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Dear Community Partners,
As we begin 2024, I’m looking forward to working with our state’s early childhood stakeholders – including parents and caregivers, child care and health providers, state and non-profit agencies, educators, businesses, philanthropists, faith organizations, policymakers and elected leaders – as partners in addressing children’s school readiness.
 To help with those efforts, I am pleased to announce that First Things First has published the latest edition of Building Bright Futures – our biennial assessment on the status of Arizona’s youngest children. You can read more about the report on our latest blog.
The new report provides insight into the challenges facing young children in Arizona and details the need for continued work to ensure the future stability of child care in our state’s post-pandemic landscape.
Included is an essay that explains the challenges our child care industry faced that grew into a full-blown child care crisis during the pandemic, how Arizona has benefited temporarily through the largest public investment in child care in U.S. history and why the future stability of child care will rely on long-term public investments.
The report’s data summaries paint a picture of the overall status of children statewide in key areas, such as family characteristics, economic circumstances, education, and child health and well-being.
This report is a tool to help our public dialogue on what our children need to learn and grow and the important role that all Arizonans play in ensuring that our young children enter kindergarten ready for success.
We are deeply grateful for your ongoing partnership on behalf of Arizona’s babies, toddlers and preschoolers, and we hope this report gives you the information that you need to support your work on behalf of young children this year. Happy New Year!
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