The Alabama Institute for Social Justice (AISJ) recently convened the inaugural meeting of the Statewide Provider Coalition Table (SPCT), marking an important milestone in building a provider-led movement to strengthen Alabama's child care system through advocacy, leadership, and public policy.
The Coalition Table brings together child care providers and community leaders committed to ensuring those closest to the challenges facing early childhood education are helping shape the solutions. As our coalition continues to grow, we are proud to welcome Senator Rob Stewart and esteemed child care leaders Daphne Morris and Cynthia McDonald to its ranks.
We were grateful for the partnership of Community Change, whose support is helping to lay the foundation for the coalition's future work. Senior Organizer Angela Dawson facilitated an engaging Power Mapping 101 training, equipping providers with organizing tools to better understand how policy decisions are made and how communities build lasting political power. Director of State & Local Policy Nina Dastur provided a strategic overview of the policy landscape and helped frame future campaigns focused on increasing public investment in child care.
The timing could not be more critical.
Across the country, the child care sector continues to operate under extraordinary strain. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), thousands of early childhood educators report that rising operating costs, declining public support, and workforce shortages continue to destabilize programs. Nearly one in four (22%) educators say they are considering leaving the profession within the next year, while 57% report declining trust in public institutions as support for providers continues to erode.
The financial challenges facing families are equally alarming. New research from the U.S. Census Bureau found that families paying for child care now spend an average of $10,520 each year on care. When parents cannot secure reliable child care, affected households lose an average of 66 workdays annually, disrupting employment, reducing household income, and weakening local economies.
Here in Alabama, these national trends are reflected in communities across our state. Child care providers continue to grapple with rising insurance premiums, increasing costs for food and supplies, workforce shortages, and reimbursement rates that often fail to cover the true cost of providing high-quality care. Families are paying more than ever, yet providers continue to bear the consequences of chronic underinvestment. It is a system that asks educators to do more with less while expecting working families to shoulder costs that have become increasingly unsustainable.
This is precisely why the Statewide Provider Coalition Table exists.
Our goal is not simply to discuss these challenges but to organize around them. By building leadership among providers, strengthening relationships with policymakers, and advancing solutions developed by those doing the work every day, we are laying the groundwork for meaningful, long-term policy change.
Later this month, that work will extend beyond our state, as an Alabama delegation travels to the Child Care Convention in Chicagoland (St. Charles, Illinois). There, we will join more than 1,000 child care providers, parents, advocates, organizers, and policy leaders from across the nation to align our work with a growing national campaign for universal child care and increased public investment in the care economy.
The challenges facing child care do not stop at state lines, and neither should the movement to solve them. By bringing Alabama's voices into a national conversation, we strengthen our ability to advocate for policies that recognize child care as the essential infrastructure it truly is—supporting children, families, businesses, and the broader economy.
Our first Coalition Table meeting is only the beginning. Together, we are building the relationships, leadership, and collective power necessary to ensure Alabama's child care providers are not merely consulted, but are leading the conversations that will shape the future of early care and education.