Join Trying Together and your early care and education colleagues to celebrate the work you do for young children and families at the 2024 Annual Celebration of Early Childhood Educators Dinner on Thursday, April 25, from 6 – 8:30 p.m. at Acrisure Stadium.

About the Dinner

Guests will enjoy dinner, a photo booth, and prizes. Individual and group ticket prices are available, and free parking will be available for guests.

While we have never had a formal dress code for this event, many have used it as an opportunity to dress up. We recognize that many people will be coming from work directly to the event. Please dress in what is most comfortable and convenient for you!

Vegan, gluten free, and certified kosher options will be available.

Keynote Speaker
Shante’ A. Brown, Deputy Secretary for the PA Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL)

Shante’ A. Brown is a dedicated early childhood education leader with over a decade of experience in leading child care programs. She believes in connecting people to resources and building strong community relationships. Shante’ began her career with the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) in 2021 as the director for the Bureau of Certification Services.  She has served as a leader in multiple positions within Philadelphia including Director of PHLpreK, Philadelphia’s city-funded PreK Initiative, Education Field Administrator Early Childhood Coach, and PreK teacher with the School District of Philadelphia.

Shante’ holds a B.S.Ed. in Early Childhood – Elementary Education, M.S. in Reading Education, and an Ed.S. in Teacher Leadership. She is a genuine advocate for the field, and committed to positive outcomes for children, families, and providers in the state of Pennsylvania.

Reserve Your Tickets

Tables and individual tickets are available for purchase online.

Trying Together aims to make attending the Annual Celebration of Early Childhood Educators Dinner equitable for all attendees. The standard ticket price is set at $15 and tables of 10 are set at a discounted rate of $135 to ensure accessibility. We encourage registrants to consider the value of each ticket and table – $140 and $1,400, respectively – and contribute more if they are willing and able to do so. Your additional contribution will help support our dinner and enhance the experience of all attendees. We thank you for your generosity and for the additional support.

Registration is open until April 19, 2024.

More Information

Additional event details are available on the 2024 Annual Celebration of Early Childhood Educators Dinner webpage. For questions or assistance, please email info@tryingtogether.org.

Raffle items include:

• Scavenger Hunts by Let’s Roam
• Phipps Conservatory passes
• Museum of Illusions passes
• And more

The Program Quality Assessment (PQA) team has released several asynchronous professional development sessions in Pennsylvania’s Professional Development (PD) Registry.

Learn More

The new sessions include:

• Online Self-Paced: Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, Third Edition (ECERS-3), event ID# 363916 – Participants will learn how the ECERS-3 scale reflects developmentally appropriate practice, how program observation can be used to support continuous quality improvement, and the ECERS-3’s role as an internal assessment tool. Pre-requisite 101-Foundations, attendance at an ITERS-R, ECERS-R or SACERS prior to July 2007, or completion of the online ITERS-R, ECERS-R, or ECERS-3.

• Online Self-Paced: Foundations of the Environment Rating Scale, event ID# 361128 – Participants will learn how the ERS program observation instruments measure quality and how the ERS program observation instruments are used in PA for continuous quality improvement. This session is a pre-requisite for the ITERS-R, ECERS-R, ECERS-3, or SACERS-U seminars.

• Online Self-Paced: Foundations of the Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale (FCCERS), event ID# 361814 – The session supports Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) planning. Participants will learn about the indicators of quality in family and group home settings, how the FCCERS-R measures quality, and how to use program observation to enhance quality practice. This is a pre-requisite for the FCCERS-R course.

• Online Self-Paced: Pennsylvania Foundations of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), event ID# 361130 – Participants that attend this session will learn how CLASS® measures quality and how CLASS® is currently being used to support continuous quality improvement work in Pennsylvania. This session will be a pre-requisite for the upcoming age specific sessions: Infant CLASS, Toddler CLASS, and PreK-3 CLASS.

• Online Self-Paced: School-Age Care Environment Rating Scale – Updated (SACERS-U), event ID# 361129 – Participants will learn about the indicators of quality in school-age settings, how the scale measures quality, and how to use the scale as a self-assessment tool. Pre-requisite: 101-Foundations of the Environment Rating Scales, attendance at an ITERS-R, ECERS-R or SACERS prior to July 2007, or completion of the online ITERS-R, ECERS-R, or ECERS-3.

More Information

To register for these online self-paced PD sessions, visit the PD Registry.

More PQA professional development (in both English and Spanish) are currently in development for the 2023-2024 program year. Learn more about PQA professional development opportunities at pakeys.org/pqa/professional-development.

