Building on the progress achieved in 2025, we began 2026 with strong momentum and look forward to our continued collaboration with our network of partners on behalf of the thousands of children we support, nurture, encourage, and prepare for lifelong success each and every day.
This past year was defined by growth, resilience, and a shared focus on giving every child a strong start. Every milestone reached is a direct result of your daily commitment to young children and the families who depend on us.
Together, we expanded access to early learning, strengthened program quality, and deepened family connections across Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties. Below are just a few highlights from the year we built together.
The Early Learning Coalition upheld its fiduciary responsibility in 2025 by maintaining administrative expenses well below the statutory mandate, while distributing over $220 million in child care provider payments, all while receiving clean audits and fully complying with state and federal oversight requirements - ensuring early learning programs had the resources they needed to operate without disruption. By maximizing every dollar invested in services for children, the Early Learning Coalition ensured that public funds were used efficiently and transparently, strengthening provider stability, supporting daily operations, and enabling continued investment in high-quality programming for students across our communities.
In 2025, the Early Learning Coalition’s Early Head Start program continued to make a powerful impact on our community by serving more than 750 infants, toddlers and expectant mothers with high-quality early learning and comprehensive family supports. Children received nutritious meals and snacks, access to medical homes, developmental screenings, and individualized care that supports healthy growth and school readiness. Through strong partnerships and a whole-child approach, Early Head Start also empowered families with resources, education, and connections that promote long-term stability and well-being—laying a strong foundation for our youngest learners and the future of our community.
Through our partnership with The Children’s Trust direct child care services for families has been expanded across our community. This funding increased support through Families Forward Scholarships, which serve “cliff families” who do not qualify for School Readiness subsidies, but still cannot afford the high cost of quality child care. Eligible families include those earning up to 300% of the federal poverty level. As a result, approximately 1,972 children were enrolled, and contracts were executed with 373 early learning programs, expanding access to high-quality early education for families who need it most.
Supporting Families When It Mattered Most
The Early Learning Coalition helped thousands of families maintain stable child care arrangements by receiving tuition assistance through the School Readiness Program, ensuring parents could continue working or pursuing education while their children remained in safe, nurturing, educational environments.
Our team increased efforts to connect families with developmental screenings, early intervention resources, and community-based services through coordinated outreach and referral partnerships.
Working alongside local organizations, we shared timely information with families about available supports related to food, housing, and other essential needs, helping ease pressures that can affect children’s well-being.
Broadening Access to Early Learning Opportunities
In 2025, the Early Learning Coalition served 24,582 children through School Readiness and 20,546 through Voluntary Prekindergarten (VPK), opening doors to early education experiences that prepare children for success in kindergarten and beyond.
We partnered with early learning partners to expand child care availability in high-demand neighborhoods, helping more families access quality care that meets their needs. Our network of early learning partners is 1,396 strong!
Targeted outreach in historically underserved areas increased awareness of child care financial assistance and helped more families navigate the application process for the School Readiness Program. These efforts resulted in 119,523 calls to our Call Center and 18,901 Child Care Resource and Referral connections, where families received personalized guidance and support delivered with dignity, courtesy, and respect.
Investing in Quality Classrooms and Educators
Professional learning opportunities throughout the year focused on developmentally appropriate instruction, inclusive practices, and strategies to support positive behavior. In total, 365 training sessions were delivered in 2025 — including 308 through the Professional Development Institute and 57 in partnership with The Children’s Trust through ElevatEd — reaching 15,432 early childhood educators and providing 2,585 hours of professional learning.
Instructional Support Specialists from our team worked alongside 488 instructional staff in 142 early learning programs, providing coaching and feedback that improved instructional quality, classroom organization, and developmentally appropriate learning experiences.
Elevating Family Engagement and Early Literacy
Understanding that learning begins at home, the Early Learning Coalition expanded efforts to equip families with tools and activities that support children’s growth beyond the classroom, reaching more than 4,000 families through more than 200 community outreach events, and digital engagement opportunities designed to reinforce early literacy and developmental skills at home.
Advanced planning for a countywide early literacy initiative included the development of more than 15 accessible, family-friendly resources, such as reading guides, activity sheets, informational flyers, bookmarks and free book resources in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole, aimed at encouraging daily reading and meaningful language-building moments for children from birth through age five.
Recognizing families as children’s first teachers, the Early Learning Coalition expanded family engagement and early literacy efforts throughout the year, reaching more than 4,000 families with resources and learning opportunities that support development at home. As part of these efforts, over 8,000 books were distributed to help families build home libraries and encourage daily reading routines.
Digital learning also played a key role. Through our VPK Fri-YAY series and Read, Play, Grow Early Literacy Campaign, the Coalition produced and shared 21 educational videos for families and educators, highlighting early literacy, STEM, and other school-readiness concepts in fun, accessible ways.
The Early Learning Coalition launched Reading Circles as part of the Read, Play, Grow Early Literacy Campaign. Hosted at schools and community organizations, Reading Circles bring children together for interactive shared reading experiences and provide each child with a book to take home. Events took place across 38 locations throughout Miami-Dade County.
Strengthening Community Connections
Collaboration with school districts, health partners, libraries, and community organizations helped create more coordinated systems of support for young children and smoother transitions into kindergarten.
Partnerships focused on early identification of developmental delays ensured more children were connected to services as early as possible.
The Early Learning Coalition has a new family engagement initiative! We are empowering and encouraging families to screen their children. Parents know their children best and their involvement in developmental screening promotes positive parenting, collaboration with early learning partners, and guidance on how to proceed with evaluations, therapies, or other interventions.
100% of children (n= 11,964) between the ages of birth and 5 years old in our School Readiness program were screened
99.2% of children’s screenings were completed within 45 days of enrollment and
100% of children’s screenings were completed within 60 days of enrollment
Cross-sector efforts continued to highlight the critical role early learning plays in long-term academic achievement and economic stability for families.
The achievements of 2025 belong to all of us. Your dedication inside classrooms, centers, and community spaces every day is shaping brighter futures for children across our region.
On behalf of our board of directors and our entire Early Learning Coalition team, thank you for being an essential part of this work. We are excited to continue building on this momentum with you in the year ahead.
