Let Your Voice Be Heard
The Early Childhood Power and Policy Action Group (PPAG) provides a space for providers and parents to build their organizing and advocacy capacity and exercise their power as leaders of the movement to transform policies and increase resources to support the early childhood education (ECE) system across St. Louis. PPAG is co-facilitated in partnership with Gateway Early Childhood Alliance, Urban Sprouts, and WEPOWER.
The Action Group exists to:
- Build the organizing and advocacy capacity of those most impacted by our region’s and state’s early childhood education system
- Design equitable and responsive policy solutions, and
- Organize and coalition build towards achieving policy changes and increase resources at the regional and state level.
The PPAG will build off the work of the First Steps to Equity Needs Assessment and the Playbook which outline gaps and barriers to equitable access and chart a path forward towards ECE policy and systems change.
Building a better tomorrow for the City of St. Louis starts with our babies, our most vulnerable citizens. We know this is widely and deeply felt. An investment in early childhood education is an investment that has the potential to yield short and long-term benefits.
This December, we urge the Board of Aldermen to allocate $60 million to Early Childhood Education in St. Louis city.
Currently, there are 89,132 children ages 0-5 in the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. However, childcare providers in the city and county only have the capacity to serve 47,219 children (52%). Further, only 5% of early childhood centers and homes in St. Louis is accredited.