City Seats

Since 2018, Agenda for Children, and the City of New Orleans have partnered to run the City Seats program. Agenda for Children administers the program, contracting with 41 early care and education centers across the City.  New Orleans Public Schools (NOLA-PS) coordinates the application and enrollment process for City Seats.  Additionally, teams of high-quality wraparound support providers deliver various comprehensive services to participating children, families, and staff at centers.

The City Seats program is driven by three goals: 

• To increase access to early learning;
• To improve the overall quality of participating early learning centers;
• To meet the diverse needs of children and teachers by providing wraparound support services to children, caregivers and families.

Increasing access to high-quality early care and education in a child’s earliest years provides a strong foundation for later learning, behavior, and health outcomes. In fact, 90% of a child’s brain is developed by the time they are 5 years old. 

In addition, increasing access to high-quality early care means that the  New Orleans’ workforce and economy will be stronger both immediately due to parents’ increased participation in the workforce and in the long-term as the next generation of workers is better prepared to succeed in the workplace.

Before the early childhood millage was passed, less than a quarter of low-income children three and under had access to any publicly-funded early childhood education in Orleans Parish.  Additionally, an estimated 67% of young children in New Orleans live in families where all available parents work.  United Way’s recent ALICE report (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) found that childcare is the single largest expense for low-income working families in New Orleans.

To address this need, the City of New Orleans and members of the early education community including Agenda and the New Orleans Early Education Network (NOEEN), an advisory committee composed of community partners, early care and education stakeholders and advocates, came together to create the City Seats program in 2017. City Seats has significantly increased access to quality early childhood education for low-income young children in Orleans Parish and improved the quality of centers participating in the program, growing from serving 50 children in 2018 to 1,000 today. Additionally, the local investment from the millage allows the program to draw down matching funds from the state’s Early Childhood Education Fund (ECEF), enabling additional children to gain access to free, high-quality early care and education.

 There are nearly 5,000 children in Orleans Parish who may be eligible for the program but are not currently being served. We currently serve 1,000 children through City Seats.

• Families can use a single online application from NOLA Public Schools (NOLA-PS) to apply for most publicly funded seats in early childhood education programs in New Orleans.
• Families can apply for seats in schools, early learning centers and Head Start centers through: enrollnolaps.com  
• NOLA-PS’ three Family Resource Centers are also available for families who would like to ask questions and learn more about the application process.  More information can be found at: enrollnolaps.com/connect

City Seats provides a set of wraparound supports valued at ~$2,500 per child to help ensure that the child, the child’s family, and the program will be successful. Wraparound supports include infant and early childhood mental health consultation, medical care coordination, teacher professional development, hearing, vision, and developmental screenings, and 1:1 coaching to classroom educators to support quality child-teacher interactions in each classroom.

In addition to the wraparound supports, City Seats also supports staff to manage other program components, including administrative data systems, monitoring, and an independent program evaluation conducted by Child Trends. There is also funding for enrollment support, workforce development, and facilities.

Agenda and the City Seats program are thankful to partner with many wonderful organizations, including the Louisiana Department of Education, NOLA Public Schools, the City of New Orleans, Children’s Hospital’s ThriveKids, Tulane University School of Social Work, Tulane University Institute of Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health, and T-NOLA Languages.

• Agenda for Children convenes and works closely with providers, offering professional development for teachers and leaders, including in-person 1:1 coaching to all educators in the program and group workshops.
• The City of New Orleans provides program oversight and accountability.
• NOLA Public Schools verifies families’ eligibility and conducts a coordinated enrollment process.
• ThriveKids provides comprehensive care coordination, screenings and early intervention supports.
• Tulane Mental Health Consultation Services (T-MHCS) works to support social, emotional, behavioral, and mental health of City Seats children and early education staff. They share information with other wrap-around services in the City Seats Program and City Seats staff in order to ensure that necessary referrals are made.
• Tulane School of Social Work (TSSW) City Seats Parent-Child Support Team (PCST): The TSSW City Seats Parent-Child Support Team works to support City Seats families experiencing barriers to accessing services, including housing, transportation, food insecurity, and other resources. The team also offers support to City Seats families if their child is not meeting the City Seats' attendance requirement.
• T-NOLA Languages-T-NOLA improves language access for families most comfortable in languages other than English by providing interpretation and translation services to teachers, program leaders, and families.

