wooden pattern

The 2025 Legislative Session

While we are working toward solving the child care crisis for the future, Washington’s providers and families are shouldering the high costs of child care today. In the 2025 legislative session, Child Care Aware of Washington is calling on the Washington Legislature to:

  • Support the legislative priorities of the Child Care for WA campaign.
  • Support high-quality early learning supports with an inflationary wage adjustment for Early Achievers Coaches.

    Child Care for WA 2025 Legislative Priorities

    CCA of WA supports the Child Care for WA campaign, a broad movement of parents, child care providers, businesses, and advocacy organizations working together to fix the child care crisis.

    Child Care for WA’s 2025 priorities fight to make sure children, providers and families aren’t left behind in the cycle of budget gaps, while making progress toward child care that works for providers, families, and the economy. In 2025 Washington must:

    • Help more families afford high-quality care … by increasing eligibility to the Working Connections Child Care (WCCC) subsidy program.
    • Help providers continue to offer the WCCC subsidy program to families… by providing a modest rate increase to reimbursement rates.
    • Honor the commitment to ECEAP expansion… by investing in meaningful rate increases and adding new slots.
    • Modernize WCCC rates to reflect the true cost for providing high-quality child care… by establishing in law the state must use the Cost of Quality Care Rate Model to set subsidy rates.
    • Increase capacity for child care … by providing additional funding to the Early Learning Facilities Fund.
    Child Care for WA Legislative Agenda
    wooden-pattern

    Key Statistics

    • Last year, we provided child care resource materials to 15,254 families who access our Family Center call center. 
    • We deployed 265 Early Learning Coaches who supported state child care quality goals for a total of 138,985 hours in 4,740 licensed childcare settings in 2023
    • We offered 2,911 professional development hours for licensed child care providers last year on a wide variety of topics including business of childcare, advocacy, assessment tools, and early childhood mental health.
    wooden pattern
    wooden pattern

    Supporting Early Achievers Coaches

    Washington is losing Early Achievers Coaches because state funding doesn’t allow for annual salary increases to account for inflation or rising cost of living. Early Achievers Coaches are critical to maintaining and improving the quality of Washington’s early learning system, but since Early Achievers began in 2012, funding for Early Achievers Coaching salaries has never been adjusted to meet rising inflation and cost of living.  

    CCA of WA is calling on the legislature to provide an inflationary wage adjustment for Early Achievers Coaching salaries, in recognition of the critical work they do for child care providers and Washington’s early learning system.