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The original was posted on /r/upliftingnews by /u/Silent-Resort-3076 on 2025-11-12 23:30:34+00:00.

The Ballmer Group’s gift could add up to 10,000 early childhood education slots over the next decade. It comes on the condition that the state not make further cuts to the program.

Just a snippet from the article:

• The Ballmer Group on Wednesday committed hundreds of millions of dollars for free preschool in Washington, a massive philanthropic contribution amid state budget cuts and federal rollbacks.
• The donation of up to $170 million per year for the next decade could fund 10,000 additional slots in the state’s Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, or ECEAP, for low-income families. The program currently has just over 14,000 slots statewide at over 460 locations.
• The Ballmer Group was founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie.
• Gov. Bob Ferguson called the funding “truly transformative.”
• “It’d be hard to quantify how significant that investment will be for our state,” Ferguson said at a press conference Wednesday, announcing the news at the Denise Louie Education Center in Seattle.
• As a condition of getting the gift, the state pledged no further budget cuts to the ECEAP program for the next 10 years.