Water Cooler Partners

The Water Cooler is an inclusive, broad-based collaborative, which provides a place for California’s birth-to-five advocates and stakeholders to share ideas and efforts , discovering common policy ground and coordinating advocacy efforts.

• The Water Cooler was formed to help facilitate and build connections between various elements of the ECE and K-12 systems, including sharing of information on program development plans and legislative and budget work.
• The Water Cooler works to support and improve current legislative and budget efforts and to catalyze new efforts around early care and education (ECE) by:
  
  • Coordinating and disseminating information about upcoming budget and legislative hearings both at the state and federal level
    
  • Providing advocacy support and policy development to ongoing efforts in both ECE and K-12
    
  • Supporting and encouraging stakeholder involvement in the work of the California Early Learning Quality Improvement System Advisory Committee
    
  • Monitoring and responding to new federal funding sources
• The ultimate goals of the Water Cooler policy workgroups:
  
  • Uncover existing policy consensus and help to forge pragmatic solutions to less settled issues
    
  • Create specific policy recommendations to support and improve the ECE system in California
    
  • Create a general policy platform for the ECE system in California
    
  • Prioritize and sequence recommendations and time lines based on differing political and revenue scenarios

Our process:

• The Water Cooler is convened approximately every quarter in an open, egalitarian meeting that brings together an inclusive and broad-based collaborative, including stakeholders from preschool, zero to three, prenatal to five, birth to eight, K-12, P-16, higher education, teachers, providers, administrators, parents, activists, advocates, philanthropists, labor, business and policy makers.
• Work group meetings are also open and meet based on the direction of the committee and co-chairs. Committee meeting information and progress reports are available at Advancement Project Los Angeles.
• Upcoming Water Cooler and workgroup meetings are also listed here on the Plan for Preschool portal calendar

In March, the Water Cooler held its first annual conference, drawing 500 people from around the state. Information from the conference is available at Advancement Project Los Angeles.