As Kentucky approaches the end of the federal fiscal year in September 2024, a potential child care crisis looms across the state. Childcare providers have already stopped receiving the Sustainability Payment, which allowed centers and family homes to increase staff wages while paying fixed costs. With sustainability benefits ending, child care programs are having to make difficult decisions about whether to lower wages, raise tuition, or close.
Sen. Danny Carroll is sponsoring Senate Bill 203, known as the Horizons Act. This bill would provide stability to early childhood education programs and allow them to serve more children in their communities. The comprehensive nature of this bill would allow early childhood education programs to remain open while encouraging new programs to start across the state, especially in child care deserts.
Highlights of the programs included in the bill include:
• Add early childhood education to the list of Work Ready scholarships. The program allows students entering high-demand fields to receive scholarships, increasing participation in the major and putting more professionals on the career track. Previously, this program was reserved for his STEM-based career. However, there is a growing demand for trained early childhood educators in the commonwealth.
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• Adds an interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education Entrepreneurship AA degree to the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. Currently, KCTCS has an Early Childhood Education major, but this new major will include more business and management training that will prepare candidates to not only teach young children, but also to teach management and early childhood education programs. It is planned that
・The name of the Department of Child Care will be changed to the Department of Early Childhood Education. Similarly, the Regulated Child Care Division (within the Office of the Inspector General) will be changed to the Regulated Early Childhood Education Division. The purpose of these offices will remain the same, but the titles will shift to focus on the educational role played by centers and family children's homes.
• Establish an early childhood education innovation delivery fund. The fund will focus on providing start-up funding to new early childhood education programs that take a different approach to supporting children and families. This may include employee-based early education, school systems creating early education programs for employees' children, and early childhood education being offered during non-traditional times such as evenings or weekends. This funding will provide the funding necessary to launch and prepare for the launch of the new program.
• Continue funding for family-based child care homes and early childhood education centers across the state. Center establishment grants still require matching, but the matching amount may be lower if the center focuses on supporting children with disabilities or is located in a child care desert.
• Establish an early learning fund. This fund will be an additional annual payment issued to early childhood education centers and family foster homes based on program enrollment. Enrollment will be documented through administrative software available through the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. The Foundation Fund plans to mimic per-child payments similar to the public school system's SEEK payments. This funding can only be allocated to staff wages or fixed costs such as mortgage/rent, utilities, insurance, etc.
• Establish permanently the positive changes to child care support programs that have been in place since 2020. This includes establishing her CCAP eligibility for families at 85% of the state median income and establishing reimbursement rates at the 80th percentile. This would cover the total medical costs of 80% of early education programs in the state. The bill would also establish a transition program for families who graduate from the CCAP program due to increased income, to avoid families facing a sudden cliff when receiving assistance.
• Establish a permanent statutory CCAP deduction for child care providers. This program allows all staff members of an early childhood education program (center or home-based) to qualify for the CCAP program for children if they work at least 20 hours per week in an accredited or accredited program. can. Kentucky was the first state in the U.S. to adopt this program, and it is a tremendous workforce aid for child care workers who can earn higher wages in other fields. Today, early childhood educators can work in the same programs (but not the same classrooms) as their children and don't have to worry about large child care costs.
• Ensure that the Cabinet of Health and Family Services continues to pay for background checks of early childhood educators in licensed centers and certified homes. The federal government implemented a large-scale background check program in 2018. Federal funding has previously allowed the Cabinet to cover the costs of background checks on childcare providers, but this could be a hurdle in the future if the costs are passed on to childcare providers. Early childhood education program.
In reality, packages of this size can be expensive. The bill itself has no fiscal memo, but the accompanying budget request provides about $150 million a year of the state's biennial budget. Kentucky has not historically invested at this level in early childhood education, but the commonwealth will support working families in all communities with successful early education programs that can help prepare young children for kindergarten. This investment will be essential.
Rep. Samara Heblin's House Bill 561 also would improve child care infrastructure by permanently establishing the Employee Child Care Assistance Partnership (ECCAP) and creating a certified child care community designation program to increase access to child care facilities for families. This will support the stability of the country. Many Kentucky cities have zoning laws that prohibit the creation of family child care facilities or independent child care facilities. This bill would encourage communities to specifically consider whether they can change their zoning laws to increase access to child care.
Every community needs a strong child care infrastructure to support working families and prepare the next generation of the workforce. Contact your local legislators and urge them to support the Horizons Act (Senate Bill 203) and House Bill 561.
Sarah Vanover is director of policy and research at Kentucky Youth Advocates. This comment first appeared on her KYA website. Senate Bill 203 is currently moving through the committee process.