Family Child Care Educators can participate in a free 30-hour online leadership development training.

About Leading for Change

Leading for Change (LfC) in Early Care and Education is a leadership development program that trains family child care providers on how to lead for change and quality improvement in their practice, program, or in the field. The program is taught in the style of a professional learning community, making it a highly interactive learning environment where you work with peers to develop your leadership skills.

LfC is a fourteen-week innovative training where:

• Participants will gain a deeper understanding of themselves as leaders and change agents. They will explore concrete ways to improve professional practice early education quality and promote social and racial justice in programs and systems serving young children and families.

• Participants will identify a specific area related to ECE practice/quality, develop a theory of change and concrete action plan, and explore how their leadership can promote change and improvement.

How to Register

Registration is now open. Dates and times vary by cohort. For more information, please contact Janine Pagano at janpag@pakeys.org or 724-761-0801.

On February 6, 2024, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro released his 2024-25 state budget proposal.

The principal partners of Early Learning Pennsylvania (ELPA), a statewide coalition of advocates focused on supporting young Pennsylvanians from birth to age five, are pleased with proposed investments in pre-k, evidence-based home visiting, and perinatal and child health.

ELPA operates four issue-based advocacy campaigns: Pre-K for PA, Start Strong PA, Childhood Begins at Home, and Thriving PA.

Governor Shapiro’s state budget proposal included:

Pre-k

• $32.478 million in additional funding for the state’s Pre-K Counts program.
• $2.7 million in additional funding for the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program.

This funding would further support pre-kindergarten providers in combating rising inflation and address increasing staffing shortages.

In a press release, ELPA states, “Inadequate wages across the early care and education sector are causing pre-k classrooms to close throughout the commonwealth. Pre-k teachers earn roughly half of their (K-5) counterparts in public schools and face the tough choice of staying in their chosen profession as wages increase across other sectors. This investment is a critical first step in closing this gap and ensuring adequate staffing levels to operate state funded pre-k programs at current-funded capacity…Additional investment will be needed in future years to further mitigate teacher shortages in this competitive economy and ensure greater access to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our preschool learners.”  

Child Care

• $31.709 million in additional funding for child care ($29.331 million in Child Care Services and $2.378 million in Child Care Assistance).

According to the press release, “Start Strong PA welcomes the inclusion of an increase in the child care subsidy reimbursement rate to the 75th percentile of the market rate. We know this is long overdue and will alleviate some of the rising facility, food, utility, and supply costs for those child care providers participating in Child Care Works.”

However, the campaign acknowledges that more investments that focus directly on recruiting and retaining child care teachers and staff are needed to solve the staffing crisis in the field.

Home Visiting

• Level funding for evidence-based home visiting in the Community-Based Family Center line item and a minor reduction in the Nurse-Family Partnership line item to adjust for federal matching rates.

According to the release, Childhood Begins at Home is concerned the proposed 2024-25 budget does not account for the anticipated loss of one-time federal stimulus funds that were included in the Community-Based Family Center line (in DHS) as part of the 2023-24 final budget.

“Without any assurance that the state will sustain funding to backfill for expired stimulus funds and administrative cuts due to sequestration, we worry this ultimately will mean fewer home visiting services will be provided in Pennsylvania next year. Even more sobering is that only 7% of children under age 6 living in low-income households statewide currently receive voluntary, evidence-based home visiting services.” 

Early Intervention

• $16.7 million increase for the Early Intervention Part C (infant and toddler) program through DHS.
• $17 million increase for the Part B Early Intervention program (age three to five) through PDE.

“Thriving PA urges policymakers to build on this proposal and ensure an investment would provide for a long-needed rate adjustment for Early Intervention providers and serve additional children. Additional support would help to address key issues in the sector, including workforce shortages, achieving equitable enrollment, and addressing the growing needs of families across the commonwealth. National data shows that not all children who are eligible to participate in Early Intervention do so,” according to the press release.

Learn More

For details, read the full ELPA budget statement.

The Pittsburgh-based early childhood nonprofit Trying Together and other partners of ELPA will continue to advocate for these investments as the budget process continues. Stay up-to-date on how to advocate for these issues by signing-up to get public policy updates from Trying Together.

The September 2023 survey conducted by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab on behalf of Start Strong PA continues to demonstrate Pennsylvania’s ongoing child care crisis.

About

The survey, conducted between August 29, 2023 and September 21, 2023, details the child care staffing crisis in 762 of Pennsylvania’s child care programs and its effects on working families’ ability to access care.

