2007: Launch of the Water Cooler conference series to bring together the education field

Our ongoing advocacy for equity in school building and gang violence reduction during the early 2000s brought Advancement Project California (APCA, today Catalyst California) into close contact with education policy makers and thinkers at all levels.

As we looked at the issues facing communities of color, we realized quality early care and education could mitigate the many stresses low-income children of color faced, giving them the tools to thrive in life.

“We could see how critical the first five years are for a child’s healthy development,” said Vickie Ramos Harris, Vice President of Policy and Programs at Catalyst California. “We wanted to really lift up early childhood education and make it the kind of topic people talk about around the office water cooler. But as advocates, we didn’t have the cohesion we needed to be effective. We got in each other’s way.”

Without a strong constituency pushing in one direction, or enough early childhood champions in the Legislature, California did not invest enough in early care and education. APCA and its allies explored ways to strengthen our impact.

Our solution: set up a high-visibility platform to bring together early childhood educators, advocates, academics, researchers, philanthropists, state education leaders and policy makers to work toward a shared vision. This would be a safe space to foster relationships, lift up key issues facing low-income children of color, and find alignment behind policy solutions.

In 2007, we launched the first Water Cooler Conference, thereafter organizing a yearly statewide convening, smaller intermediary gatherings, and interviews with network leaders to provide differing perspectives to inform our efforts.

“For me, those initial conferences were the first time I heard directly from the researchers and other leaders whose work I had been reading about, alongside various early childhood voices,” Ramos Harris said. “I can still remember the ah-ha moment I had at one of the first Water Cooler conferences. Listening to Dr. Alison Gopnik describe her brain science research deepened my understanding of the importance of the earliest years of life.”

Over time, the Water Cooler became the space to raise key early childhood issues, think holistically and strategically about addressing them, and align political pushes promoting educational equity and racial justice to support California’s youngest children to thrive. The conference featured state department leaders, local and state policymakers, and even gubernatorial candidates who realized the importance of addressing California’s early education needs to win. Elected officials, Gov. Gavin Newsom among them, embraced certain early childhood issues and became important messengers for this long-neglected policy area that even today requires dedicated attention.

As Catalyst California and its partners pursued more K-12 policy advocacy, we created a K-12 Water Cooler space. But we soon realized that to truly advance educational equity at all levels, thus bridging early childhood and K-12 education, we needed to bring all stakeholders together. In 2018, we launched the first Birth to 12th Grade Water Cooler Conference.

Today, the Water Cooler remains a collaborative space where stakeholders uplift best practices, ensure inclusion of community voices and discuss equitable policy initiatives across the birth-to-12th-grade education continuum. The Water Cooler Network interviews we conduct annually help us gain a deeper understanding of the landscape.

The Water Cooler Network’s priorities are:

• Prioritizing racial equity in policy recommendations to better serve students and families of color
• Highlighting best practices through rigorous research that promotes racial equity
• Engaging communities to ensure policies reflect their needs and fill any gaps
• Informing California's lawmakers about education policies that address the needs of the whole child
• Building broad-based support for the birth-to-12th-grade agenda across California

As we look to the future, our students, families and partners face immediate hostility from a Trump administration bent on attacking public education, dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, and ending funding for programs supporting families of color. The Water Cooler’s mission is more vital than ever.

“With our network partners, we are listening to our communities, developing urgent resources, and collaborating to stay aligned and united,” Ramos Harris said. “We share a purpose that we have been building toward for nearly two decades, so we have better strategies and brain power to counter the bigots, bullies and billionaires in this administration who are trying to tear us down.”