LGK works with child care programs and community partners throughout Vermont to create new opportunities for child care leaders to share best practices in early education as well as program administration such as purchasing, bookkeeping, billing and waitlist management.
Learn how to use digital tools, like email and social media, to become a stronger child care advocate within your existing networks and create meaningful connections with families in your program. Created specifically for early childhood educators, here are some resources to get you started:
Follow LGK on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay up-to-date on summer campaign events and other opportunities to support child care candidates this election season.
Share an advocacy post (or two) from Let's Grow Kids on your social media channels.
Add an advocacy paragraph to your next program newsletter. Here is an example you can use: Our child care program supports Let’s Grow Kids! Right now, over 60% of Vermont’s youngest children don’t have access to the child care they need. When they can find it, Vermont families are spending up to 30% of their household income on child care, even with financial assistance. Meanwhile, early childhood educators earn the least of all college graduates nationwide and many can’t afford to stay in the field. Vermont’s current child care system is failing us all. Please join us in supporting Let’s Grow Kids as they work to create systemic change: https://letsgrowkids.org/join
Let's Grow Kids works across Vermont to help early childhood businesses achieve financial sustainability and strong child outcomes through Shared Services.
Shared Services can help you work smarter, not harder through:
Regional Early Childhood Business Collaborative Networks work with an administrative hub that enable programs to share resources, staff, tools, and information. Check out an example of a thriving VT Early Childhood Business Collaborative Network.
SharedServicesVT.org is an online resource platform that offers ECE program support to all regulated programs in VT through HR resources, customizable templates, curriculum ideas, professional development, discounts, safety tips, tools for parent engagement, and Vermont specific information.
Vermont Child Care Lynx is a user-friendly online resource to help early education programs throughout Vermont market themselves to families at no cost. Promote your early childhood program by highlighting all you have to offer, share your website, update openings, and add a detailed description and photo! Check out this video for more information on Vermont Child Care Lynx and then click here to enter your program!
Wonderschool is an end-to-end solution for family child care providers designed to allow early educators to spend less time with administrative tasks and more time with children. Wonderschool offers small child care program leaders many features such as online attendance, billing, wait list, communicating with families and expense tracking. Be a part of something bigger as National trainings and peer support, curriculum development and discounts are available to Wonderschool participants as well.
Child care business management software enables directors to receive payments and manage attendance, billing, employees, medical records, child/family data, real-time ratios and more directly from the web or an app. For more information on the best childcare management software for your program, check out Capterra.
Together, Vermont child care businesses can become stronger, more financially sound, efficient, sustainable and better able to deliver high-quality child care services. To learn more, please contact: LouAnn Beninati.
Part of our mission at
Let’s Grow Kids is to ensure affordable access to high quality child care for
all Vermont families. We work with partners, individuals and communities to
develop, expand and sustain programs throughout the state.
Note: Let's Grow Kids does not plan to offer another round of Make Way For Kids grants at this time. If you would like to be contacted by Let's Grow Kids staff to learn about other available assistance and opportunities, please click here.
Workforce development. To ensure the early childhood education field can attract, train, and retain skilled educators, we provide technical assistance to early childhood educators working to increase their skills and qualifications, collaborate with partners to offer professional development opportunities and provide resources to support the development of strong professional networks.
Advice and technical assistance is available on the following topics:
STARS is Vermont’s quality recognition and improvement system. LGK provides technical assistance and resources to help child care programs navigate the STARS system and improve quality. Click here to learn more about STARS.
Vermont now has a statewide registry where developmental screening results can be safely shared between parents, early childhood educators, pediatricians, and other community providers. Click here to learn about Vermont’s Universal Developmental Screening, including the Ages & Stages Questionnaire.
Early Childhood Jobs VT is Vermont’s free job board for early educators. Job seekers can search and apply for jobs on EarlyChildhoodJobsVT.org at no charge. Regulated employers can advertise jobs at no charge by visiting SharedServicesVT.org. All postings to the jobs board automatically appear on other major job sites including Indeed, LinkedIn, and Google. Other benefits include pre-populated job postings, salary suggestions, custom workflows, follow-up email templates, and integrated hiring services. Click here to view current early educator job openings. To learn more about posting a job, visitSharedServicesVT.org.
The annual Early Childhood Educator of the Year Award recognizes excellence in teaching of Vermont’s young children and emphasizes the importance of high-quality early childhood education. Each year, VTAEYC announces the award earned by a Vermont early childhood educator who demonstrates exceptional skill and dedication that positively impacts the lives of children, families, and the community. Click here to learn more and watch videos of previous winners.
Local networks of early childhood educators leaders across 12 regions in Vermont utilize professional development opportunities and peer support to encourage, learn, and grow together. Vermont Early Childhood Networks meet regularly to provide a comfortable and engaging way for early childhood educators to connect with each other, identify opportunities and challenges, propose solutions, and celebrate achievements.
In addition to our work to bolster the early educator workforce in Vermont, we are providing scaffolding for Vermont’s child care system, shoring up critically underfunded elements of the system to ensure that it is sustainable far beyond 2025.
By 2025, we will ensure that our nonprofit partners are strong and in position to carry on critical roles including policy advocate, early childhood systems coordinator and planner, early childhood educator professional organization, higher education and professional development steward, and child care business resource advisor. These key partners include:
Let’s Grow Kids Early Educator Facebook group is an online community for Vermont child care professionals to shareand receiveimportant early education resourcesand news.
Thank you, Vermont's early childhood educators, for all that you do!
Every day, we see early educators who are: brain architects, arts
and crafts scholars, marching band directors, science teachers,
and even best friends. During a very challenging 2020,
Vermonters are especially thankful for the important work early
educators do.
