Eagle County Colorado Early Childhood Investments

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Eagle County, Colorado continues to invest local public dollars from their general fund to support their Early Childhood Providers in several ways including salary supplements, subsidies for providers who provide infant and toddler care, and rental assistance so that no provider incurs any expenses relating to occupancy. In addition to these supports from the general fund, in November of 2022, their voters approved a short-term lodging tax of 2% to generate additional funds to support childcare programs and affordable housing opportunities for their local workforce.

As their program expands, Eagle County would like to support families throughout the prenatal period through home visiting, maternal mental health, and increasing access to health benefits for the ECE workforce through a shared service alliance.

As our community considers investing locally in our early care and education ecosystem, learning from other communities such as Breckenridge and Aspen can help us maximize the return on our investment.

This Provider Appreciation Day®, Let's Show Our Appreciation By Investing In Childcare

Today is national childcare Provider Appreciation Day®. As the Director of the Early Childhood Alliance, I see the impact that providers can and do have in our community. But, without more support, they cannot keep doing the incredible work that they do every day.

Please join me in showing our appreciation for our wonderful providers including:  Alpine Adventures, Black Diamond, Creekside Kids, Deer Valley Child Care, Evan’s Day Care, Heaven’s Little Angels, Little Adventures Children’s Center @ Canyons, Lil Oaklies Childcare, Little Miners Montessori, Holy Cross Ministries, Park City Cooperative Preschool, Park City Kids Camp, Park City Recreation Summer Day Camp, PC Tots, Peck’s Playschool, PEEK Program, local private, public and charter school preschool and after-care programs, Soaring Wings International Montessori School, Stepping Stone Academy, Wildlings Mountain Camp, and Wildstar.

In our community, like so many across the country, grim trends in childcare have only gotten worse since the pandemic began. Program costs have increased, while waiting lists continue to get longer. Childcare centers are losing workers and often closing their doors because they cannot compete with the rising wages and benefits offered by large corporations. There are 50,000 fewer childcare providers across the nation than before the pandemic. Short-staffed childcare centers are closing, despite increasing demand from families.

Voters largely support increased funding for child care. Both women overall and strong Republican-leaning voters say they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports investing in childcare to make it more accessible and more affordable. That includes increasing compensation for early childhood educators.

The earliest years are critical – they lay the foundation for the brain and body architecture that will support a child’s ability to learn, and for lifelong social, emotional and physical health. This Provider Appreciation Day®, let’s show our gratitude for those who support the social, emotional and physical care of our youngest children. Childcare providers are essential – and they have been long before the pandemic.

“They are the workers that make all work possible.”

It is so important that our policymakers commit to increasing compensation for the folks who care for and educate our children, who are currently some of the lowest paid but most heavily relied upon professionals in our workforce. America’s early learning system, which was already failing to meet the needs of families and providers before the pandemic, is currently propped up by funds that are set to expire soon.

ARPA Stabilization Grant Countdown

Join us in celebrating Provider Appreciation Day® by committing to better fund the child care workforce and finally treating providers like the professionals they are. It’s the absolute least we can do.

Learn More About the Park City Cares About Kids Proposal Here

Supporting Parents in Summit County

Summit County parents benefit from two fantastic home-visiting programs: Welcome Baby and Parents as Teachers. The holistic, two-generation home-visiting approach is defined as follows:

“Early childhood home visiting is a service delivery strategy that matches expectant parents and caregivers of young children with a designated support person—typically a trained nurse, social worker, or early childhood specialist-who guides them through the early stages of raising a family. Services are voluntary, may include caregiver coaching or connecting families to needed services, and provided in the family’s home or another location of the family’s choice.”

— The National Home Visiting Resource Center

Home visiting has measurable benefits tied to positive parenting practices, improvements in child development, school readiness, child and maternal health, and stronger family economic self-sufficiency, including:

• Increasing access to prenatal care;

• Increasing infant-caregiving practices like breastfeeding;

• Providing knowledge and training to reduce the risk of unintended injuries and child maltreatment;

• Promoting reading and other child development activities; and

• Connecting families with job training, mental health, and other resources.

Parents need access to these valuable home-visiting services and we are so thankful that both programs are operating in our community.

President Biden's Proposed Budget Calls for an Additional $14.9 Billion Investment in Universal Preschool and Affordable Childcare

President Biden’s proposed budget includes almost $15 billion in additional funding for early care and education. The Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families Justification of Estimates for Appropriations Committees explains why these additional investments benefit our workforce and communities at large. The budget calls for an additional $5 billion so that “all of the approximately four million 4-year-old children in the U.S. have access to high-quality preschool, while also charting a path to expand free school to 3-year-olds.” An additional $9.9 billion would be invested to increase early care and education options so parents have more high-quality options and childcare providers are paid higher wages. The funding would allow states to serve children ages birth to five from families earning up to $200,000. The goal is for the lowest-income families to pay nothing and for most families to pay no more than $10 a day per child.

Childcare Stabilization Grant Tapering Will Be Severe

With the ARPA stabilization grants ending in September of 2023, the state of Utah has said that it would invest some of its ARPA discretionary funds as a means to taper these stabilization payments to offset the fiscal cliff. The Office of Child Care Advisory Committee is meeting today from 1 to 3 to discuss two options for tapering.

