From NAEYC - Action Needed!

I've just received this request via email from the NC-AEYC (North Carolina Association for the Education of Young Children)

U.S. Senators Dodd (D-CT) and Snowe (R-ME) have written a "Dear Colleague" letter requesting $1.072 billion in Head Start funding and $874 million in Child Care Development Block Grant funding (attached). We need to get as many Senators as possible to sign the letter by April 4th. Please contact Senators Dole and Burr and urge them to sign on to the Dodd-Snow Dear Colleague letter. Here are their phone numbers: Senator Dole 202-224-6342 and Senator Burr 202-224-3154. Share this information with your friends and colleagues and urge them to call, as well. As always, the more people the Senators hear from, the more likely they are to act.

According to the National Head Start Association, the White House & Congress hamstrung Head Start by reauthorizing the program in December 2007 - with many costly new requirements - but with a net budgetary loss of $10.6 million dollars.

As for the Child Care Block Development Grant (CCDBG), the National Association for the Education of Young Children says:

The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) helps low-income families, families receiving public assistance and those families transitioning from public assistance in obtaining child care. The program, created in 1990, is authorized under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1966 (Public Law 104-193). According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the current funding level for the Child Care and Development Block Grant provides assistance to only one out of 10 eligible children.

Here is the text of the letter

We request that you consider an increase of $874 million for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and $1.072 billion for Head Start in the FY2009 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations bill. We appreciate your continued support of CCDBG and Head Start over the years. Improved funding for early education is integral to every child having the opportunity to succeed in school and in life.

Every day millions of working parents struggle to find affordable, high quality child care. Studies clearly indicate that child care is a crucial support to both parents and children. The CCDBG enables 1.8 million children from more than one million families to receive child care and provides essential resources to help states improve the quality of that care. Reliable child care supports parents’ stable and productive employment. Child care assistance often helps low-income women get and keep a job. A Census Bureau study found that single mothers of young children who received child care assistance were 40 percent more likely to still be employed after two years than those who did not receive any help paying for child care.

High quality child care also contributes to children’s school readiness. The National Institutes for Child Health and Development found that children from birth to age nine in higher-quality care scored higher on assessments of cognitive skills, language ability, vocabulary, short-term memory and attention than children in lower-quality care.

For low-income and other families, child care is often the second highest cost in a family budget and can be the highest budget item. For example, in 38 states, families earning $18,000 must spend more than 30 percent of their income to afford child care for an infant. And, in 49 states, child care for two children exceeds the median rent. Without additional child care assistance, low-income families have little of their limited incomes left for rent, clothing, food, and other basic necessities.

As you know, appropriations for the CCDBG have been essentially flat since 2002. As a result, many states have tightened eligibility requirements for child care, increased parents’ co-payments, and cut back reimbursement rates to already low-paid caregivers. Initiatives to bolster the quality of child care have been forced to scale back. By the Administrations calculations, more than 200,000 children will lose child care assistance by 2009, yet the President did not include increased funding for CCDBG in the FY 2009 budget request.

Since 1965, Head Start has prepared more than 20 million of America’s most vulnerable children for success in kindergarten and later life. Head Start has been our nation’s model program for comprehensive early learning -- helping children to develop the cognitive, social-emotional, and academic skills to launch them on a path to achievement. Studies show that at-risk children who have participated in Head Start programs are better prepared for school than their peers who have not had the benefit of Head Start.

Head Start serves only about half of all eligible preschool children and only three percent of eligible infants and toddlers. Today, there is a growing need for more – not fewer – Head Start services. As funding for other social services programs has been cut, low-income families depend even more on the comprehensive health and nutrition and early education services Head Start and Early Head Start provide.

The bipartisan 2007 Head Start reauthorization included many positive provisions that will move the program forward by expanding access and enhancing quality. But, increased investment is critical in meeting those goals, including serving more infants and toddlers in Early Head Start, improving teacher quality, providing more full-day services, increasing access for Indian children and children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers, and strengthening program management.

As funding over the last seven years has failed to keep pace with inflation, Head Start programs struggle to pay for increased facility rents, insurance coverage, transportation costs, skyrocketing heating and cooling costs and the recruitment of qualified teachers. In addition, fewer children are being enrolled, waitlists are growing, program days and school years are being condensed, staff members are being cut, and transportation services are being reduced or eliminated. Inadequate funding has also meant a reduction in the number of children served – fewer children today attend Head Start than in 2002. Failing to keep funding for Head Start on pace with inflation could result in fewer children being served and otherwise undermine implementation of the strong reforms in the new reauthorization law.

We need to invest in our children to ensure that they reach their full potential. Undeniably, the Child Care and Development Block Grant and Head Start are vital parts of that investment. We thank you for your serious consideration of this request and support for these important programs.

Call Richard Burr. Call Liddy Dole. Heck - Call Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Ask them to sign on to this letter to the Appropriations Committee. This is important. I keep going back to what Ashley Thrift has said:

Big people are supposed to take care of little people.

That's just the way the world works, folks. Or at least it's supposed to.