Massachusetts CPPI — Community Needs Assessment & Strategic Planning

ECA has worked with numerous Massachusetts cities, towns, and school districts participating in the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care’s Commonwealth Preschool Partnership Initiative (CPPI).

CPPI supports communities in expanding access to high-quality preschool through partnerships between public schools and community-based early education programs. The state’s planning process calls for communities to establish a leadership structure, conduct a needs assessment, and use the findings to develop a strategic implementation plan.

ECA customized the process for each community rather than using a one-size-fits-all assessment. Our work combined existing community, school, EEC, enrollment, licensing, and workforce data with surveys, interviews, focus groups, and conversations with families, educators, program directors, school personnel, Early Intervention providers, and other community partners.

Our work included:

• Examining the local early childhood system as a whole, looking beyond the number of available preschool seats to understand affordability, hours and schedules families need, workforce recruitment and retention, program quality, professional learning, family engagement, special education, inclusion, and transitions.
• Engaging community stakeholders as partners in the process, including families, early educators, community-based providers, school district leaders, Early Intervention, special education professionals, and other community organizations.
• Integrating quantitative and qualitative evidence to identify where data and stakeholder experiences converged, where perspectives differed, and where additional investigation or action was needed.
• Focusing planning around three interconnected priorities: expanding access to affordable, high-quality preschool; strengthening locally aligned quality; and supporting equitable access to special education and inclusion.
• Moving communities from findings to action. ECA helped leadership teams review findings, set priorities, consider solutions, and develop practical goals and action steps. Strategic plans addressed program strategies, policy changes, new or reallocated resources, funding and sustainability, implementation stages, and ongoing stakeholder engagement.