Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Child Care Issues & the 2008 MN Legislature...
From Child Care Works:
The 2008 Legislature has finally come to a close, finishing on Sunday night, with the passage of a budget bill, a bonding bill, and several other provisions. Here is a brief synopsis of items related to child care and early education.
The supplemental budget bill includes:
A State Advisory Council on Early Education and Care will be created. Under the federal Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007, state governors are required to create such a council. The adopted language recognizes this process, and adds to the council's duties and membership. In addition to representatives from state departments overseeing early childhood programs, and from Head Start, school districts and local ECE providers, the legislation adds four legislators and two parents with children under the age of six. Parental involvement in the Council is paid for by transferring $12,500 from the Pre-K Allowances and $12,500 from the administrative costs of the Child Care Development Fund, unless other funds become available.
The State reimburses school districts for a portion of the actual cost of health and development screening for three to five year olds, as required by law. The law change increases these reimbursements from $30 to $40 for 5 year olds, from $40 to $50 for 4 year olds and recognizing the importance of screening earlier, $50 to $75 for 3 year olds. This is a marked improvement and will help identify children who need assistance in getting ready for school earlier.
The bill includes these cuts to early care and education:
-$9.227 million cut from Basic Sliding Fee child care. Normally these unspent funds are reallocated to the counties with child care waiting lists (There are 3,700 families on the waiting list statewide). Additionally, some changes were made to the formula by which basic sliding fee funds are allocated to counties to more accurately reflect the actual need in counties. These changes will help prevent situations such as the state faced this year, with regard to unspent funds.
-$250,000 will be cut from the Pre-K Allowances pilot project. This is a small victory because earlier in the session, one budget bill had proposed that Pre-K allowances be cut $2 million but advocacy efforts by a number of early childhood organizations and action by Senator Dick Cohen, chair of the Finance Committee, made the cut much smaller.
-1.8%, or $110,000, will be cut from Child Care Development Grants, which affects a small amount of dollars for Pre-K Allowances, the FFN grants, quality improvements, and child care resource and referral services.
The bill does not include: Bonding for the early childhood facilities grant was not included in the bonding bill. The grant program is for facility construction and rehabilitation, for use by Head Start, early childhood family education, early childhood intervention, and crisis nurseries programs. The facilities grant was line-item vetoed in the first bonding bill, and was not included in the final negotiations despite the efforts of R4K, advocates, and strong leadership from so me legislators.
Facing a $935 million/$1 billion deficit, CCW knew that the 2008 legislative session was going to be difficult and cuts were likely to be made. However, we know that without your efforts to advocate for early care these cuts would have been much worse. Thank you for all that you did on behalf of children and early care this session.
From Child Care Works:
The 2008 Legislature has finally come to a close, finishing on Sunday night, with the passage of a budget bill, a bonding bill, and several other provisions. Here is a brief synopsis of items related to child care and early education.
The supplemental budget bill includes:
A State Advisory Council on Early Education and Care will be created. Under the federal Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007, state governors are required to create such a council. The adopted language recognizes this process, and adds to the council's duties and membership. In addition to representatives from state departments overseeing early childhood programs, and from Head Start, school districts and local ECE providers, the legislation adds four legislators and two parents with children under the age of six. Parental involvement in the Council is paid for by transferring $12,500 from the Pre-K Allowances and $12,500 from the administrative costs of the Child Care Development Fund, unless other funds become available.
The State reimburses school districts for a portion of the actual cost of health and development screening for three to five year olds, as required by law. The law change increases these reimbursements from $30 to $40 for 5 year olds, from $40 to $50 for 4 year olds and recognizing the importance of screening earlier, $50 to $75 for 3 year olds. This is a marked improvement and will help identify children who need assistance in getting ready for school earlier.
The bill includes these cuts to early care and education:
-$9.227 million cut from Basic Sliding Fee child care. Normally these unspent funds are reallocated to the counties with child care waiting lists (There are 3,700 families on the waiting list statewide). Additionally, some changes were made to the formula by which basic sliding fee funds are allocated to counties to more accurately reflect the actual need in counties. These changes will help prevent situations such as the state faced this year, with regard to unspent funds.
-$250,000 will be cut from the Pre-K Allowances pilot project. This is a small victory because earlier in the session, one budget bill had proposed that Pre-K allowances be cut $2 million but advocacy efforts by a number of early childhood organizations and action by Senator Dick Cohen, chair of the Finance Committee, made the cut much smaller.
-1.8%, or $110,000, will be cut from Child Care Development Grants, which affects a small amount of dollars for Pre-K Allowances, the FFN grants, quality improvements, and child care resource and referral services.
The bill does not include: Bonding for the early childhood facilities grant was not included in the bonding bill. The grant program is for facility construction and rehabilitation, for use by Head Start, early childhood family education, early childhood intervention, and crisis nurseries programs. The facilities grant was line-item vetoed in the first bonding bill, and was not included in the final negotiations despite the efforts of R4K, advocates, and strong leadership from so me legislators.
Facing a $935 million/$1 billion deficit, CCW knew that the 2008 legislative session was going to be difficult and cuts were likely to be made. However, we know that without your efforts to advocate for early care these cuts would have been much worse. Thank you for all that you did on behalf of children and early care this session.
// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 3:16 PM 
