Small Gains at the Minnesota Legislature

Legislative Session ends with a few small victories

After a weekend of tough negotiations between the Governor and legislative leaders, the 2008 Legislative Session wrapped up Sunday evening with the legislature passing a budget balancing bill, a bonding bill, and several other provisions. For early childhood, all the provisions that were in the bills going into the weekend stayed in the final bills. Most notably, the supplemental budget bill includes funding for early screening, the creation of a State Advisory Council on Early Education and Care, a cut to basic sliding fee child care, and cuts to child care quality improvements. Additionally, the Governor and key Republicans would not agree to include bonding for early childhood facilities in the final bonding bill.

Specifically, the supplemental budget bill includes the following provisions:

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 as passed by the legislature creates a State Advisory Council on Early Education and Care. 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.

Unfortunately, the bill also includes several cuts to early care and education.

• $9.227 million is cut from the Basic Sliding Fee child care appropriation. In a typical year, funds unspent by counties, due to projections with the current distribution formula, are redistributed to counties with families on child care waiting lists. This $9 million would have provided child care assistance to many of the approximately 3,700 families currently on the waiting list.
• $250,000 is cut from the Pre-K Allowances pilot project. 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. Thank goodness for small victories.
• 1.8%, or $110,000, is 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.

As mentioned previously, bonding for early childhood facilities was not included in the final bonding bill. The Early Childhood Learning and Child Protection Facilities grant program is for facility construction and rehabilitation, for use by Head Start, early childhood family education, early childhood intervention, and crisis nurseries programs. Funding for the program was line-item vetoed in the first bonding bill, and despite strong leadership from some legislators who fought for the inclusion of early childhood bonding until the end, we were unable to secure funding in the final negotiations. Even so, Ready 4 K was successful in making some changes to the statute to make the grant program clearer and easier to use. Legislative leaders encouraged Ready 4 K and our allies to come back next year with another proposal and to do more work to educate legislators about the effectiveness of this bonding program.

The second year of the biennium, in addition to bonding, is also typically used for promoting changes to state policy. Key changes were made to child care, including the creation of a statewide task force to make recommendations about barriers facing families applying for and receiving child care assistance. 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.

Ready 4 K knew going into the 2008 Legislative Session that with the state facing a massive budget deficit, the opportunity to infuse the necessary dollars for young children would be difficult to realize. Despite the setbacks we incurred, the changes and funding allocated this year are meaningful, and will continue to help improve school readiness. Please look for a more detailed 2008 Session Summary soon.

Thank you for all you have done this session, and we look forward to your input and involvement as we prepare for this fall's election (including all members of the Minnesota House) and the 2009 Legislative Session.