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Early Childhood Legislative BriefingMarch 28, 2019

Welcome

Denise MayotteExecutive Director

Early Childhood Legislative BriefingMarch 28, 2019#OurChildrenMN

Start Early Coalition Members

Thank You To Our Event Sponsors

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#OurChildrenMNEarly Childhood Legislative Briefing

March 28, 2019

Event Emcee

Lynn HaglinVicePresident & KIDS PLUS Director


Minnesota’s Children’s Cabinet


Erin Bailey

Assistant Commissioner and Executive Director


Early Childhood Priorities in the 2019 Legislative Session

Eshay Natreese Laura LaCroix-Dalluhn

MN Coalition for Targeted Home Visiting and PN3 Coalition

Gertrude Matemba MutasaPhyllis Wheatley Community Center

Bharti WahiChildren’s Defense Fund of Minnesota

Christa AndersMinnesota Early Childhood Workforce Team

Minnesota’s Prenatal to

Three (PN-3) Coalition

2019 Policy Priorities

Overview

• New coalition focused on increasing awareness among decision-makers about the opportunities, and importance of investing early, beginning prenatally.

• Focused on policy, administrative and legislative strategies focused on racial, economic and geographic inequites in order to help all Minnesota children and families thrive

• Co-chairs

– Nancy Jost, West Central Initiative

– Bharti Wahi, Children’s Defense Fund Minnesota

Healthy Pregnancy &

Infant Health

• Integrated Care for High Risk Pregnancies

• Doula and Community Health Work

Reimbursement Rate Increases to support

pregnant women and new mothers

Paid Family Leave

• Paid family insurance leave for all families

– Paid Family Leave Coalition

– Children’s Defense Fund Minnesota

– Governor’s Budget

• Next week is focused on highlighting early

childhood benefits

Home Visiting

• Increased flexibility and resources for

voluntary home visiting services

– MN Coalition for Targeted Home Visiting

– Local Public Health Association

– MinneMinds

Early Childhood & Learning

Services

Increased access to and funding for Infant &

Toddler care through

– CCAP

– Early Learning Scholarships

– Funding to Minnesota initiative Foundations to

support child care providers

– DEED, support for child care

centers/providers

Early Childhood Workforce

• Retain Scholarships

• CCAP Rate Increases

• Eliminate cap for early learning

scholarship

• Tax Credits (for families & providers)

– MCCA

Community Solutions Fund

• Community Solutions Fund to encourage

thriving families and empower

communities of color

– Voices & Choices Coalition for Children

– Children’s Defense Fund of MN

Introductions

Gertrude Matemba-Mutasa

Executive Director of Phyllis Wheatley Community Center

Early Learning Scholarships

Early learning scholarships meet the unique needs of children and families:

• They are used in high-quality programs rated by Parent Aware

• They follow the child until they enter Kindergarten

• They give parents the agency to choose programs that best meet their child’s specific needs

• They can be used for full day, year round, care and education

State Budget

State BudgetState

BondingState

BondingState

BondingState

Bonding

State Bonding

State Bonding

State Budget

State Budget

State Budget

2010

Increasing Access to Quality Early Childhood2012

Legislative Biennium2014

Legislative Biennium

2016Legislative Biennium

2018 Legislative Biennium

2020 Legislative Biennium

Scholarships 3-4 yrs.

$55M


$65M

Phase One


$20M

Phase Two

Home Visiting

$12MHome Visiting

$21M

GAP

GAP

Home Visiting $33 Million Scholarships $140 Million

Key Values

2018-19:$400 millionTotal early childhood funding

2012-13:$114.5 million

Total early childhoodfunding

Early Childhood Funding Advancements

Total increase of

more than $285 millionfor Minnesota’s youngest and most vulnerable

figures provided by Minnesota Management and Budget, they include: Voluntary Pre-K, Scholarships, Head Start, ECFE and Home Visiting

Key Values

Senate File 1306Increases access to early childhood scholarships for 3- and 4- year olds

House File 1Expands funding and access to

early childhood programs

Chief author: Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn

Current Session Legislation

Chief author: Sen. Carla Nelson

2019 Session Deadlines

Last Day of Session: May 20

1. First Deadline – Policy: March 15, 2019

2. Second Deadline – Policy: March 29, 2019

3. Third Deadline – Finance: April 12, 2019

• Conference Committee Deadlines: • May 1 – members appointed• May 6 – budget targets• May 13 – committee reports

