Friday, April 18, 2008
More Cuts To Child Care Funding...
Child Care Works wants you to know that a $9 million dollar child care cut has been proposed in Minnesota...
The Senate proposes to transfer $9 million out of the Basic Sliding Fee child care appropriation to help solve the state's budget deficit. These funds are allocations not yet spent by counties for Basic Sliding Fee child care. Each year, these unspent funds are redistributed to counties with families on the waiting lists.
Basic Sliding Fee child care helps working families access affordable quality early care and education. This $9 million would provide child care to approximately 900 families. There are currently about 3,700 families in Minnesota on the waiting list.
What Can You Do?
Please contact the chairs of the conference committee a.s.a.p.:
· Rep. Lyndon Carlson (Crystal) at 651-296-4255
· Sen. Dick Cohen (St Paul) at 651-296-5931
Give the message:
We ask for your support of the House position which proposes no cuts to Basic Sliding Fee child care – and leaves the funding in the program to support the families that qualify for the program and have been on the waiting list.
Background...
Early this session members of both the House and Senate said that they would spare early childhood from cuts in this year’s supplemental budget bill. The House has lived up to its promise and has left early childhood alone. On the Senate side, education spending for early childhood has also been spared and the Senate has even included as small increase of $936, 000 for early childhood screening. However, once again, child care is subject to cuts. This may be a sign of a bigger problem: that legislators still don’t see child care as early education.
While the legislature faces the difficult task of addressing the nearly $1 billion deficit, cutting child care at this time is a missed opportunity for helping families who may be experiencing financial strain.
Smaller cuts are slated for child care development grants (grants to programs designed to improve the quality of early care and education settings) as well as cuts to Pre-K Allowances (provides $4,000 allowances to low-income families for high quality early care and education services).
If you are able to make additional calls, please contact the other members of the Conference Committee:
Child Care Works wants you to know that a $9 million dollar child care cut has been proposed in Minnesota...
The Senate proposes to transfer $9 million out of the Basic Sliding Fee child care appropriation to help solve the state's budget deficit. These funds are allocations not yet spent by counties for Basic Sliding Fee child care. Each year, these unspent funds are redistributed to counties with families on the waiting lists.
Basic Sliding Fee child care helps working families access affordable quality early care and education. This $9 million would provide child care to approximately 900 families. There are currently about 3,700 families in Minnesota on the waiting list.
What Can You Do?
Please contact the chairs of the conference committee a.s.a.p.:
· Rep. Lyndon Carlson (Crystal) at 651-296-4255
· Sen. Dick Cohen (St Paul) at 651-296-5931
Give the message:
We ask for your support of the House position which proposes no cuts to Basic Sliding Fee child care – and leaves the funding in the program to support the families that qualify for the program and have been on the waiting list.
Background...
Early this session members of both the House and Senate said that they would spare early childhood from cuts in this year’s supplemental budget bill. The House has lived up to its promise and has left early childhood alone. On the Senate side, education spending for early childhood has also been spared and the Senate has even included as small increase of $936, 000 for early childhood screening. However, once again, child care is subject to cuts. This may be a sign of a bigger problem: that legislators still don’t see child care as early education.
While the legislature faces the difficult task of addressing the nearly $1 billion deficit, cutting child care at this time is a missed opportunity for helping families who may be experiencing financial strain.
Smaller cuts are slated for child care development grants (grants to programs designed to improve the quality of early care and education settings) as well as cuts to Pre-K Allowances (provides $4,000 allowances to low-income families for high quality early care and education services).
If you are able to make additional calls, please contact the other members of the Conference Committee:
- Rep. Mary Murphy (Hermantown) 651-296-2676/ 800-890-5428
- Rep. Jean Wagenius (Minneapolis) 651-296-4200
- Rep. Tom Rukavina (Virginia) 651-296-0170/ 888-682-3205
- Rep. Dennis Ozment (Rosemount) 651-296-4306
- Sen. Don Betzold (Fridley) 651-296-2556
- Sen. Linda Higgins (Minneapolis) 651-296-9246
- Sen. David Tomassoni (Chisolm) 651-296-8017
- Sen. Dennis Fredrickson (New Ulm) 651-296-8138
Don't let our government make child care unobtainable for even more families!
// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 4:14 PM 
