December 2022 Monthly Update
Dear Friends and Partners,
What a year 2022 has been! We at the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children are proud and immensely thankful for all that we helped to accomplish for our youngest learners this year. Here are some highlights:
With all of our wins this year, we’re excited to start the year running with a virtual press conference in early January with our partners at the Children’s Funding Project. We will release the Local Funding Toolkit for Strengthening Early Care and Education in Louisiana Communities, a resource to help localities in Louisiana understand potential funding strategies for strengthening their local early care and education systems in their communities. Register for the press conference here.
Yesterday, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted to move forward with the final adoption of the revised Early Learning and Development Standards (ELDS). The standards will continue through the process to become formal rule. Your advocacy made a difference and it is imperative that BESE members know how much we appreciate them. Please take the time to send a thank you note to BESE members for moving forward with the revised standards.
We also want to applaud two leaders and champions of early childhood education have been honored in the last two months. Rochelle Wilcox, Louisiana Early Childhood Leader of the Year, was featured in the Louisiana Department of Education’s podcast Teacher Leader Lagniappe where she discusses what it means to value students, what makes a classroom special, and how to keep teachers motivated to go above and beyond for their students. Mattilyn Karst-Batson was an honoree of the Northshore 40 Under 40 for her longstanding passion for improving the social, health and education systems of Louisiana that shape the critical first five years of a child’s life.
Lastly, we will celebrate our annual Early Ed Month in February with a program of events aimed at highlighting the critical need for increased investment in high-quality early care and education for young children, birth to age four, in Louisiana. Be sure to tune in!
And as always, we can’t thank you enough for your continued generosity and support both financially and through your advocacy on behalf of our state’s youngest learners. We look forward to continuing to advance policies to ensure the children of Louisiana are successful in school and in life.
We wish you a joyous holiday season and a prosperous new year!