That's obvious as one steps into the St. Anne's Children and Family Center here in Spokane.

Since I'm doing an early education piece for our newsletter later this month, I decided to take a visit while I was here at the WSSDA conference. The two-year-old center has everything a parent is looking for when trying to find someplace to put your child in while you're at work. It's clean, it's friendly, it's secure (they have to buzz you in), trained staff and low ratios. And if you want to check on your kid during the day, there is Internet access and cameras in each room that will allow you to check on your child's classroom, or any classroom for that matter,  from your desk.

Of course center director, Lee Williams, told me that while any parent can check on any classroom, they usually stick to the one their kid's . The center takes children from low-income families as well as from families that can easily pay the $600-$700 a month charge for the center, which takes children from one month to six years. They also manage to find a place for children from the single mother and homeless family center down the street.

Centers like this, and I wish there were more of them, are critical to families trying to pay bills, climbing out of poverty and just raising kids. Williams said that if the state could help subsidize the payments of families struggling to pay the daycare bill and provide more money for training of staff, it would go a long way to making this state a leader in early education, one of the top priorities for Christine Gregoire.

When I told Williams that Early Education was listed first in the Washington Learns report, and then of course, math science ed was listed next, you could almost see her sigh in relief.

"We've been at the back of the line so long,"  she said. "It will be nice to move up closer to the front."