The City of Chicago and the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) announced a $7M City investment to provide a cost-per-child increase towards salaries for early childhood professionals. At least 3,000 early childhood workers across at least 86 early care and education providers will receive wage increases averaging 5-10 percent to bring their pay closer in line with the broader K-12 education workforce. Through this investment, all state-funded workers will see a 5-10 percent increase and in their salary. Head Start workers will receive a one-time bonus of 2 percent. The average salary for non-federally funded early childhood workers is $35,000, well below the average salary for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) educators. DFSS Children Services Division will coordinate a research and evaluation project with Center for Early Learning Funding Equity (CELFE) to provide a comprehensive analysis of models and make recommendations for a funding strategy that allocates funding to community-based organizations that align salaries to parity with CPS. The results from this research will inform an Early Learning Workforce Salary Funding Strategy to be incorporated into DFSS’s next Early Learning RFP.