On May 18, more than 100 Vermonters gathered at Zenbarn in Waterbury Center for the 2026 State Advisory Council and Early Childhood Strategic Plan Summit. Attendees represented a wide array of fields, including home visitors, pediatricians, early educators, legislators, housing advocates, transportation partners, and family navigators—all coming together to support the implementation of a unified vision.
The morning included opening remarks and a whole-group discussion about the vision of Vermont’s Early Childhood Strategic Plan 2030 and Building Bright Future’s role in stewarding it. Attendees then participated in one of nine small-group conversations built around a shared premise: that there are places in Vermont’s early childhood system where our understanding and opportunities for discussion are limited, where progress is hard to quantify, and where the people closest to the work are the most essential source of knowledge we have. Groups were asked to celebrate real progress, name persistent barriers, and identify what we can learn and apply.
What follows is a summary of what each group heard and documented. These summaries represent the knowledge and perspective of those present in small groups, and they haven’t necessarily been externally fact checked. These notes are only the beginning of the BBF team’s work to monitor on behalf of the system, pursue areas positioned for further discussion and strategy, and advise Vermont’s Governor and Legislature.
Group 1: Protecting Access to Services for At-Risk Families Amid a Threatening Political Environment
Strategic Plan Reference: 1.A.3, 1.A.4, 2.B.3, 5.B.1
With this issue, the group noted that fear is acting as a policy barrier. One participant put it plainly: Two parents with mixed immigration status felt it was too risky to drive their child to pre-K for fear of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) exposure. When the program arranged bus pick-up, the child was able to attend school. Some key points from the group’s conversation included the following:
- Vermont has real momentum on legal aid; a new $1M fund is tripling the number of immigration attorneys available statewide, backed by United Way of Northwest Vermont and philanthropic partners. The statewide refugee and asylee coalition (which includes Central Vermont Refugee Action Network [CVRAN], Association of Africans Living in Vermont [AALV], Vermont Afghan Alliance, Northeast Kingdom Asylum Seekers Assistance Network [NEKASAN], and others) is active and growing.
- Mutual aid networks and interfaith groups are filling gaps that formal service systems cannot, and they are doing so at a pretty significant scale, but without stable infrastructure.
- Anecdotally, it seems Vermont could be at risk of losing many immigrant families altogether due to other factors. The lack of affordability and cultural community are drawing some families to larger, more diverse metropolitan areas. Retaining immigrant families in Vermont requires strategic investment and efforts related to belonging.
- Programs for English Language Learners and intercultural liaisons are essential, and the group identified them as key structurally, and not something to be considered “supplemental.”
Group 2: Mitigating the Impact of Climate Change on Children and Families
Strategic Plan Reference: 2.B.1
This group’s attendance was small, a reflection of the daunting work ahead and our need to develop more partners in climate and conservation work at early childhood tables. The conversation that did happen surfaced important tensions.
- Vermont’s response to climate events seems to lean toward being reactive rather than proactive. Many towns have identified the appropriate contact to call in a crisis, while systematic resilience planning lags behind.
- Funding losses are quietly eroding the community infrastructure that helps connect families, including closures of shared spaces like town pools that serve as informal safety nets.
- There is a persistent tension between triage and planning: Resources go to one and not the other, and it’s hard to make the case for prevention when the next disaster feels imminent, especially related to flooding.
- The group named this conversation as one that needs more investment—in participants, in cross-sector relationships, and in bringing early childhood explicitly into climate resilience planning.
Group 3: Inclusion Supports and Behavioral Health for Children to Access Learning Environments
Strategic Plan Reference: 3.A.2, 3.A.3
This group was one of the most energized conversations of the Summit, and the discussion came with both genuine progress to celebrate and a structural problem that needs attention.
- Real progress is visible: Behavioral support for children in programs using the Pyramid Model (Early MTSS) shows promising results; the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) adaptation through Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children’s (VTAEYC) Systems for Program Access to Resources for Quality Supports’ (SPARQS) team is strengthening inclusive classrooms; Special Accommodation Grants (SAGs) are supporting children and caregivers; and coordination between the Agency of Education (AOE) and the Agency of Human Services Child Development Division (CDD) around early intervention has grown meaningfully.
