About Ready Regions

With steady investment and bipartisan support from Virginia’s governors and legislature, local Smart Beginnings have brought public and private leaders together to collaborate on priorities for young children since 2005. Building from this asset, Ready Regions will bring unprecedented levels of coordination, accountability, and family engagement to early education programs in every community in the Commonwealth by:

• Covering all geographic areas of the state so that every child and family in Virginia will benefit
• Striking the important balance between maintaining consistent standards across regions, while enabling flexibility to address local needs and priorities
• Promoting greater efficiency and consistency of standards through a new 9-region model
• Enabling regional leads to work closely with the Virginia Department of Education to implement new quality standards, aligned with robust data collection and reporting
• Empowering regional leads to more effectively manage and disperse grants from state and federal sources by simplifying distribution and oversight, covering all areas in the state

Full Ready Regions map description

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a bright light on the importance of a strong child care system to the well-being of children, families, and communities. Launch of the Ready Regions network is a critical component of bipartisan efforts to reimagine our child care system in the wake of the COVID crisis. This includes the July 2021 consolidation of child care oversight at the state level to the Virginia Department of Education, creating a single point of accountability for early childhood education. Through public-private partnerships at the regional level, Ready Regions will allow every child and family to benefit from greater access to quality child care services.

The Virginia Early Childhood Foundation has put together resources related to Ready Regions on its website. You can also contact info@vecf.org.