to improve their pay.
• Advance statewide policies to improve compensation.

minnesotA

Partnership Team:

• Minnesota Department of Education
• Minnesota Children’s Cabinet
• Minnesota Management and Budget
• Minnesota Department of Human Services
• Minnesota Office of Higher Education

Minnesota’s grant-funded activities will include:

• Evaluate existing compensation reform efforts, including the Preschool Development Grant’s $1.3M Pay Equity Pilot, to identify opportunities to scale effective practices. 
• Sustain several staff positions that are temporarily funded by grants to preserve the institutional knowledge and sustain Minnesota’s capacity to focus on improving compensation for the ECE workforce. 
• Conduct a 2026 Early Childhood Workforce Study to allow the state to ascertaom shifts within the workforce in terms of compensation and benefits access.

tArrant county, texas

Partnership Team:

• Child Care Associates
• Texas Education Agency- Education Service Center Region 11 
• PreK Today 
• Texas A&M University Division of Academic & Strategic Collaborations 
• Tarrant County College 
• City of Fort Worth 
• Tarrant County 
• Rainwater Charitable Foundation 
• Rice University – Texas Policy Lab 
• Child Care Associates – Institute to Advance Child Care

Tarrant County, Texas’s grant-funded activities will include:

• Evaluate, refine and enhance CCA’s Prime Early Learning Pilot that advances innovative financing of community-based early learning programs towards increasing early educator compensation across the birth-to-five spectrum.
• Evaluate, refine and enhance CCA’s PreK Today pilot that advances a new community-based prekindergarten model. 
• Identify state, local and operational barriers to the use of contracts/grants as a transformative and functional method for layering multiple funding streams into a single, coordinated contract. 
• Develop a comprehensive workforce study to build robust understanding of the early educator workforce in the North Texas region.