October 2007
Archived Public Policy Report & Alert

Federal | Maryland | MDAEYC
Archived Reports: August 2008 | June 2008 | January 2008 December 2007 | October 2007

Federal:

Congress is back in session, the Presidential candidates are out on the stump, and the Bills are whizzing around getting amended and voted upon. The Head Start Reauthorization Bill is heading to conference between the Senate and House versions. Partly due to NAEYC's efforts the Higher Education Bill passed in the Senate includes a provision for educational loan forgiveness for people working in child care, Head Start, and Pre-K. The House and Senate both voted strongly (the latter with a veto-proof majority) to reauthorize and increase substantially the eligibility and funding for children's health insurance. The President, however, is threatening a veto, and so the expansion is not a sure thing. Please, if Representatives Gilchrest or Bartlett represent you, let their offices (202) 225-3121 know how you feel about children's health insurance. The appropriations bills for the programs of interest to us are all being negotiated within their respective committees and subcommittees, and a has authorized continued expenditures at the current rate after the new Federal Fiscal Year on October 1, until mid-November. We may be calling on you to call your Senators or Representatives in October about any of these important pieces of legislation.

Reminder: NAEYC's Web site, http://capwiz.com/naeyc/mlm/signup/, allows you to sign up for public policy alerts and news about early childhood issues on a national scale. Please sign up today. NAEYC expects to survey all the Presidential candidates this Fall about their positions on early childhood issues.

Maryland:

School's back in session, and much is happening around the State. This September (or August, as the case may be) was the first occasion when every parent in Maryland with a four year old who is eligible to receive free or reduced price school meals has a right to send that child to Pre-Kindergarten. A number of jurisdictions are going beyond the State's requirements, and are admitting other children (such as English language learners, children with disabilities, and families marginally above the income eligibility limit) to the Pre-K classes. Some, like Montgomery County, provide some medical, dental, and similar services to these Pre-K children as well. Prince George's County is providing Pre-K for a full school day for all eligible children, and filling up their Pre-K classes with over-income children. The new systems have caused challenges to child care providers, as their enrollments of four year olds have dropped substantially, and the providers rely on the income from four year olds to make up for the added expenses of caring for infants or other younger children. The State's Universal Preschool Task Force is putting together its recommendations to the Governor and General Assembly. The recommendations are due by December. The Task Force, established by legislation in 2006, has studied what other states have been doing about the care and education of young children, and what Maryland needs to do for them and can do for them.

MSDE's Early Childhood Division has been very busy, working to implement its 3-year strategic plan adopted last Winter. The Division's Web site, including vastly new materials for the Office of Child Care, is at http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/divisions/child_care/.

From this Web page you can find forms, contacts, regulations, and circulars on regulatory issues; rules, eligibility criteria frequently asked questions, and applications for Purchase of Care child care subsidies; information about the new comprehensive preschool curriculum project and its requirements, including guidelines for State-apporved specific content curricula; guidelines for healthy and safe child development and care for children 0-3; the Program Development Branch's grants and contracts; descriptions and applications for child care credentials and tiered reimbursement; contact information for issues, complaints, and suggestions —— and quite a bit more!

The FY 2008 Budget that the State School Board sent to the Governor provides for flat funding for the Early Childhood Division, but a significant increase for the Infants and Toddlers program. As you probably know, the Governor decides on these issues without the General Assembly having much power to overrule him, and this year the State is facing a huge structural deficit.

The long-awaited POC provider reimbursement rate increase will go into effect in October, with providers beginning to receive about a 6-7 market percentage rate increase, to the 45th percentile of the market as of January 2005. This increase, which was planned as the first of 3 such increases, will be accompanied by a corresponding 6 percent increase in required co-payments; however, if providers make the subsidized families pay the difference between the actual market rate and the POC reimbursement rate, there may be a net reduction in some actual co-payments. The average mandatory co-payment is now 10.2 percent, which is 0.2 percent higher than the Federal Government recommends. There probably will be struggles, both within the State Government and in the General Assembly, to try to continue the increases in the reimbursement rate as planned, and to reduce the prohibitive parental co-payments. Evidently the transitional problems in adjusting the POC voucher and payment systems to the new CCATS computer system that caused so much grief last Spring have been fixed.

The Office of Child Care is proposing legislation requiring centers to close immediately for emergency suspensions, as family providers now do. OCC is drafting regulations, that they plan to publish in January, to take effect in July 2008, to require all licensed centers and registered family child care homes to receive only unannounced inspections. That inspection will include a review of the provider's records. Licensing Specialists will take measures to minimize disruptions from these inspections, especially for family providers who must attend to the children at all times. A new form of "permanent" license or registration is now being used. It provides spaces to show whether the licensee can be called a "school" and whether it is accredited. Licensing inspection forms are being revamped to consolidate and reduce items to be checked off.