The Access Gap

Over 15,000 children currently receive scholarships

Over 33,000 children still need access to quality care and education

2019 Early Childhood Legislative Briefing

March 28, 2019

Nonpartisan, nonprofit organization

• The Children’s Defense Fund Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child

a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and

successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

• We

• Minnesota is one of eight state and regional offices

Children’s Defense Fund

Legislative Advocacy

• Early Childhood

• Health Care

• Child Care

• Child Well-Being

• Economic Security

Research & Education

• Issue research

• KIDS COUNT ®

Children’s Defense Fund -Minnesota

Youth Leadership• Freedom Schools ®

• Beat the Odds ®

Outreach & Organizing• Bridge to Benefits• Voices & Choices Coalition

KIDS COUNT Ranks Minnesota Fourth

Annie E. Casey Foundation KIDS COUNT ranked Minnesota 4th overall in 2018• 5th in Family and Community• 11th in Education• 5th in Economic Well-being• 6th in Health

However, when data is disaggregated by race and ethnicity Minnesota has some of the worst disparities in outcomes and

access to opportunities for children of color and American Indian children in the country.

Child Well-being

Four Components of Child Well-being • Safe and Supportive Homes and Communities• Economic Well-being• Health Coverage and Care• High–Quality Early Childhood and K-12 Education

High-Quality Early Childhood and K-12 Education

Access to high-quality early childhood education continues to be hindered by the high cost and limited funds available to provide financial assistance.

We have 43 early childhood programs in our state, according to the OLA report.

The ECLDS online tool allows us to look at access to programs across agencies prior to Kindergarten entry.

High-Quality Early Childhood and K-12 Education

Every region in the state is experiencing a shortage of child care, particularly infant care.

Community leaders in many areas are working together to identify creative solutions to address the shortage of child care, because they realize it affects employees and businesses across the state.

Program Access Data

16,531

66%

79%

55%

10,803

3,09891%

55% 72%

54%

17,540

Legislative UpdatePrioritizing Children

Child Care Assistance Program: CCAP

Child Care Assistance Program is a program that is funded through Federal and State dollars.

This program was originally designed to be a work support program. It is a support to help parents work, by providing resource support for the cost of child care. In the past four years, improvements at the federal level have made the program more child focused.

CCAP support decreases as a family’s income increases.

CCAP support is available in three ways: 1) If the parent is accessing MFIP, 2) When the parent is transitioning off of MFIP, and 3) for working parents in low-income households, know as Basic Sliding Fee.

Legislative UpdateKids Can’t Wait Coalition

• Kids Can’t Wait Coalition advocates for affordable, accessible child care primarily for investments in and improvements to the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP)

• We advocate fully funding and forecasting CCAP so eligible families can participate, increasing provider reimbursement rates and family-friendly program improvements to align with federal regulations

• PROGRESS: Governor’s budget has funding for 1,000 additional families to access CCAP, increase reimbursement rates by updating the market survey to current from 2011 and fund the family-friendly provisions

• Bipartisan support for addressing the family friendly provisions• House File 1 Rep. Pinto’s early childhood committee on fully funding and forecasting and

increasing reimbursements to 75th percentile of market rates and 100th percentile for infants. Hearing will also include large Scholarship expansion.

CDF-MN Legislative Update

• Minnesota Family Investment Program Cash Grant Increase: Has not been increased since 1986

• Community Solutions Grant Program: Investment program in culturally and geographically diverse communities around the state.

• Repeal of the Sunset for Health Care Provider Tax: Helps fund critical elements of health care for children and families

• Lower Wage Tax Credit: Proposal to increase to max credit and eligibility expansion, including adding third tier for families with three or more children.

• Paid Family and Medical Leave

Legislative UpdatePaid Family & Medical Leave

The Paid Family & Medical Leave Act will•Provide up to 12 weeks of partial wage replacement for family and medical leave (including pregnancy), so Minnesotans can take care of themselves.

•Replace wages on a progressive scale at 90%-55% of an employee’s salary (66% on average), while protecting job and healthcare benefits

•Keep costs low for all by creating a large statewide risk pool and equally share costs between employers and employees, with both contributing 0.31% on employee earnings. For a median worker and their employer, this costs less than $2 per week.

•PROGRESS: HF5 has been through several committees and continues to move through the House. It also has the support of the Governor’s office.

