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It can be difficult to realize you鈥檝e reached a tipping point until you鈥檙e on the other side, like crossing a state line but not noticing until the big 鈥淲elcome To鈥︹�� sign appears. It鈥檚 becoming increasingly clear that child care just passed one declaring Welcome To Being a Policy Priority. For those politicians who haven鈥檛 yet gotten on board, the time is now 鈥� the vehicle is only picking up speed.

The latest example of this shift comes from my home state of Virginia. Jennifer McClellan is a state senator and one of the leading contenders for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination (which, in increasingly blue Virginia, makes one the overwhelming favorite to win the office; McClellan is also one of two Black women running, either of whom would make history as, amazingly, the nation鈥檚 ).

McClellan recently made her first : a for a massive $4 billion investment in early care and education that would, by 2025, make birth-to-five child care free for any Virginia family below 200% of the federal poverty line, while capping costs at 7% of income for everyone else.

It鈥檚 important to put this number in context. At the moment, the Commonwealth of Virginia a grand total of $186 million a year on early care and education, half of which is from federal sources. $4 billion over four years is鈥� more.

McClellan鈥檚 proposal comes two months after Multnomah County (OR) passed a universal pre-K ballot measure that will raise around $200 million a year for that region via a progressive income tax. Even in red states like Missouri, the tenor of how elected leaders talk about child care .

President Biden, meanwhile, a much-needed surge of $40 billion to stabilize the child care industry. His campaign鈥檚 larger would take a solid step forward by raising federal child care funding from its current level of around $10 billion a year into the range of $30 billion or so. National policy and advocacy groups are now talking about paths toward , and philanthropic entities are beginning to step up to .

If there鈥檚 a single moment that this sea change can be traced back to, it is perhaps U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren鈥檚 announcement in February 2019 of her . As one of her first major 鈥榩lans-for-that,鈥� Warren鈥檚 proposal generated and put a stake in the ground that forced the other Democratic candidates to respond. Early care and education was suddenly a topic during after primary debate.

All of this put child care into the zeitgeist long before the world heard of coronavirus, and the dam broke when the pandemic hit: over the past year, local and national media sources have been rife with stories on the child care crisis. Warren herself later offered a mile marker of sorts, bringing the story of Aunt Bee as Warren gave a speech from an early care and education center.

Of course, we don鈥檛 get Warren鈥檚 announcement without the tireless work of advocates who have in many cases been beating the drum on child care for decades. It was less than 30 years ago that a major report called inadequate child care a 鈥�.鈥� These advocacy efforts have tilled the soil and watered the seeds, often with little thanks, and now they are leading to big fruits. As a concrete example, thought leaders Julie Kashen and Katie Hamm co-authored a paper in 2017 entitled 鈥�.鈥� That paper offered the intellectual framework for the Child Care For Working Families Act first introduced (and stalled) in Congress that year, which in turn was what Warren based her plan on.

So where to from here? The first step is to broadcast far and wide that the bar has been raised. State-level politicians should no longer be allowed to call themselves champions for children and families without adopting a child care platform of 9- to 10-figure annual investments, and a pathway to true universal early care and education. This is no longer a fringe position, this should be considered the new mainstream position — and to aim any lower considered an unpalatable weakness.

Ideally, these platforms can even become part of the DNA of political parties. For instance, a group of advocates in British Columbia launched the ambitious 鈥溾�� child care plan at the turn of the 2010s; by the latter half of the decade, one of the major political parties 鈥� now in power 鈥� had as their child care calling card. In New Zealand, the mid-2000s saw the two main parties arguing not over whether to increase support for child care, but to expand publicly-supported services.

It鈥檚 important to note that increased funding is a 鈥渘ecessary but not sufficient鈥� condition for transforming a child care system. As , U.S. child care policy currently rests on a welfare frame that is badly mismatched with the actual lived experience of families with young children. For instance, systems that only support care during certain hours or through certain providers can let many families that fall through the cracks. Similarly, simply focusing on reducing how much parents are paying without also hugely increasing educator salaries doesn鈥檛 solve issues of quality.

By the same token, just because people are paying attention doesn鈥檛 mean the sector is yet able to . Child care programs spent most of 2020 struggling to stay afloat as Congress again and again provided a mere fraction of the requested support. It鈥檚 highly uncertain what the industry would be staring down had one of the two Georgia Senate runoff elections gone a different way. McClellan鈥檚 plan is currently light on details for funding sources, and British Columbia advocates for their plan to be fully implemented. When it comes to Biden’s broader child care proposals, the investments would represent progress but, as , still offer only a fraction of the needed funds.

To put it plainly: Advocates should now leverage this momentum to push for a comprehensive vision, early care and education鈥檚 own (perhaps less polarizing!) Green New Deal or Medicare For All. Moreover, now that the switch has flipped, the next step is to initiate conversations about where the new funding will come from — spoiler alert: progressive taxation — and all of the benefits that () offset the price tag.

Even if McClellan doesn鈥檛 win or Biden鈥檚 plan is not fully passed, the very fact that such significant political figures are advancing these ideas is a victory. Raising the level of ambition is the first step to achieving policy transformation; proposals for meager subsidy increases and drizzles of a few million here and there can now be left at the door. Advocates have clawed us here inch by inch. Circumstance has opened a window. It鈥檚 time to start leaping by miles.

This story originally published on Early Learning Nation and is now archived on 蜜桃影视. Learn more here.