The latest Head Start reauthorization bill and President Biden’s 2025 fiscal budget include much-needed funding increases to raise educator wages. However, these gains are fragile, as evidenced by a recent Washington, D.C., budget proposal that would eliminate the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, a program created in 2021 to achieve pay parity between early childhood educators and their K-12 counterparts.

As at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson pointed out, “It feels like we’re balancing the budget on the backs of Black and brown women in the childcare sector.”