NOLA Public Schools manages the enrollment process and helps families understand their publicly-funded early care and education options, as well as how to apply for those seats. NOLA Public Schools also provides special education identification and special education services for children aged three to five regardless of whether they attend an early learning program.

The New Orleans Early Education Network (NOEEN) is a collaborative partnership between every publicly-funded early education provider in the city. NOEEN is managed by Agenda for Children and NOLA Public Schools.

The NOEEN steering committee is a collaborative body that represents child care providers, city officials, and more. They are responsible for guiding strategic decisions for all publicly funded seats in Orleans Parish. They also approve the Coordinated Funding Request recommendations, advise on how to improve the enrollment system, and work with the City of New Orleans and the program administrators to approve an annual spending plan.   

NOEEN’s work is guided by a Steering Committee comprised of representatives from schools, centers, the City of New Orleans, Head Start and Early Steps. All Steering Committee meetings are open to the public and information about past and future meetings is available to the public. Learn more.

• Agenda for Children and New Orleans Public Schools provide monthly and annual reports on millage-funded activities to both the City of New Orleans and the City Council. Agenda for Children and NOLA-PS' roles as a Co-Lead Agencies mean that the Louisiana Department of Education provides oversight of network activities, including the enrollment process, observations, and funding requests.
• The NOEEN Steering Committee provides oversight of the City Seats program and millage funding, to include the overall millage budget, application processes through which centers become City Seats providers, the enrollment process for families, and the accountability system for providers.
• City Seats is being evaluated by Child Trends, a nationally-recognized research institution.
• As a 501(c)3 non-profit organization receiving state funding, Agenda for Children receives annual audits, which have consistently had no material findings.
• As program administrator, Agenda for Children receives quarterly reports from all wraparound service providers and collects daily attendance data from every participating center. Additionally, every center receives quarterly on-site visits to ensure they are meeting program requirements.

City Seats was evaluated by the Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center in the first five years of the program to ensure high-quality programming is delivered. Among many findings, the evaluations to date have found that NOEEN and partners have successfully increased access to early care and education in New Orleans and also increased quality in child care centers. In 2021, the Louisiana Department of Education matched private and public investment in the City Seats program and doubled the program’s size. The program is currently being evaluated by Child Trends.

• Year One Findings (2018-2019)
• Year Two Findings (2019-2020)
• Year Three Findings (2020-2021)
• Year Five Findings (2022-2023)
• Year Six Findings (2023-2024)
  • 2023-2024 City Seats Evaluation Executive Summary
  • Select Findings From the 2023-2024 City Seats Evaluation
• 2024-2025 City Seats Evaluation Executive Summary

The City Seats program serves children ages 0-3. Most K-12 schools legally cannot serve children under the age of four because they are not licensed to do so. Two of our program partners-Hoffman Early Learning Center and ReNEW-are licensed child care centers that are affiliated with charter management organizations.

Administrative costs are used primarily for staffing (approximately eight team members spend a portion of their time on this program), including staff to administer the program, provide financial and programmatic oversight, and also support indirect operating costs. In addition, Agenda for Children is required to use a portion of these funds to contract with an independent external program evaluator. Total administrative costs are less than 3% of the overall funding, well below national averages for other community millage efforts.

Scholarships are $12,000/seat per year per child and are paid directly to the early learning program providing services on a monthly basis. The funding rate was established in 2017 for municipal seats using Early Head Start comparisons for similar services and scale. 

Child care is unaffordable for many families in New Orleans, especially for single parents and families with multiple young children. In contrast to Kindergarten through 12th grade, which is not only free but also permits higher teacher-to-student ratios, quality early care and education requires low teacher-to-child ratios. This greatly increases the cost, as early learning programs need to hire many more teachers than an elementary school would to serve the same number of children, yet they don’t have the same stable sources of funds. 

A well-functioning program also requires comprehensive support for children and families so that all children can reach their full potential. Program supports include professional development and coaching for the educators, parenting support and training, health and developmental screenings, and more. Early childhood education is also a unique opportunity for identifying children in need of early intervention through vision, hearing, and developmental screenings. These wraparound supports can help change a child's life by connecting them to critical services that enable them to thrive.