Event: Governor's Early Childhood Summit: The First Thousand Days

The NGA Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) awarded 10 states $10,000 grants to support Governors' Summits on Early Childhood: Alaska, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Virginia were the states to receive this award. The NGA Early Childhood Summit
grants are intended to help governors build support for a state early childhood policy agenda that incorporates the core principles, policy framework, and recommendations of the NGA Task Force on School Readiness.

Governor Rell’s summit will focus specifically on the needs of children ages birth to three in the state’s 58 most at-risk communities. Scheduled for January 15, 2008, the goal of the summit event is to:

♦ Build cross-branch state and local leadership support for a family-focused system to improve developmental and learning outcomes for Connecticut’s target cohort of “at-risk” children ages birth to three;
♦ Promote public and private sector coinvestment in strategic planning and systems change in target communities; and
♦ Develop and implement a strategic communications plan to support birth-to-three investment and systems development.

Participants will include bipartisan, crossbranch state and local policy leaders as well as a group of key stakeholders.