Thread by @JeffJacksonNC

One of the things that energizes me is talking to people who do early childhood education for a living.

These folks are so passionate and impactful that it just revives me and I’m reminded of what an opportunity we have if we can make early childhood a higher priority.

/thread/

That’s how I felt in Iredell County this weekend when I visited their Partnership for Young Children, which runs their local NC Pre-K and Smart Start.

These folks are just unreservedly good and crucial people and we don’t spend nearly enough time spotlighting their work.

In our discussion, we kept coming back to the role they played during the pandemic.

When we were hit hardest last year, child care workers were one of the groups who carried our country on their backs.

And yet, over half of early childhood educators get paid so little that they qualify for government assistance.

While I was there I spoke with Shana. It turns out, we had met before.

A few years ago, she came to Raleigh to advocate for early childhood education and at that time told me about the difficulty she was having with a persistent toothache because seeing a dentist was too expensive.

Now - with that issue resolved - she told me what the last year has been like for her as she worked every day to find ways to connect with young children during an incredibly stressful time for them, and often through a computer screen.

We already know that nurses and grocery clerks and bus drivers are some of our pandemic heroes.

Let’s just make sure that child care workers are on that list, too.

We’re going to talk later this week about the importance of early childhood from the standpoint of kids and their parents, but I wanted to start with a focus on the educators because they’re so often overlooked as an essential piece of the progress we need to make.

This week, I’m filing a bill in the state Senate titled, “Go Big for Early Childhood Education.”

It involves scaling up NC Pre-K and Smart Start to reach far more children than we currently do, but it also involves giving a raise to our early childhood educators.

One more thing:

When we started our town hall in an outdoor amphitheater in Statesville later that day, I began by telling the crowd about my trip to their county’s Partnership for Children.

And here’s what I said:

“I just want to report back to you, you have some extraordinary people working here in your community, who are doing *everything they can* for kids, and over the last year have done a large part of carrying this economy on their backs...

... The amount of compassion and care that they’re using to give y’alls kids the best start possible is remarkable. Y’all are the beneficiaries of some amazing people who are doing great work for young kids, and I just wanted to tell you that before we talk about anything else.”