According to programs:

• Nearly 26,000 additional children could be served at child care programs if fully staffed.

• 2,395 open positions have resulted in the closure of 934 classrooms.

• Child care providers’ inability to recruit and retain staff is having a direct impact on the quality of their programming.

In addition to the survey, child care providers shared their challenges and recommended solutions in 13 Child Care Listening Sessions held by Start Strong PA and The Office of Child Development and Early Learning in November and December 2023. Themes similar to those in the survey emerged and hundreds of participants shared stories illustrating the impact of staffing shortages.

Reports from each listening session will be available within the next month, according to Start Strong PA. For more information about the survey and the listening sessions, read Start Strong PA’s news release.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is expected to end in spring 2024.

About

The ACP provides eligible, low-income households with up to $30 monthly broadband subsidies on internet service plans, and a one-time benefit of up to $100 to help buy a device, such as a laptop or tablet.

In 2021, Congress established the ACP in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and appropriated $14.2 billion for the program. Households enrolled in the program are projected to continue to receive the benefit on their internet service through April 2024.

The FCC has begun taking steps to wind down the ACP, which means:

• No new ACP enrollments will be accepted after February 7, 2024 at 11:59 p.m.
• Households that enrolled with an ACP internet company before February 7, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. will continue to receive their benefit until ACP funds run out as long as the household remains enrolled and eligible for the benefit.
• When ACP funds run out, participating households will no longer receive discounts.

Details are available on the ACP Wind-Down Fact Sheet and at www.fcc.gov/acp.

Applications are now open for the Office of Child Development and Early Learning’s (OCDEL) 2024 Pennsylvania Equity in Early Childhood Education Champion Awards.

About the Awards

The Pennsylvania Equity in Early Childhood Education Champion Award brings awareness to and highlights the equity work being done within Pennsylvania’s early childhood education and afterschool settings, including child care, evidence-based home visiting, and early intervention. These professionals and organizations align with the position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education Position Statement.

Apply

Submissions can be an application (apply on your own or a program/organization’s behalf), or nomination (submit another individual or program/organization) to be acknowledged for their work around equity.

Self-applications are accepted. Applications should be submitted by Friday, February 23, 2024. Applications are available in English and in Spanish.

All programs must be physically located and operating within Pennsylvania and providing early childhood education services or supports relating to Pennsylvania’s families/children. Those who were 2022 or 2023 awardees in the Gold, Silver, and Bronze categories are not eligible for submission for the 2024 Pennsylvania Equity in Early Childhood Education Champion Award.

Eligibility information and application details are available on the PA Keys website. For questions or concerns, email Mary Hall at marhal@pakeys.org.

Parents and caregivers should be aware of several child-related product recalls.

Learn More

Here is a list of January 2024 recalls collected from the following major federal agencies: the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into the Evenflo Revolve360 car seat, plus all other Revolve360 models, including the Revolve360 EXTEND and Revolve360 Slim. New concern over compliance of the seat’s child restraint systems and detachable base has led NHTSA to take action.

• Yaomiao Children’s Rhinestone Silver Tiaras recalled due to violation of Federal Lead Content Ban.

• Alliance4Safety and 31 Furniture Companies recalled millions of plastic New Age Furniture Tip-over Restraint Kits due to tip-over and entrapment hazards to children.

• Retrospec recalled Kid’s Bike Helmets due to risk of head injury; violation of the Federal Safety Regulation for Bicycle Helmets.

• UBBCARE Play Yard Mattresses recalled due to suffocation hazard for infants; violation of the Federal Safety Regulation for Crib Mattresses.

More Information

For recall details, visit the links above or review the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration websites.

PA Navigate is a new online tool that connects Pennsylvanians with community-based organizations, county and state agencies, and healthcare providers, for referrals to community resources that help them meet their most basic needs like food, shelter, transportation, and more.

About PA Navigate

PA Navigate also allows individuals to refer themselves for services and facilitates greater connection and communication between healthcare providers and organizations that serve shared populations.

A person’s overall health and wellness are influenced by socioeconomic, environmental, and behavioral factors that shape our present and long-term health outcomes.

PA Navigate bridges these systems through a shared platform where health care providers and social services organizations can track referrals and better understand and assist by helping individuals access services and support. The system will also allow health care and service providers to assess an individual’s needs during a physician’s office or emergency department visit, when receiving case management services, or when seeking assistance from a community-based organization.

For more information and to find resources in your community, visit pa-navigate.org.