OUR 2026 LEGISLATIVE AGENDA
The Building Blocks of Our Agenda
At Children’s Alliance, we envision a Washington where every child has an abundance of what they need to flourish. Achieving that future requires confronting the racial injustices embedded in our laws and policies. Our legislative agenda prioritizes the communities most impacted by systemic racism and economic exclusion, advancing policies that sustain early learning, health equity, and economic justice. This includes addressing the historic devaluation of care work, rooted in the forced labor of enslaved Black women, and ensuring that the majority female and BIPOC early learning workforce receives the recognition and economic security they deserve.
As our state faces a severe budget shortfall for the second year in a row, we must protect essential programs and services — like food assistance, early learning subsidies, and Medicaid — and fight against efforts to balance the budget on the backs of Washingtonians with low or middle incomes. To this end, we will champion progressive revenue proposals that require the wealthiest individuals and corporations to contribute their share, safeguarding the services children and families rely on.
Here are our top priorities for the 2026 legislative session:
Early Learning
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Early learning is the work that makes all other work possible. It allows parents to support their families, businesses to operate, and Washington’s economy to function.
Lawmakers must protect and sustain early learning funding to keep our economic and family infrastructure strong. Early learning programs give children the strong start they deserve and help parents stay employed. Cutting or delaying funding harms children, families, and the broader economy — landing hardest on those already facing barriers to access and opportunity.
Our early learning system is only possible because of the professionals who power it. They provide critical care and education for our youngest children while being paid in the lowest 3% of occupations. Protecting provider rates is essential for programs to stay open and financially stable. Investing in early learning means investing in families, the workforce, and Washington’s future — building a system that supports children’s growth and parents’ ability to work.
Health Equity
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Big tech companies are knowingly designing addictive online platforms that exploit children's attention and well-being for profit. They engineer products to keep kids hooked, while deflecting responsibility onto parents and downplaying the true consequences of their technology. The result is a growing crisis: depression and anxiety continue to plague our children and youth, and young people can’t stop scrolling, can't focus in school, struggle to sleep, and feel socially isolated.
To address Washington’s youth behavioral health crisis, lawmakers must pass HB 1834/SB 5708 to stop online platforms from targeting children and youth with addictive feeds and sending notifications to them during school and sleep hours.
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Every child deserves the chance to grow up curious, confident, and emotionally resilient, supported by families, schools, and communities that help them thrive. Yet Mental Health America ranks Washington 48th in the country for “youth flourishing,” a measure of whether young people demonstrate learning, persistence, and emotional regulation. Too many young people are falling short of the emotional and behavioral prosperity they deserve, in large part because our state’s current system of care is failing to adequately meet their needs.
The Washington Thriving strategic plan will align advocates, agencies, and lawmakers on a trajectory to address our fragmented and insufficient behavioral health system of care, ensuring that more young people and their families have access to the equitable care and support they deserve.
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Every child and family in Washington should have reliable access to food, health care, and the resources they need to thrive. More than 1.8 million Washingtonians depend on Apple Health/Medicaid — and 2 in 5 of them are children. Over 883,000 rely on Basic Food/SNAP to put food on their tables, with more than half of participants in families with children. These programs are jointly administered by our state and the federal government. However, recent federal legislation threatens to strip food assistance and health care access from thousands of Washington kids and families who are already furthest from opportunity. Lawmakers must take urgent and decisive action to ensure that families who depend on these programs are informed and supported to ensure their continued access to health care and nutrition.
Economic Justice
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In a state as prosperous as ours, working families should be able to build a future without being weighed down by an inequitable tax system. But Washington has the second most regressive state and local tax system in the country and does the opposite by relying heavily on sales and property taxes that hit households with low and middle incomes the hardest.
It’s time for our state to shift the burden by requiring the wealthiest individuals and corporations to pay their share for the services that benefit us all. Lawmakers must pass legislation that balances the scales and ensures that all Washingtonians can thrive.
Support Agenda
Allow flexibility for mixed age ratios to allow child care providers reliable access to meal and rest breaks.
Remove administrative barriers so child care teachers can access affordable care for their own children through Working Connections.
Prioritize required facility inspections for child care facilities and classrooms so that providers can open and serve communities.
Ensure Washington’s public preschool program, ECEAP, is as accessible as possible for qualifying families, including military families.
End isolation in school settings.
Codify the Cost of Quality Care model that was developed with providers across the state to survey the true cost of providing high quality child care.
Support implementation of the Ballmer investment in ECEAP.
Create a state commission that identifies strategies to improve outcomes for boys and men of color, especially those with low incomes and those who live in rural communities.