Investing in Early Education Providers Through Business Management Trainings

 “[The] devaluation and lack of professional value given to child care is a very direct line to the racism and misogyny on which we’ve built our country. It’s time for an entirely new system that’s not built on that racist, patriarchal foundation. We can start from operationally efficient. We can start from anti-racist. It’s an amazing, exciting opportunity. At Neighborhood Villages, we feel like we have the greatest job in the world—to actually fix things.” – Sarah Muncey, co-founder of Neighborhood Villages, in Early Learning Nation

At Neighborhood Villages, we know that successfully overhauling our broken early education and care system starts with assigning professional value to early educators. Unfortunately, society has historically treated early educators more like babysitters and less like professionals, and little is done to invest in their professional development. That’s why we are working to build an example of what a comprehensive early education workforce infrastructure can look like if we properly invest in and support early educators.

In addition to our Professional Pathways program and Registered Apprenticeship Program for Early Educators, we also provide Business Management Training, which provides center-based directors (also known as Group and School Age (GSA) administrators) and family child care (FCC) providers access to high-level business training, coaching, and technical assistance.

We offer these training sessions statewide, in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), United Way Shared Services, and Urban College. All licensed early education and care and Family Child Care providers in Massachusetts are eligible to participate in the Business Management Training program, which isfree and available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese (and soon in Mandarin).

Launch and Demand for Training

The Business Management Training program was originally launched in the summer of 2021, when Neighborhood Villages worked with EEC to develop the training module for FCC providers.

From its conception, the program was wildly popular with early education providers looking to run their businesses more efficiently. In the initial outreach effort, which was a single email blast, 350 FCC providers registered — far exceeding the 60 spaces available for the training.

Seeing the interest and demand for these trainings, Neighborhood Villages and EEC expanded the training to include both FCC providers and GSA administrators in the fall of 2021. Since then, we’ve implemented and refined the FCC business training module to provide quarterly training programs and expanded the business training module for GSA providers to three training programs a year.

To date, Neighborhood Villages has served a total of 641 FCC providers and GSA administrators from across the state, including 426 FCC providers and 215 GSA program administrators.                        

The data-informed business training modules are designed to produce outcomes that increase provider knowledge of business expertise and support changes related to optimal business practices in key priority areas. They emphasize priority areas related to business planning, fiscal management, budgeting, and accounting; human resources such as compensation, benefits and issues related to equity and diversity; marketing and outreach; and the use of technology.

Tailored Trainings

Neighborhood Villages understood from the start that FCC providers and GSA programs have very specific and unique needs that necessitated training modules specifically created for each group.

So, we created training modules that incorporate two distinct curricula, coaching/support protocols, and resource suites to effectively and efficiently address business management priority areas across the diverse business structures that distinguish these forms of care.

For GSA providers, the Urban College Business Management Training classes include seven business-focused modules with individual office hours and are taught by instructors at Urban College. These modules cover topics like record keeping, budgeting, reading financial statements, marketing, financial management, business planning, and HR practices.

The trainings for FCC providers are designed to meet the unique needs of running a family child care business. Offered in partnership with EEC and United Way - Shared Services of Boston, the 12-week program includes six business-focused Zoom classes and three 1:1 coaching sessions, followed by topic-focused workshops. The goal is to help participants gain important skills in record keeping, budgeting, marketing, financial management, and business planning.

Continuous Quality Improvement

One of the cornerstones of Neighborhood Villages’ work is to continually evaluate our programs and adjust them based on feedback. For the Business Management Trainings, we partner with Brazelton Touchpoints Center to conduct exit surveys of participants and use that data for continued improvements and training iterations.

According to the data collected from Brazelton, the majority of providers reported that they felt very positively about the business training provided by Neighborhood Villages and that the classes were easy to attend and accommodated their busy schedule. They also consistently reported having made, or plan to make, modifications to their practices as a result of the trainings.

In response to feedback, Neighborhood Villages has been able to make data-driven modifications to the implementation of the businesses course based on a continuous quality improvement process. Specifically, the FCC model was adapted to include the use of gift cards to ensure access to technology, supplemental workshops, and integrated coaching. For GSA providers, small group coaching, job quality analysis, workshops, and a series on human resources were added based on feedback from participants.

The surveys prove that there is a real demand for these business management trainings and Neighborhood Villages is helping to fulfill that unmet need. We are working with Brazelton on an ongoing basis to use data for continued improvements and training iterations as we continue to offer this program and reach more providers to offer them this important resource.

In order to make child care work, we need to first make it work for the dedicated educators and providers who care for our youngest learners each day. At Neighborhood Villages, we are building a workforce development infrastructure model for the early education and care sector that will show what our system can—and should—deliver.