A surge in federal pandemic aid helped Arizona finally stabilize its early childhood education system. Now, providers are bracing for cuts that could reverse those gains as that money dries up.
In just four years, early childhood education funding increased by nearly $1 billion — from $727 million during the 2018-19 school year to over $1.6 billion in 2022-23. It has since dropped to $1.2 billion in the 2024-25 school year and is expected to decline further.
That's according to a new report from Read On Arizona, an early literacy improvement initiative launched in 2013.
Most of the funds in 2023 were used to stabilize the early childhood education workforce, with a large sum of the roughly $552 million distributed that year going to support livable wages.
Now, with those funding streams gone, programs may have to forego staff stipends, reorganize classrooms, or see an overall decrease in quality, Lori Masseur told The Arizona Republic. She is the early learning director for Read On Arizona.
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“When we had federal COVID relief dollars coming into the state, what we heard anecdotally from several leaders and from different early childhood program providers was: For the first time, Arizona's early childhood system was beginning to be adequately funded.” she said. “When we began to lose those dollars, there are tough conversations that had to happen around how do we sustain these efforts?”
Its recent Arizona Early Childhood Fiscal Map looked at funding streams for early childhood education across the state. This consists of children from birth to age 5 — or before a child enters kindergarten — as well as early literacy, which is from kindergarten through third grade.
Arizona’s funding focused on early literacy
Federal funding for Arizona's early childhood education during the pandemic nearly doubled between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school year from $600 million to $1.1 billion. During that period, state investments remained relatively flat at about $175 million per year. Since then, Arizona increased its investments in early childhood education with a total of $203 million for the 2024-25 school year.
The report found that 88% of the state's early childhood education funding came from federal dollars, but early literacy programs were funded almost entirely by state dollars at 97%. Arizona's funding was distributed in large part through initiatives such as the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant, Move On When Reading, Foundational Literacy Coaches, and the Early Literacy Grant.
The Foundational Literacy Coaches grant has also been responsible for deploying staff in rural Arizona who help teachers implement improved reading techniques. Data from the state Department of Education shows schools that received the grant for three years saw a 30% increase in reading proficiency scores from the beginning to the end of the school year.
However, the largest contributor to early literacy funding, the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant, will expire at the end of June — leaving a $600,000 gap in state resources. The services and programs that received the most funding were child care, food and nutrition supports and preschool.
The findings will help Read On Arizona and other public and private partners identify areas to either maximize spending, look for redundancies in programs or find innovative solutions as budgets are tightened, according to Masseur. The statewide initiative launched in 2025 with the goal of getting 72% of third-graders reading at grade level over the next five years.
One of the goals of the plan is to identify funding for early learning by 2029. The report, Masseur said, serves as a foundation to inform local and state leaders where to align investments and secure funds.
“Currently only 31% of children are accessing high-quality early learning settings here in the state of Arizona," she said. “So next steps, whether that's at the local level and at the state level, is to use the data within the fiscal map in order to inform a strategic financial plan.”
Tempe partners with Read On Arizona
Tempe is a designated Read On Community, or a city that works in partnership with Read On Arizona to invest in shared goals such as Literacy Plan 2030. The initiative worked with the city to show how education services are supported by city, state, federal, and philanthropic funds.
“One of the key takeaways is how local funding complements state resources. State funding often brings scale, while city funding provides flexibility and stability within a fluctuating funding landscape,” said Marie Raymond, the community lead for Read On Tempe.
Since 2022, Tempe has invested roughly $2 million every year towards early childhood education, with the majority of those investments going to fund preschool.
According to the report, city investments remained focused on early care and education because of their direct connection to workforce participation and family stability. More reliable child care allowed families to return to work while children acquired skills needed to be successful in kindergarten and beyond, Masseur said.
Coverage of education solutions on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is partially supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation’s Arizona Community Collaborative Fund.
