DC Council Closes FY27 Budget With Major Restorations for Early Childhood Education

On Tuesday, June 23, the DC Council took its final vote on the Fiscal Year 2027 budget, closing one of the most consequential budget cycles for early childhood education in recent years.

For early childhood educators, directors, families, and advocates across the District, the final vote brought meaningful relief. The Council restored significant funding to the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, strengthened the Child Care Subsidy Program, and preserved HealthCare4ChildCare. These decisions helped prevent pay cuts for early childhood educators and protected critical supports for families seeking affordable, high-quality early learning opportunities.

The final budget includes $73.5 million for the Pay Equity Fund, with $61.5 million restored by the Council for educator compensation. It also maintains $12 million for HealthCare4ChildCare and adds $39 million to the Child Care Subsidy Program in FY27, bringing the total subsidy investment to $153 million. In addition, the Council added $10 million in FY26, a step that advocates say should help OSSE lift the current enrollment freeze and begin opening additional priority groups on the waitlist.

The outcome did not come quietly or quickly. The budget season began with a proposal from the Mayor that would have deeply weakened DC’s early education system. The proposed budget would have eliminated the salary component of the Pay Equity Fund and underfunded the Child Care Subsidy Program. For early childhood educators, that raised the possibility of reduced wages after years of progress toward fairer compensation. For programs, it created serious concerns about retention, staffing, and financial stability. For families, it threatened to make affordable early learning even harder to access.

Over the past several months, DCAEYC followed the budget process closely and joined partners, coalitions, early childhood education professionals, families, and community advocates through hearings, rallies, walkarounds, Council visits, and budget votes at the John A. Wilson Building. The advocacy was steady, visible, and personal. Educators spoke about what pay equity means in their lives. Directors explained how funding instability affects staffing and daily operations. Families shared the reality of navigating work, school, and caregiving while access to affordable early learning remains uncertain.

That message also reached Councilmembers through public testimony, office meetings, hallway conversations, email campaigns, phone calls, rallies, and community hearings. Coalition partners helped organize a broad and persistent response. According to one of our partners, Under 3 DC, more than 100 coalition members testified in support of early education, more than 250 people participated in walkarounds at the Wilson Building, and more than 3,000 emails were sent to the Council over the past several months.

The final budget reflects that collective pressure. After the final vote, Travis Ballie, Coalition Director of the Under 3 DC Early Childhood Coalition, described the result as a rescue of the early education sector. He emphasized that the Council’s restoration of more than $100 million to early education programs did not happen on its own. It happened because educators, families, directors, community members, and partners organized, showed up, and made the consequences of inaction impossible to ignore.

Councilmembers also acknowledged the people behind the advocacy. Councilmember Christina Henderson recognized early childhood educators as essential workers in the community, noting the difficulty and importance of their work with DC’s youngest learners. Councilmember Brianne Nadeau expressed gratitude for early childhood educators and support for restoring funding to the Pay Equity Fund. Councilmember Matthew Frumin underscored that early learning access, subsidy funding, and pay equity must work together for the system to function.

For educators, the significance of this budget is immediate. The restored funding should prevent pay cuts and help programs continue compensating early childhood educators under the Pay Equity Fund structure. That matters because compensation is not an abstract policy issue. It shapes whether educators can remain in the field, support their own families, pursue credentials, and continue the work that families depend on every day.

For families, the subsidy investment is also critical. While the final budget does not fully eliminate the need for continued advocacy, the additional funding is expected to prevent thousands of children from being locked out of affordable early learning and should help move the District closer to reopening access for families currently waiting.

This budget is not a complete victory for every program or every need. Partners have already noted that some areas remain underfunded, and broader questions about sustainable revenue and long-term investment remain unresolved. But for early childhood education, the final vote marks a major shift from where the budget process began.

DCAEYC is grateful to Chairman Mendelson and the Councilmembers who listened to early childhood education professionals, families, directors, advocates, and partners throughout this process. We are also grateful to DC Action, Under 3 DC, DC Fiscal Policy Institute, DC Fair Budget Coalition, and the many coalition members who helped keep early childhood education at the center of the budget conversation.

Most of all, this moment belongs to the educators and families who told the truth about what these investments mean.

The final vote showed that sustained advocacy can change the direction of a budget. It also showed that DC’s early childhood field is organized, informed, and deeply committed to protecting the children, families, and educators who make this city stronger.

The work is not over. But this budget season proved something important: when early childhood education professionals, families, programs, advocates, and partners move together, the District listens.