- Resources to comply with 2021’s Act 35 prohibition on exclusionary discipline differ between school-based and private Universal Prekindergarten (UPK) programs, and this was a capacity gap identified as deserving additional attention. Schools typically have on-site special education staff and behavioral supports that private programs lack. Some private partners are considering leaving the UPK system as a result.
- Sustainability is a recurring concern. Vermont has a pattern of building capacity through grants and then not maintaining it. Early intervention is underfunded and tied to the local tax base, and geographic barriers compound the inequity. For instance, in the Northeast Kingdom, travel for providers delivering in-home care or families traveling to care can be more than 45 minutes each way.
- Coaching and workforce shortages mean that even where strong frameworks exist and funding is present, the people to deliver them are often hard to find and keep.
Group 4: Strengthening Transportation Systems for Families to Access Health Care and Education
Strategic Plan Reference: 1.D.1, 1.D.3, 2.B.2
This group surfaced that no one currently owns the full picture of what children’s transportation in Vermont costs, covers, or misses—and that gap has real consequences for families.
- Three Vermont Early Childhood Fund grantees currently focused on transportation solutions were at the table, indicating recent investments in this priority but also serving as a sign of the degree to which community-level problem-solving is filling what should be a systems-level gap. Grantees identified several barriers for community-led programs, including increased gas costs, challenges coordinating with local schools, and workforce shortages that affect the ability to hire drivers.
- Bus drivers transporting 4-year-olds, including children with special needs and car seat requirements, reportedly receive little to no training specific to young children. Regulations exist for school-age transportation, but for the youngest children, they largely don’t.
- McKinney-Vento eligibility gaps for families experiencing homelessness may be leaving children in private child care programs and some Head Start settings without access to transportation to school. Reportedly, Vermont receives about $300K in federal McKinney-Vento funds, and only seven of 17 Local Education Agency (LEA) liaisons have grants, though the full picture of who is and isn’t being reached warrants more examination.
- The group’s core question, left unanswered was: How much does Vermont actually spend on transportation for young children, across all systems?
Group 5: Supporting Parents and Caregivers Navigating Isolation, Perinatal/Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs), and Lack of Community Connection
Strategic Plan Reference: 2.A.1, 2.B.2, 5.C.1
Vermont has genuine bright spots in this area. The challenge is that they aren’t evenly distributed—and when budgets tighten, the group observed that programs tend to silo rather than coordinate.
- Medicaid reimbursement for doulas, community-based doula partnerships, Vermont Consultation and Psychiatry Access Program (VTCPAP), Good Beginnings of Central Vermont, library programming, and the Vermont Mental Health Outreach for Mothers (VT MOMS) PartnershipSM through Howard Center are efforts where good outcomes and reach are reported. The Developmental Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone (DULCE) model’s integration into pediatric settings was highlighted as especially promising, given that it reaches families who wouldn’t necessarily self-identify as having a need and seeks to address power dynamics in health care settings.
- Access to treatment for Perinatal/Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs) varies sharply by region, and the “support cliff” between birth and six weeks leaves families without meaningful check-ins at one of their most vulnerable moments.
- Research suggests untreated PMADs carry significant costs, estimated at roughly $35,000 per birthing person/infant dyad, making the case that investment in prevention pays off.
- The group identified sustaining VTCPAP’s state funding as time-sensitive, with federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funding ending in September 2026.
Group 6: Tracking and Addressing Root Causes of Student Chronic Absenteeism
Strategic Plan Reference: 1.A.3, 3.C.3, 5.B.2
The language shift from “truancy” to “chronic absenteeism” is itself a marker of progress and reflects a different theory of change, moving from a punitive approach to a supportive one. Several Vermont communities’ experiences exemplify that shift, and there is real learning to lift up from their experience.
- Burlington’s post-COVID recovery work was a touchstone for the group: Direct outreach, multilingual community service liaisons, family room infrastructure, and a school culture oriented toward connection helped bring students back.
- Community school models, free and universal school meals, and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) enrichment supports appear connected to improved attendance, and all are vulnerable to budget pressure and federal policy change.
- Housing instability surfaced as a primary driver that schools can’t address alone. The group heard that families are sometimes choosing unsafe housing situations to keep children enrolled in their current school, and that parents may not disclose housing status out of fear it will factor into custody proceedings.
- Vermont has approximately 5,000 homeschooled students; participants noted that in some cases, families may have arrived at that choice due to barriers rather than preference, and that understanding those situations better is key.
