Start the day with coffee and conversation with fellow advocates, early educators, and leaders from across Tennessee.

Celebrate ten years of TQEE and the partners who have helped advance opportunity for Tennessee’s youngest children. We’ll reflect on what we’ve accomplished together and look ahead to the next decade, beginning with Blueprint 2030.

TQEE CEO Blair Taylor introduces the proposed framework for Blueprint 2030, joined by Linda Smith, one of the nation’s foremost child care policy experts. Drawing on the National Conference of State Legislatures’ new report, Childcare at a Crossroads, Smith will bring national context and insights to a conversation about building a mixed-delivery system that supports quality, affordability, and meaningful choices for families. Together, we’ll set the stage for participants to help shape Tennessee’s path forward.

Explore the political landscape shaping Tennessee’s next chapter and what it could mean for child care and family policy. This candid conversation will examine opportunities, challenges, and how to build support for meaningful progress, providing context for the policy choices we make and how we advance them together.

Connect with colleagues over lunch and celebrate the people at the heart of quality child care. We’ll share a short video honoring our Early Educator Award winners, followed by a conversation about strengthening Tennessee’s early educator workforce and child care businesses. Explore strategies to strengthen career pathways, improve recruitment and retention, and support competitively compensated educators and financially sustainable providers.

Too many working families face child care costs they cannot afford. Explore policy options to close the affordability gap for low- and middle-income families while ensuring providers have the resources to deliver quality care. Help shape priorities for a more dependable, accessible system of financial support.

How can Tennessee protect children’s health and safety while creating a more business-friendly environment for quality child care? Explore opportunities to modernize regulations, streamline licensing and compliance processes, and ensure clear requirements and consistent oversight. We’ll examine changes that reduce administrative burdens and costs and make it easier for providers to open, operate, and expand while preserving essential safeguards.

Investing in child care can pay dividends in recruitment, retention, and productivity. Drawing on The Child Care Advantage, TQEE’s new Tennessee Business + Family Forum report featuring 26 Tennessee employers, we’ll explore the business case and practical ways employers can participate. We’ll examine how tax incentives, public funding, and partnerships can stretch employer dollars, and what policy changes could encourage more businesses to invest.

Families need time to care for a new baby and dependable child care when they return to work. Explore paid parental leave as a complement to quality child care, what the evidence tells us, and policy approaches that support infant development, parents, and workforce attachment.

Celebrate leaders whose vision, collaboration, and persistence are creating brighter futures for Tennessee’s young children and families. Their work shows what becomes possible when communities turn commitment into action.

Close the day with the next steps for Blueprint 2030 and how you can help move its priorities forward. Get ready to bring your voice to the Rock the Hill Rally on March 8, and order your T-shirt as we build momentum together.