The legislature will consider many significant bills regarding our early care and education system. During this year’s “short session” many of these bills will move at a dizzying pace. We will attempt to keep this space updated so that you can follow along, and will circulate action alerts when appropriate. For questions on early childhood education and care related bills contact Emily Griffey at emily@vakids.org.
CHILD CARE SAFETY BILLS
To date there have been 15 bills introduced related to child care safety. Due to the number of bills, we will track the outcome of each bill on the bill chart below. As these bills are considered, we will be supporting policy solutions that meet any of the following criteria:
-Ensure that everyone in the business of caring for unrelated children (outside of the child’s home) has health and safety training and appropriate monitoring.
– Aligns with federal policy changes, including the implementation of national fingerprint background checks.
– Takes a strengths-based approach to monitoring aligned with continuous quality improvement.
– Establishes tough penalties for operating outside the system.
1/16/15- ECE bill chart– bills are introduced (.docx with links) (PDF)
OTHER EARLY CHILDHOOD BILLS- Studies and Smoke!
HJ610 (Jones)/SJ241 (Favola) SJ287 (Ruff)- JLARC study of early childhood programs
SJ56 (Edwards)- VPI expansion JLARC study
SJ239 (Favola)- Professional development workgroup
HB1310 (Krupicka)- Local governments can impose vapor/ECigs tax- revenue must fund preschool/pre-k programs
December 10, 2025
December 10, 2025
October 9, 2025
August 28, 2025