Dispute. Dysfunction. Dereliction. And yet…

Facing yet another threat of a government shutdown, with the nation’s capital firmly in the grip of perpetual crisis, few expected last Wednesday’s omnibus spending bill that contained a groundbreaking increase in federal funding for early childhood education.

Child care spending grew by a whopping 55%. These funds will boost the quality of child care and subsidize the cost of child care for working parents. In PA, as many as 10,000 more children will be added to our high quality early learning programs. That means that thousands of working parents can go to their jobs confident that their children are safe and learning!

Head Start and Early Head Start also got a boost, although less so with a 6% increase. The new federal funds mean that children who are in half-day Head Start programs will get a full-day seat next year.

When the President’s proposed budget slashed important support for children and families, the inclusion of new child care investments in the final budget seemed like a political improbability, if not an outright impossibility.

But, before Trump won the election there was a window of opportunity to push for kids once both candidates for President used a smidgen of their precious air time to tout the need for quality child care.

Never ones to let an opening like that go untapped, we assembled the most powerful folks we could to rally behind more federal funds for child care, including House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi, Governor Tom Wolf, Mayor Jim Kenney, then -State Representative Dwight Evans and former Republican Lt. Governor Jim Cawley.

Evans crystalized the significance of the high level local, state, and federal offices meeting, remarking, “What you’re seeing here, it’s never happened before.”

Just two months later, former Democratic California Congressman George Miller and former Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum co-authored an op-ed in USA Today declaring that early childhood development was an issue that “can unite both political parties” and must do so for a nation desperate for “meaningful solutions.”

(That Santorum seems to believe CPR can help kids deflect bullets does not negate this striking call for bipartisan cooperation for pre-k.)

Like many historic meetings held in Philadelphia, this meeting mattered.  It hit home, in a big way, evidenced by the findings of the dramatic poll showing that an overwhelming majority of both Republicans and Democrats backed pre-k as a priority for the new president.

Donald Trump won and so did Dwight Evans. Not surprisingly, the need for a greater commitment to early childhood development is also one of the few political winners in these tumultuous times.