Group 7: Recruiting and Retaining a Robust Health, Mental Health, and Specialty Provider Workforce
Strategic Plan Reference: 2.B.2, 4.B.1, 4.B.2
Financial compensation for the early childhood workforce, across roles and sectors, emerged as the defining barrier in this group, and the current federal student loan landscape appears to be compounding it.
- Participants observed that graduates are choosing higher-paying specialties over pediatric and early childhood work because loan obligations are difficult to absorb on early childhood wages. The current model, which often requires specialists to open their own businesses in order to serve young children, is not working well for providers or families.
- Contracted organizational models, where providers work for an organization rather than in private practice, came up as a promising alternative. As one participant put it: “That way, providers can do the work and not have to own or administer a business. This may be a place to turn the curve.”
- Billing structures are consuming clinical bandwidth that should go to families, and the group noted that too many conversations in this space center on billing concerns rather than what children and families actually need.
- Library-based and community-centered service delivery models are expanding reach in creative ways but require intentional investment to be sustained.
Group 8: Service Navigation for Families
Strategic Plan Reference: 5.B.1, 5.B.2
Vermont has strong regional models for service navigation. What it doesn’t yet have is a statewide system to support, fund, or learn from these models consistently.
- Northeast Kingdom Community Action’s (NEKCA) “no wrong door” model, the White River Children’s Integrated Services (CIS) collaborative, Janet S. Munt Family Room’s co-located intake, and the Help Me Grow pilot’s Electronic Health Record (EHR)-integrated CIS referral are all examples of coordination working well, illustrating the importance of getting services to families earlier and with less burden on them to navigate the process alone.
- The most consistent challenge raised was that referrals go out and organizations rarely hear what happened. Families keep retelling their stories at every new contact. Feedback loops are broken—and participants described this as a system design issue, not an individual one.
- Homelessness adds a particular layer of difficulty: Families may not know what services are available, may fear disclosure, and are among the least likely to be reached by the systems meant to serve them.
- The group’s summary stated plainly: “A lot of really great regional efforts—but what is missing is a statewide system to support those efforts.”
Group 9: Navigating Threats to Funding and Eligibility from Federal Political Instability
Strategic Plan Reference: 2.B.2, 2.B.3, 5.D.1, 5.D.2
This group grappled honestly with both the acute federal moment and what it is revealing about longer-standing structural vulnerabilities in Vermont’s early childhood system.
- Vermont has demonstrated real capacity to respond creatively. Successes cited included pandemic-era economic equity payments, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) gap-filling, and applying for and being awarded the Preschool Development Grant.
- Providers described navigating grant language compliance word by word, and editing out terms that may draw federal scrutiny. Participants raised concern that over time, this erodes institutional clarity about what Vermont is trying to accomplish and for whom—a cost that’s real but hard to quantify.
- Vermont lacks the kind of coordinated funders’ collaborative that exists in other states. Multiple participants identified this as a gap and acknowledged that philanthropy may have a bigger role to play in supporting compliance navigation, workforce investment, and systems coordination in a way that isn’t currently organized at a statewide level.
- The 1115 Medicaid waiver renegotiation expected in approximately two years was named as a significant pressure point to watch, particularly for Vermont’s ability to effectively fund supports for young children and their families, such as mental health services in schools.
What We’re Taking Forward
A theme that surfaced in the large-group share-back after the small groups met: across nearly every topic, Vermont has examples of heroic local and regional action—programs, collaboratives, and organizations that have stepped into gaps that should really be filled by larger, systematic statewide strategies. The problem isn’t a lack of good models. It’s that those models remain the exception. Part of BBF’s role is to elevate the models, learn from them, and make the case for the sustained investment and coordination that would expand these models statewide.
The notes from all nine groups will inform BBF’s monitoring and policy advisement in the year ahead. We are grateful to everyone who showed up, spoke honestly, and held Vermont’s children and families at the center.
Stay Connected
Join a Strategic Plan Committee. BBF’s standing committees work on many of the issues explored at the Summit.
Help us Develop the 2027 Policy Recommendations. These recommendations reflect the shared priorities of Vermont’s early childhood network and are based on your feedback and participation in meetings this summer and fall. Read more about the process and how to get involved.
Stay in the loop. If you were at the Summit and haven’t yet filled out the network survey, please do—it helps BBF stay in touch as priorities evolve.
