📚✂️ Students at our Hartford early learning center recently completed a family engagement activity focused on buildings. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Family engagement activities nurture an ongoing partnership that supports family well-being. It also honors and supports the parent-child relationships that are central to a child’s healthy development, school readiness, and well-being. (fb)

This commentary from members of the child-care subcommittee of the Women's Fund of Rhode Island highlights the challenges in our child care sector and lays out a few key solutions before our state legislature this year. "At the same time that Rhode Island families are struggling with the cost of child care, our child care providers are facing a staffing crisis. Rhode Island child care educators, who are overwhelmingly women, and often women of color, make about $15 per hour on average. This has led many to leave the field for higher-paying jobs in retail and other sectors. And when child care educators leave, that often leads to classrooms being closed because programs are unable to maintain state-mandated child-to-teacher ratios. And when classrooms close, it makes waiting lists for child care programs even longer." (fb)