History of the Commission

The Commission was established in § 2.2-208.1 of the Code of Virginia by the 2023 General Assembly via House Bill 1423/Senate Bill 1404.

The Commission has the following powers and duties outlined in :

1. Expand access to and the quality of child care statewide; 
2. Analyze existing and potential new financing opportunities, with a focus on data-driven outcomes;
3. Retain, grow, and strengthen the quality of the ECCE workforce; 
4. Gather and study information and data to accomplish its purposes; 
5. Gather and analyze data on current and projected availability, quality, cost, and affordability of ECCE services; determine needs and priorities; and develop funding recommendations focused on family choice, access, affordability, and quality; 
6. Annually report on specific expenditures, outcomes, and impact, including children served, demographics, child-level assessments, classroom-level assessment data, educator turnover and retention, and parental employment; 
7. Support the development of an integrated early childhood longitudinal data process to capture and link access, quality, and educator data with child outcomes, and facilitate the integration of this data with other longitudinal data systems; and
8. Monitor and support ongoing research and evaluation conducted by VDOE, UVA, and VECF, and any other higher education or research institutes deemed relevant, to continuously improve ECCE quality.