Also included in these planned regulatory changes (but subject to provider input) will be new requirements for pre-service education and in-service training, effective July 1, 2008. All new providers and providers who change positions after July 1, including aides, will be required to take training on communicating with staff, parents and the public about their work. Family providers will be required to complete 24 hours of training before their registration. For centers, subject to some grandfathering, Directors will need 40-45 hours of training in administrative topics, plus the 3 hour OCC orientation. A year's prior experience as a teacher will no longer qualify someone as a director. School age teachers will need to have at least 45 hours' training in school age curriculum, as part of their 90 hour advance training. Some waivers might be granted in transition, especially in rural areas where relevant training is hard to come by. Annual refresher training requirements will be 6 hours for aides, 12 for teachers and directors, and 12 hours for registered family child care providers (18 hours in the first year of registration, starting 1/1/08). Each person providing licensed or registered child care will have his or her own professional development plan, which she or he will be responsible for updating and carrying to new positions. When the plan is completed, a new plan must be begun.

As of September 10, 2007, the Credentialing regulations have been changed, with new options to qualify and larger annual bonuses for higher level credentials. A new administrator credential will be available to center directors, with four levels, starting with a one-time bonus of $600 for Level 1, and with progressively higher annual bonuses to top off at $1,500 for Level 4. Yearly bonuses will be paid for teachers and aides Levels 2 and above. The staff bonuses start off with one-time bonuses for levels 2, 3 or 4, then $600, 750, and $1,000 annual bonuses for Levels 4+, 5, and 6. Credentials for all teaching or directing staff will be required for any program applying for Maryland Accreditation or receiving Accreditation Incentive or Program Improvement grants, and for certain other quality incentive programs. Almost 6,000 Maryland providers have credentials. All approved training less than 5 years old counts toward the credential.

All credentialed providers with at least a year's experience will have access to MSDE's new Career and Professional Development Fund. The Fund will pay scholarships for Maryland college tuition, fees, and books for two or more courses a year, without a dollar or college level limit, if the applicant is majoring in an early childhood-related subject, and will be continued until a degree is obtained if the applicant maintains at least a 2.75 grade point average. The scholarships will start as loans and become grants on completion of equivalent years of service in Maryland child care. Applicants will be given priority if beginning college or early on in their pursuit of a degree. Applications are being accepted now for the 2008 Spring semester. Plans are still underway to publicize this program among providers and colleges. This Fund is independent of the $400 per year training voucher or reimbursement fund that credentialed providers may use.

MSDE has approved preschool comprehensive curricula for ages 3-5 from Core Knowledge, Houghton Mifflin, Macmillan McGraw-Hill, Pearson Early Learning, Success for All Foundation, and Teaching Strategies, Inc., that mesh with the Maryland Model for School Readiness and the Voluntary State Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten curricula. MSDE more recently approved several voluntary content-area curricula in Social Studies, Personal and Social Development, Mathematics, Science, and Reading/English Language Arts, to supplement the comprehensive curricula above. Beginning July 1, 2009, all Maryland-Accredited programs and all programs receiving funding (except for Purchase of Care reimbursements) from MSDE will be required to be implementing one of these curricula, or a curriculum individually approved by MSDE, or a local school system curriculum. MSDE may reimburse providers for the costs of obtaining these curricula through accreditation enhancement grants or the child care quality incentive grants. MSDE accreditation validators will be trained to monitor the implementation of these curricula. A review is being conducted currently of commercial comprehensive curricula for children under 36 months of age, so that the program can be extended downwards. Additional comprehensive curricula for ages 3-5 will not be added for about 3 years. The goal of the curriculum project is to increase the intentionality of instruction in child care, and to align educational curricula being used in child care with those being used in public schools in Maryland. For more details, see http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/divisions/child_care/preschool_curriculum/.

The State School Board has reviewed a Birth Through Three Business Plan prepared by Friends of the Family in partnership with MSDE. The Plan recommends establishing community-based hubs in each elementary school attendance area, offering or coordinating a full array of services to parents, children, and child care providers (at an estimated annual cost of $1 million per hub), starting with demonstration hubs where needed most. Build better availability, affordability, and quality of infant and toddler child care. Fully fund the Maryland Infants and Toddlers Program and the early childhood mental health initiative. Contact Friends of the Family for further information.

On August 6 the Governor signed an Executive Order authorizing the election of an authorized representative for family and informal child care providers receiving Purchase of Care subsidy reimbursements. The election has taken place, and the Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) was selected; however, the Maryland State Family Child Care Association (MSFCCA) has challenged the Executive Order in court. The local court granted a temporary restraining order to stop the union representation process, but last Friday the Special Court of Appeals overruled the lower court. The Executive Order only authorizes the union's elected representative to meet and confer with MSDE and other State Government agencies about the terms and conditions of child care provider participation in the POC program, including reimbursement rates, payment procedures, and benefits. It does not authorize the selected representative to represent providers who do not want it to do so, and it does not authorize the negotiations to be exclusive of other parties (such as MDAEYC). It does not authorize strikes.

MSFCCA has a new health insurance plan that is available to all registered family child care providers and center staff who work more than 30 hours a week. Coverage begins at $285.51 per month for a single person. See http://www.msfcca.org.

MDAEYC:

Maryland AEYC would like input from you, its members, on our public policy priorities for the coming year, and on our general vision for public policy in Maryland. Please send your input to PublicPolicy@mdaeyc.org.

If you know of others who might like to sign up to receive these occasional early childhood news updates for Maryland, please give them the above e-mail address and invite them to add their names to the list.

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