“Shovel Ready Virginia” was established this month by the Virginia Business Roundtable for Early Education.
Virginia has assembled a task force of business leaders who will spend the rest of 2024 working to increase the Commonwealth’s supply of high-quality early childhood care and education services.
Leaders announced the launch of Shovel Ready Virginia—which has the slogan “We mean business with childcare”—on July 11, at the annual meeting of the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation.
VECF last year founded the Virginia Business Roundtable for Early Education on the belief that “Virginia’s prosperity and quality of life are inextricably dependent upon a strong early childhood education system,” according to its website.
The new task force will advise the roundtable members on strategies to meet its mission and address the unique childcare supply challenges in each of nine Ready Regions across the state.
The Ready Region structure was established in 2022 to coordinate statewide efforts under the Virginia Department of Education to improve childcare supply and access.
The Fredericksburg area—which includes Fredericksburg and the counties of Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline, and King George—is in Ready Region North Central along with Loudoun, Fauquier, Prince William, and Culpeper counties and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.
There are 97,628 children under age 5 in the region, and the majority—66%—have both parents in the workforce. There are 66,650 childcare slots in the region and 10,210 more slots are needed to meet the demand, according to the Ready Region North Central website.
The new task force will be working on ways to increase the number of childcare slots in each Ready Region.
It will begin meeting in August and will provide initial findings and recommendations by December.
“Working collaboratively with [Virginia Business Roundtable for Early Education] leaders, the Task Force members share a bold vision to make Virginia the best state to live, learn, work, and raise a family, along with making the Commonwealth ‘shovel-ready’ to attract new and retain existing businesses,” said Mike Chinn, a partner with Endicott Capital, Chair of VBREE and Co-Chair of the new task force, in a press release.
In addition to Chinn, the 10-member task force includes business, nonprofit, and higher education leaders, regional alliance leaders, and members of several state boards.
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