On January 14, child care providers across California joined our “Raising California Together” state budget briefing call. We heard from Courtni Pugh, Executive Director of SEIU Local 99, Luisa Blue, the Chief Executive Officer of SEIU Local 521, and Rene Bayardo, our Child Care Lobbyist for SEIU State Council.
Providers on the call learned the details of the Governor’s proposed budget and how it affects us and the families we serve.
At the end of this call, providers had a lively discussion (statewide!) about how we can get more involved to make sure the final budget includes more investment in our littlest learners!
Dates to remember:January 10 Deadline for Governor to release his initial budget proposal May 14 Deadline for Governor to release his May Revise (after several months of hearings and state tax revenues are counted) June 15 Deadline for the Legislature to pass the FINAL budget bill |
Budget Overview:
The good news is this budget includes a significant increase in funds. The plan provides over $6 billion dollars in new revenue, which the Governor uses to tackle California’s debt, establish a stronger rainy day fund, and set aside reserves for next year. He also restores K-12 education funding. With this proposal, the Governor prioritizes paying off our debts and stashing away reserves over restoring funds to much-needed programs.
As part of the Governor’s focus on education, he proposes an overall increase of $6.3 billion for K-12 schools and Community Colleges, for a total of $61.6 billion. Of this, the Governor proposes a $4.5 billion increase for his “Local Control Funding Formula,” which provides greater funding for disadvantaged students.
The Governor also proposes to completely pay off all of the remaining K-14 deferred payments, totaling $6.2 billion.
Child Care Details:
The era of deep cuts is over.
Last year the Legislature was able to increase funding for child care programs by approximately $63 million and also increased spending on state preschool by $30 million.
The Governor’s current budget proposal generally funds child care programs at their previous levels with minor adjustments for caseloads in CalWORKs Stage 2 (an increase of $6.3 million) and Stage 3 (an increase of $2.8 million). However, we are hopeful that we will be able to advocate for additional increased investments in child care as budget negotiations progress. We must fight to provide early education and care to the 110,000 California children cut over the past few years.
The Governor’s budget includes a six-county, 2,000-family pilot project over three years that will connect children enrolled in the CalWORKs program with licensed child care, engage parents with children in the child care setting, provide parenting and life skill programs for parents, and provide parents with work readiness activities. The project will cost $9.9 million General Fund in 2014-15 and $115.4 million General Fund over three years.
Also in the Governor’s proposal is a $7.5 million increase in funding to improve child care licensing. This money will provide more than 70 new positions, add a specialized complaint hotline, increase training for new field staff, and create training for supervisors and managers.
Increases at the Federal level:While there is no real increase over last year in the California budget, we expect the U.S. Congress to pass an appropriations bill that includes $2.36 billion for the Child Care & Development Block Grants (CCDBG), which is $154 million more than the FY 2013 level, and $8.6 billion for Head Start, which is over $1 billion more than the FY 2013 level, enough to fully restore the FY 2013 sequester cuts to Head Start and allow for an approximately 1.3% percent cost of living adjustment for the program. |
Our Next Steps:
This January budget is really just a starting point for the budget process. The final budget will likely look very different after the work we do to educate the Legislature on our issues. We will fight to restore the children cut from child care programs during the recession. And we will remind Sacramento that the goal of the Local Control Funding Formula—closing the achievement gap among our most disadvantaged students—will never be realized if California continues to neglect its early education system.
In the next few months, we will be doing a few things to make sure that the Governor and the legislature hear directly from us and the families that we care work with. Here are some upcoming actions:
- To highlight the important work that we do on a daily basis, child care providers throughout California will conduct a BUS TOUR with multiple stops at providers’ homes from San Diego to Sacramento, February 18-20, 2014. Joining us on the tour will be key influential community leaders and elected officials. Our goal is both to educate those on the tour and also to get media attention so that the Governor sees that it’s crucial to invest in early education. The events will be held in San Diego, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Fresno, San Jose, and Sacramento. If you are a provider who lives near any of those cities, please call your organizer to see how you and your client parents can be involved in this exciting bus tour! We are stronger together!
- We will have a LOBBY DAY in late April or early May where providers from all over the state will go to Sacramento to urge our state legislators to make funding for early education a top priority in the budget that they send back to the Governor. Stay tuned for details!
