What’s New?

Share with Legislators ACNJ president’s Op-ed supporting legislative bills to invest in child care.

Posted on April 21, 2022

It's time to address the long-time child care crisis in New Jersey.  The pandemic didn’t create it – it exposed it.

Let's urge legislators to support Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz's comprehensive package of bills that would help parents, strengthen programs and support staff. One bill, S-2476 (pending introduction), incentivizes the development of child care for infants and toddlers, the most difficult for families to find.

Share the op-ed authored by ACNJ President Cecilia Zalkind describing this historic proposal.

The package comes with a $360 million price tag. But we need to tell state leaders that this is an investment we cannot afford not to make.

Read the Op-Ed

New Jersey's commitment to children has led to extraordinary advances, putting the state ahead of the rest of the country and most importantly, improving the lives and well-being of newborns and preschool-age children.

But we are still missing the babies.

Let's make some noise for child care  and take a moment to send a message to your state leaders that this is a critical investment for children, families and for our economy.

During this legislative session, ACNJ is calling on the state to:

  • Improve access to infant/toddler care by increasing the number of available child care programs;
  • Expand child care assistance for parents of very young children; and
  • Support the child care workforce, who have historically been underfunded and underappreciated
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Unlocking Potential: Our Ambitious Roadmap to Close Inequities for NJ Babies

Posted on June 24, 2020

In order to give all children a strong and equitable start in life, New Jersey must begin with an intentional focus on eliminating racial inequities and disparities in access to essential supports, according to a new report, Unlocking Potential, released today by Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ).

Read Unlocking Potential, A Roadmap to Making New Jersey the Safest, Healthiest and Most Supportive Place to Give Birth and Raise a Family

The statewide plan, funded by the Pritzker Children's Initiative (PCI), provides the action steps needed to achieve concrete targets related to early childhood development with the goal of ensuring an additional 25 percent of low-income infants and toddlers - 27,000 young children - will have access to high-quality services by 2023. These supports include access to quality child care, home visiting, health and mental health services.

Unlocking Potential is based on the belief that we all have a role to play in achieving equity and that supporting equal opportunities at the start of a child’s life is the first step in eliminating disparities that impact outcomes for babies, families and communities. The foundation for change is in place; the opportunity is now!

 

New law expands parents’ rights to advance notice before IEP meetings

Posted on August 15, 2025

Nina-web

Nina Peckman, Esq.
ACNJ Staff Attorney

 

Starting with the 2025-2026 school year, a new special education law will expand a parent’s right to receive advance notice regarding certain information before an annual IEP meeting takes place.

Under federal and state special education laws, parents have what are known as “participation rights”. The purpose of these laws is to ensure that parents have a meaningful opportunity to provide their input regarding their child’s education program. These rights also help parents provide well-informed consent when their written consent is required by law. Some of the existing laws that support these participation rights require school districts:

  • Explain the child study team evaluation reports and the proposed IEP
  • Share the reasons for child study team decisions
  • Provide advanced notice for school meetings and prior to implementing school decisions

The new law signed by Governor Murphy on July 22, 2025 requires additional notices and information to be provided to parents before an annual IEP meeting. (The annual IEP meeting is the meeting that must occur yearly around the anniversary date of the initial agreed upon IEP.) This law will help parents better understand their children’s progress and proposed IEPs and to be more effective at offering input and asking important questions at IEP meetings.

Per the law, at least 2 business days before the annual review, parents must receive a written statement by regular mail--and by email if the child study team has the parent’s email address. The statement should include:

  • What will be discussed at the meeting
  • The student’s current levels of academic and functional performance
  • A list of names of any required school staff IEP members who will not attend and a statement of their observations and recommendations for the program and services they are responsible for. Parents have the right to reschedule the meeting for a date when all IEP members can attend.
  • The parent’s right to provide input and feedback at the IEP meeting

The law also requires the New Jersey Department of Education to establish an IEP Working Group “to provide recommendations to the Department regarding methods to improve the development and implementation of the IEPs and to ensure parent involvement in the process. “ The committee will be made up of administrators, teachers, parents and advocates and child study team members.

For more information See P.L. 2025 c.107: https://pub.njleg.state.nj.us/Bills/2024/S4000/3982_R1.PDF

For further information, feel free to contact Nina Peckman, ACNJ Staff Attorney at npeckman@acnj.org.

Join us for September’s Lunch and Learn on Midwifery and Doulas

Posted on August 14, 2025

Sep 17 Lunch N Learn

Join us for a Lunch and Learn session that explores how midwives and doulas provide critical support to families before, during, and after childbirth.

Wednesday, September 17 @ 12PM Via Zoom

We’ll discuss the benefits for maternal and infant health, how these services can improve birth outcomes, and the barriers families face in accessing them. We’ll also look at policy and community efforts that expand access, particularly for underserved populations. Stay tuned for details about the speakers.

