Q. How can children's advocates get Governor Davis to place as high a priority on early childhood care and education as he does on K-12 public education?

A. While polls show that the public is willing to use tax dollars to support public education, "there is still the belief that child care is the responsibility of the parent," says Paul Miller, director of Tri-Cities Children's Services in Fremont. "Unless we make the shift.to child care being a public responsibility, we're not going to see change," says Patty Siegel, director of the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network." Advocates are using many strategies for convincing the public and policymakers.

Raising parents' voices: "If you look at how system changes have taken place in the past, the people most affected have always been in the forefront," says Siegel. Nancy Strohl, executive director of the Child Care Law Center, says building public will for early childhood programs will require "engaging parents and providers in a massive way," reaching across income divisions. "As long as child care is seen as a low-income issue," says Siegel, "it's easy to snip and clip."

Opportunities to involve parents include:

• Parent Summit. The statewide group Parent Voices will host a day of action for child care September 29 in the Bay Area. Participants will present a child care agenda to a panel of legislators. Organizer Maria Luz Torre says the event is a way for parents to "become leaders themselves."
  
  
• Master plan. SB 390 (Escutia) would develop a master plan for early care and education through "very inclusive discussions with parents" and other stakeholders in 20 hearings across the state, says Strohl. At press time SB 390 was in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
  
  
• Providers reaching out. Child care providers, says Strohl, "can get out materials and start discussions when parents pick up their children," as Tri-Cities Children's Centers already does (Children's Advocate, November-December 2000).
  
  
• Promising partners. Child advocates can seek alliances in "all the places that parents go now for strength and support,"-like unions, churches, and pediatricians' offices, says Siegel. Some unions, like San Francisco's Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 2, have won contracts that include support for child care (Children's Advocate, November-December 1999).
  
  

Linking to education: "Because school performance is so important to policymakers, [early childhood advocates] need to do a good job communicating about the really important role they play in reaching that goal," says Jack Hailey, staff director for the Senate Office of Research. Advocates must:

• Recraft the message. "We need to get away from the word child care," says Paul Miller of Tri-Cities. "Early care and education" could help policymakers see that "quality early education is key to [school] success."
  
  
• Change the messengers. "It's got to come from outside the child care field," says Linda Parfitt, a consultant with Child Development Division of the California Department of Education. "It's got to be K-12 saying, 'we need to start working with children earlier.'" A September 20 summit, "Promoting School Success," hosted by the Child Development Policy Institute, will bring early childhood advocates together with K-12 educators, pediatricians, researchers, and policymakers.
  
  

Articulate a vision: "For the last 30 years we've been trying to fix the corners of a system that's really inadequate," says Siegel. "That's not enough. Unless we say what we want, we're never going to get there. All we'll get is crumbs."

Contact:

• California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, 415-882-0234
  
  
• Child Care Law Center, 415-495-5498
  
  
• Child Development Policy Institute, 916-443-1096
  
  
• Parent Voices, 415-882-0234, parentvoices@rrnetwork.org
  
  
• Tri-Cities Children's Centers, 510-744-9280