The same amount of funding is available under either option, the choice is only whether the tapering should begin in July or wait until the stabilization grant deadline in September.

Either option will result in a significant reduction in payments. Using the high end of Option 1 (25% for 6 months and 15% for 3 months), for example, would result in the following estimated stabilization payments to childcare providers in Summit County:

The state as a whole will see a similar decline. In calendar year 2022, covid funding (ARPA and CRRSA) invested nearly $190 million in Utah’s early care and education system. 468 providers Salt Lake County, for example, received a total of $90,693,213.

You can review the full slide deck of the Office of Childcare Advisory Committee meeting here.

We do not have the luxury of time to invest in and stabilize our early care and education system. Learn more about the Early Childhood Alliance’s request for public funding to Park City municipal here.

Park City Cares About Kids

The Early Childhood Alliance advocates treating early care and education as the public good that it is. (As a refresher, please visit prior blogs on this topic here, here, here, and here). ECA recently created a childcare needs assessment for Park City as well as a summary of the developmental and workforce benefits of high-quality early care and education. These documents demonstrate in detail the clear need for, and benefits of, an affordable, accessible early care and education system in our community.

We know that we have a problem. The question is whether we are willing to invest public funds in our early care and education system to address these critical community needs. If not, as Elliot Haspel clearly outlined in his opinion piece in the Deseret News when discussing the impending federal funding childcare fiscal cliff, “the damage from inaction is difficult to overstate yet easy to predict. . . . Quality child care will become a luxury good, nearly impossible to find for all but the wealthiest.

The Early Childhood Alliance has submitted a proposal to Park City Municipal, the Park City Cares About Kids program, seeking local public funds to:

(1)   stabilize the childcare industry by increasing compensation for the Summit County early childhood workforce serving families who live or work in Park City;

(2)   address the affordability gap for income-eligible Park City residents with children under age six who need childcare;

(3)   increase utilization of the federal childcare subsidies available through DWS by Park City resident and workforce families;

(4)   increase Summit County licensed, residential certificate, or DWS-approved FFN capacity to care for Park City resident and workforce children under age two; and

(5)   increase licensed family, residential certificate, and DWS-approved FFN capacity in Park City.

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

— Nelson Mandela

Aspen Kids First Program Helps Families That Don't Qualify for Other Subsidies

KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher interviewed Aspen’s Kids First program co-manager Nancy Nichols this morning. You can listen to the full interview here.

Over thirty years ago, the voters in Aspen added a .45% sales tax that is split between affordable housing and early childhood. Ms. Nichols explained that over the years the percentage of that split has changed, and recently they have revised the split so that 75% of the funding is for early childcare and 25% is for housing.

These funds are used for many initiatives to support the local providers (such as wage supplements, grants for infant and toddler care, and professional development grants) as well as families through offering a resource and referral service and providing financial aid. This aid is available to assist families that make too much for the state’s childcare subsidy but still can not afford the costs of high-quality childcare.

Here in Utah, these state childcare subsidies are available to families that earn 85% or less of the state median income and are working or in school and can demonstrate a need for childcare, among other requirements. Because Summit County’s median income levels are higher than the state levels, this results in an income limitation that is likely to range between 51% and 64% of Summit County’s area median income, depending upon household size.

In September of 2022, there were only 39 children in Summit County who received a childcare subsidy from the DWS program, and the majority of these children (25) are five years old or younger. We must help connect families to this valuable childcare subsidy. Learn more here.

We also need to invest local public funds to support the essential childcare industry and our families who so desperately want access to high-quality, affordable childcare options in our community. Learn more here.

2022 Kindergarten Entry Scores Still Show Disparity in School Readiness

Improving school readiness and closing the opportunity gap are two of the critical priorities of the Early Childhood Alliance. In reviewing the Kindergarten Entry and Exit Profile (KEEP) results for the school districts in Summit County, it is clear that more work needs to be done. Once again, our minority, English-language learners and low-income students are disproportionately less ready for school than their peers based on the KEEP assessment scores in both literacy and numeracy.

Offering opportunities for high-quality, affordable early care and education is one of the best ways for our community to close this opportunity gap and ensure that all kids have equal access to healthy cognitive development in a responsive and enriching environment.

2023 Legislative Priorities and Child Care Advocacy Day on the Hill

As the Utah state legislature prepares to convene next Tuesday, the Early Childhood Alliance has been working alongside other early childhood advocates to promote the needs of our youngest Utahns and their families.

In addition to fully funding all-day kindergarten and expanding maternal Medicaid beyond 60 days past the birth of the child, we would love to see the legislature invest in the early childhood workforce in a major way, particularly given the upcoming deadlines for federal Covid relief funding.

Please join us on January 27 to talk with state legislators about why child care is important to families.

Childcare Subsidy Application Tutorial

This week the amazing staff of Holy Cross Ministries’ Promotora Outreach Program gave an overview and answered questions regarding Utah’s childcare subsidy program. More information about the childcare subsidy is available here. Watch the video discussion here and download a flyer summarizing the program here.