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|  | News Items Posted On: March 14, 2006
Showing stories 1 - 4 of 4.
CA - Program unites businesses and child care
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Tuesday, March 14 @ 10:30:27 EST by emohan
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Some employers are pretty candid about saying: Day care rules the world.
According to the California Child Care Portfolio statistics released a few months ago, in 2004 there were 21,492 children under the age of 13 in Humboldt County. Of those, there were 12,606 children with working parents. Child care costs for one preschooler in a licensed facility takes up to 22 percent of a family budget with an annual income of $28,080. On top of affordability issues, parents and employers have to deal with limited availability.
Kit Mann, production manager for Kokatat in Arcata, said the crisis of affordable/available childcare hit home when he offered an employee a well-deserved raise.
”She asked me, 'Please don't give me a raise because I'll lose my child care benefits and they are worth much more than any raise you could give me,'” Mann said. He estimates that 25 percent of Kokatat's 115 employees have children in child care.
A new program called the Work-Life Alliance is hoping to bridge the enormous gap between need and affordability. The Alliance is a collaboration of representatives from government, businesses, child care facilities and individual communities and was formed to address these issues head on.
Wendy Rowan, executive director for First 5 Humboldt and a member of the Alliance, said this group is working toward bringing more employers into the fold. So far the group has worked on two projects: one to begin offering a public acknowledgment of businesses that are “family friendly,” and one to develop a web-based resource for employers and child care providers. Rowan said a retention incentive program has also started that gives financial rewards to child care providers as a means of encouraging providers to stay in business.
Full text available at the Times Standard Online
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MA - Locals endure long wait for child care assistance
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Tuesday, March 14 @ 10:18:05 EST by emohan
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A 40-person waiting list is agonizingly long for Carolyn Corliss.
For her, it represents 40 families in her community who won't get help to pay for child care.
"It makes me sad, parents asking us to put them on the waiting list in good faith," said Corliss, the administrator of Project Apples, a Community Partnership for Children program in Leominster. "I just feel that we are not serving their needs ... when we know they won't get served."
Roughly 14,000 families statewide were on a wait list as of June 2005 for financial assistance to get child care or early education, mostly due to a lack of money.
Inconsistencies in the state's system, particularly in who qualifies for help, have contributed to the logjam, and state officials are trying to remedy the situation.
But a call for sweeping changes spells concern to some people, who worry a large portion of the state's working poor could lose their benefits.
The Department of Early Education and Care opened for business July 1, merging the former Office of Child Care Services and the early-learning wing of the Department of Education.
EEC Commissioner Ann Reale said a major problem resulting from the marriage is the agency now manages three types of child services with different criteria to qualify.
People who make more than 50 percent of the SMI do not qualify for vouchers or access to state-contracted programs, though there are exceptions. But CPC programs can accept families who make 100 or even 125 percent of the SMI, depending on the case.
Some CPC directors worry that creating a universal set of criteria might cut access to people who make too much money.
Full text available at the Sentinel and Enterprise
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Mississippi Head Start hoping to absorb a mid-year budget reduction
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Tuesday, March 14 @ 10:10:28 EST by emohan
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A mid-year budget reduction has Mississippi Head Start officials hoping they will not be forced to drop children served in their programs.
The 1 percent across-the-board reduction means $67 million less in the national Head Start budget of $6.7 billion. Mississippi would lose about $1.6 million of its $160 million in federal money.
Mississippi Head Start receives no state funding.
Head Start is a child-development program that promotes school readiness for low-income children and their families.
Mississippi enrolls about 26,000 3- and 4-year-olds in 200 centers across the state.
Head Start centers will offset the cuts by laying off an undetermined number of employees, not filling open positions, not paying employees for some holidays when the centers are closed and curtailing busing to save fuel costs, said Lee Frison, president of the Mississippi Head Start Association.
Full text available at they Picayune Item
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CT - Educators raise academic standards for preschools
Submitted by emohan. Posted on Tuesday, March 14 @ 10:01:42 EST by emohan
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As a preschooler, James Blount attended the Action Early Learning Center in Danbury because his grandmother was a teacher there.
Now, the 22-year-old is among six Action staff members earning national certificates from the Childhood Development Association, which helped the center earn national accreditation.
Because research suggests quality preschool programs increase academic success — especially for children from low-income families — expectations and accreditation processes for early childcare programs have become more demanding.
Yiesha Clemons, 22, has worked at Action for four years and received her certificate plus 12 college credits in December. That's what the state requires to lead an early childhood classroom in a state-funded school readiness program. Action required Clemons to spend a year as a teacher in training before getting her own class.
The center, which is run by the Community Action Committee of Danbury, has 125 children from birth through kindergarten.
By earning certification from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the center became one of 530 early childhood programs in Connecticut with the distinction.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children accreditation system weighs teacher education and qualifications, child-to-teacher ratios, curriculum, and health and safety in setting professional standards for early childhood education.
Full text available at News Times Live
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