• Investment in a mixed delivery system for early childhood supports. In addition to CCAP we advocate for Early Learning Scholarships, school readiness programs, Family Home Visiting and other early childhood supports. We believe a mixed delivery system is important to meet diverse needs of children & families across MN

• Teacher of color pipeline – support Coalition’s work and have been engaging our Freedom School staff and network in this work.

• Follow child welfare policy and engage when relevant and able

• Support initiatives to address health and other disparities (i.e. Rep. Pinto’s bill to reduce pregnancy and infant outcomes).

• Other issues affecting children and families that come up, including playing defense

Legislative UpdateOther issues CDF-MN Advocates For

TAKE ACTION FOR CHILDREN!

• Join our mailing list

• Follow us on Facebook (Children’s Defense Fund-MN) & Twitter @cdfmn

• Join our coalitions (Kids Can’t Wait, MN for Paid Family & Medical Leave, and Voices and Choices (contact us for info)

• Advocate for our legislative priorities with your representatives (we can send Cheryl a suggested script for our priorities!):

– Send an e-mail or letter

– Make a phone call

– Face-to-face meeting

– Write a letter to the editor

Questions & Discussion

Feel free to contact us with questions or data requests:

Bharti WahiExecutive Director

Children’s Defense Fund – Minnesota [email protected]

651-855-1171

mailto:[email protected]

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Presentation to 2019 Early Childhood Legislative Briefing March 28, 2019

Christa Anders, B8 Early Childhood Workforce Team

www.ecworkforcemn.org

http://www.ecworkforcemn.org/

What do we know about Minnesota’s Early Childhood Workforce?

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Early Childhood Workforce in Minnesota is at a Crisis!

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• In the next 10 years, we will need 44,000 additional childcare workers in MN

• Median wage of child care workers in Minnesota is $11.44

• Minnesota spends $43 million a year providing public assistance benefits to early childhood educators

• Early Childhood is the lowest paid bachelor’s degree you can earn in the United States

• There is very little payoff to educational investment. Workers with a BA degree earn a median wage of $15.60 two years after college graduation

Bottomline: early childhood workforce is critical to the economic vitality of Minnesota AND our business/economic model is entirely broken and not sustainable


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So Why Does it Matter?

• Child Care Deserts• High Turnover rates• Business and economic

development impact• Maternal labor force

participation rates reduced• Stressed teachers

Legislative Proposals that Address our EC Workforce Crisis

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1. Funding for Education and Retention

2. Child Care Grants

3. Tax Credits

4. Increasing Teachers of Color


National Tracking of EC Legislation

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95 out of 409 bills are from Minnesota!



Funding for Education and Retention

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REETAIN Funding Bill (HF 2264 Wazlawik/SF2363 Draheim) - $100,000/yr in Rep Pinto’s House Division Report

YWCA Job and Career Assistance (HF1594 Richardson/SF 867 Hayden)


Child Care Grants

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SF 2 Omnibus Child Care Bill -$2M for grants to MIFs, $649,000 to DEED, $140,000 to DEED

Greater MN Child Care Facility Grants (HF423 Brand/SF 538 Relph) - $10 M

Grant to First Children’s Finance - $500,000/yr (in Pinto’s Division Report)


Tax Credits

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Refundable tax credits (HF 1034 Pryor/SF 1110 P. Anderson) - $500 for CDA, $1500 for AA and $3000 for BA as well as credit for parents and child care businesses


Increasing Teachers of Color

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Increase Teachers of Color Act (HF 824 Kunesh-Podein – includes Head Start teachers

House Omnibus Education Policy Bill (HF 1711 Youakim)

Governor’s Education Bill (HF 2207 Davnie/SF 2347 Nelson)


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Vision


Minnesota has qualified, diverse, supported and

fairly compensated early childhood educators.


Let us know your thoughts and ideas:

[email protected]

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mailto:[email protected]


Parents Leading in Advocacy


Sen. Carla NelsonRochester

Rep. Rena MoranSaint Paul

Erica ValiantSPPN Parent Council

Demetria WilliamsNorthside Achievement Zone

Moderator: Rinal Ray, People Serving People

Advocating for Our Children

Acooa EllisSenior Vice President, Community Impact


Advocacy for Children Day…TODAY @ 1:30pm!

Early Childhood Legislative BriefingMarch 28, 2019

Visit

www.StartEarlyFundersMN.org

for today’s event materials

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