2026 SESSION RECAP: Early Care and Education

This session, Voices continued advancing toward our bold goal: ensuring that all Virginia families have access to quality, affordable child care by 2030.

Early care and education is essential to children’s learning and development. It is also essential to family stability, workforce participation, and Virginia’s economy. When families cannot find or afford child care, parents are forced to make impossible choices. When providers cannot afford to pay early childhood educators fairly, classrooms close, families lose options, and children lose access to the early learning environments they need to thrive.

Our top priorities focused on meeting the needs of Virginia’s families and strengthening the child care system. To achieve these goals, Virginia needs a state investment of $681 million in additional funding in the FY27–28 biennial budget to:

The Governor’s introduced budget included some investments in early care and education. During session, the General Assembly also passed legislation to establish the Employee Child Care Assistance Pilot Program through HB 18, carried by Delegate McClure, and SB 3, carried by Senator Aird. This program is designed to increase access to child care for Virginia’s workforce while maximizing state and local resources.

Still, major questions remain. Because budget decisions are still pending, it remains unclear whether Virginia will make the deeper investments needed to meet the full scale of need in early childhood education and child care.

During the 2026 General Assembly session, several bills supported by Voices advanced efforts to strengthen early childhood education, expand child care access, and better support working families across Virginia.

Voices will continue working with lawmakers, advocates, providers, families, and community partners to advance these priorities and strengthen support for Virginia’s children and families in future sessions.

For more information on legislation tracked this session, visit Voices’ 2026 Bill Tracker.

For families, child care is often the difference between being able to work, attend school, or maintain financial stability. For children, early care and education creates the foundation for learning, development, and long-term well-being. For providers, public investment helps keep classrooms open and early educators in the field.

Yet Virginia’s child care system continues to face significant challenges. High-quality early childhood educators are leaving the profession because compensation and reimbursement rates remain too low to sustain the workforce. Without stronger investments, programs will continue to struggle to recruit and retain the experienced educators children depend on.

To stabilize and strengthen Virginia’s early childhood workforce, advocates estimate that an additional $252.8 million over the biennium is needed to support fair compensation and retain qualified educators.

At the same time, child care remains out of reach for too many working families. Current funding reaches only 42% of eligible families, leaving many parents and caregivers without the support they need to work, pursue education, and provide stability for their children.

Expanding access to affordable, high-quality child care would strengthen family economic security, support children’s healthy development, and enable more Virginians to participate in the workforce. Meeting current demand will require an additional $428.2 million over the biennium.

Without deeper investment, Virginia will continue to fall short of what children, families, providers, and employers need. The choices made today will shape whether families can access care, whether educators can remain in the field, and whether young children have the strong start they deserve.

As budget decisions continue to unfold, Voices is watching whether Virginia will make the level of investment needed to expand access, stabilize the early childhood workforce, and move closer to the goal of affordable, high-quality child care for all Virginia families by 2030.

What’s at stake is not just access to child care. It is family stability, school readiness, workforce participation, and the long-term strength of Virginia’s communities.

The progress made this session matters, but the final budget will determine how far Virginia moves this year toward meeting the needs of children, families, providers, and employers.

We’ll continue to follow what unfolds and share what it means for young people and families across the commonwealth. Stay with us as we continue advocating for the investments Virginia’s children, families, and early childhood educators need.