Welcome to the Center for District Innovation and Leadership in Early Education!
Our Mission
The Center for District Innovation and Leadership in Early Education (DIAL EE) partners with local education agencies to build capacity for implementing culturally responsive early education strategies that leverage the mixed-delivery system and community partnerships to improve student outcomes.
Our Vision
We envision a future where families experience equitable access to high-quality, culturally responsive early education through a coherent mixed-delivery system that enables children to thrive across early care and education and TK-12 systems.
Our Context
California’s Local Education Agencies (LEAs) operate within a highly complex environment, managing numerous programs governed by state and federal regulations across instructional, operational, and student support functions. Beyond these core functions, LEAs must navigate layers of local initiatives set by Superintendents and their cabinets, alongside state and federal initiatives. This environment is further influenced by a complex web of external actors shaping K–12 education.
The implementation of Universal Transitional Kindergarten (UTK) fundamentally altered this landscape, expanding LEAs’ mandate from K–12 to TK–12 to serve all four‑year‑olds who enroll. This shift has catapulted LEAs into the center of the early care and education (ECE) system as relative “new kids on the block” within a mixed‑delivery model that blends public and private funding across childcare centers, family childcare homes, Head Start, and informal providers serving children from birth to age five. While UTK strengthens the early learning continuum, it has also created significant implementation challenges, as many LEAs lack deep experience or expertise in early care and education.
Historically, the ECE system and the K–12 system operated as bifurcated systems, often misaligned in funding, philosophy, and practice. With UTK, the early education space within an LEA has become the point at which the ECE and TK–12 systems intersect and overlap—creating a cacophony of gaps, tensions, and misalignments alongside new initiatives and opportunities to improve outcomes for students when approached with care and respect, in acknowledgment of the ECE system and its existing mixed-delivery model. Realizing these opportunities, however, requires intentional coordination, shared leadership, and coherence across ECE and TK–12 systems. It is within this complex and shifting landscape that DIAL EE’s theory of change is grounded.
Blending, Braiding and Layering Funds: A Creative Approach to California’s Universal Preschool Program WEBINAR
Full implementation of California’s Universal Preschool Program began in Fall 2025. Do you have unfilled spots in state preschool? Do you have more UTK students than you expected? If you are struggling to fill spots, provide an appropriate child-driven learning environment, or remove barriers for enrollment, this webinar is for you. Watch Dr. Kelly Fountain, Director of Early Learning, Lancaster School District and Shanna Birkholz-Vasquez, Associate Director, Early Education Division, California Department of Education unpack blending, braiding, and layering to leverage funding for early education. This webinar highlighted Lancaster School District’s innovation in creating a play-based program in the mixed delivery system.
The webinar was hosted on March 9, 2026.