Why New Jersey’s Next Governor Must Prioritize Early Childhood Educator Compensation

Posted on August 11, 2025

headshot of Meghan Tavormina
Meghan Tavormina
Director of Public Policy & Advocacy at NJ Association for the Education of Young Children (NJAEYC)

The Math Doesn’t Add Up

Hard work and low pay rarely lead to retention, quality, or professional growth; yet that’s the reality facing much of New Jersey’s early childhood education workforce. Unlike other minimum-wage jobs designed for high turnover or temporary employment, early education roles demand skill, experience, and emotional labor. These aren’t stepping-stone positions. They’re foundational to a child’s development and a family’s stability. And yet, far too often, early educators are paid less than a living wage.

We know that raising children is expensive. So why is caring for and educating them treated as low-wage work? The answer lies in what we choose to value and how our public systems have failed to keep pace with our growing need for child care. Consider this: a child care center accepting a family's subsidy for infant care through New Jersey’s Child Care Assistance Program receives just $7.75 per hour. With a 1:4 teacher-to-infant ratio, that translates to $31 per hour in total revenue to cover one teacher’s time. Out of that, the center must cover rent, insurance, supplies, administrative costs, utilities, and breaks, leaving very little for wages. The math doesn’t add up. And it’s time our next governor helps fix it.

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Let's make children and their
families the center of the
2025 Election Campaign.

A Legacy of Devaluation: How History Shapes Today’s Pay Gap

The early childhood profession has long suffered from devaluing language and policies. Terms like “daycare,” “babysitter,” or “hired help” have shaped public perception and reinforced the notion that early care is not real education, and certainly not worthy of real investment. These messages haven’t just shaped how society sees early educators; they’ve also influenced how educators view themselves. The roots of this problem run deep. Child care in the U.S. has historically depended on the labor of Black and Brown women, whose work was undervalued and underpaid. This legacy continues to shape today’s compensation structures.

For decades, early care was viewed primarily as a service to supervise children while their parents were at work rather than a field requiring knowledge, expertise, and deep emotional labor. And yet, as research has confirmed the critical importance of the first five years of life, we’ve seen moments where policymakers have acknowledged our value — from the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 that made it all the way to President Nixon’s desk before it was vetoed, to the creation of Head Start, to Abbott preschool in New Jersey, and more recently, to post-COVID compensation gains in states like New Mexico, Washington D.C., and Kentucky. While New Jersey has made meaningful strides in areas like apprenticeships, mixed-delivery preschool, scholarship supports, and career lattices, we have yet to take the leap on compensation. Until we do, early education will remain stuck at the intersection of essential and expendable – a career in name but not in pay.

$32,000 a Year: A Salary That Keeps Families in Poverty

The data paints a clear and troubling picture: early childhood educators in New Jersey earn, on average, $32,000 per year – far below what is needed to support a family in this state. According to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, nearly half of child care workers nationally rely on some form of public assistance. In New Jersey, even lead teachers with degrees and years of experience often earn only minimum wage or slightly more. These low wages contribute directly to high turnover, disrupting continuity of care and undermining child development.

Preschool Gains, Infant-Toddler Gaps: A Broken System

While preschool expansion has opened the door to increased compensation in some settings, particularly for qualified teachers working in publicly funded mixed-delivery programs, it is not a comprehensive solution. Infant, toddler, and two-year-old teachers are consistently left out of wage improvements, despite performing equally demanding and developmentally critical work. Additionally, many community-based providers remain excluded from preschool funding opportunities due to budget constraints or district-level decisions, creating a two-tiered system where some educators benefit and others remain stuck in poverty-level wages.  Even in community-based programs where preschool expansion has led to improvements in wages and benefits, early educators still earn less than their in-district counterparts.

Brain Science Is Clear, But Our Policies Aren’t

This fractured landscape undermines stability and fails to recognize early educators as the skilled professionals they are. Brain science confirms that nurturing, responsive relationships in the earliest years shape lifelong outcomes. Until our investments match that science, across the full birth-to-five spectrum and across all settings, New Jersey’s early education system will continue to fall short of its potential for children, families, and the workforce that serves them.

A Message to New Jersey’s Next Governor: Value the Workforce, Secure the Future

To New Jersey’s next governor: The strength of our child care system and the future of our youngest learners depend on how we value the people who care for and educate them. High-quality early learning cannot exist without a stable, well-supported workforce. Yet today, too many early educators live in poverty, leave the field out of necessity, and are denied the professional recognition and compensation they deserve. We have the tools to change that. With bold leadership, we can build a system where early educators earn a living wage, have access to training and benefits, and are able to support their own families while supporting ours. This is more than a workforce issue; it’s a matter of opportunity, economic growth, and doing right by New Jersey’s children. The path forward is clear. What we need now is the political will to walk it.