Laurie Smith, SECAC Executive Director and architect of required Standard and Comprehensive child care center designations has taken a post with the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Governor’s policy makers did not conduct an Economic Impact Study to determine the impact of SECAC’s plan on private citizens and small businesses.
The Governor’s policy makers did not follow Administrative Procedures Law.
This conduct of state actors is unprecedented and proving to be the most irresponsible, hostile and destabilizing in the history of Mississippi’s CCDF.
SECAC/MDHS has held Mississippi to zero new child care enrollment state-wide for five years now and recently terminated approximately one-half of all children who were being served by employing new, draconian eligibility requirements and adding extra hurdles sure to eliminate large numbers.
Employers have lost entry-level but well-trained, employees willing to fill stubborn vacancies.
The child care infrastructure developed and based in the private sector (much like the developing charter school infrastructure) is crumbling, particularly in rural areas, as owners serving low-income children go out of business.
John Davis has appointed Dana Kidd as MDHS Deputy Director of Federal Programs.
In a very recent meeting with MDHS Executive Director John Davis, I was introduced to MDHS Deputy Director of Federal Programs Dana Kidd.
According to Ms. Kidd, CCDF program redress and announcements are to come expeditiously.
Postscript
During that lunch meeting with SECAC Executive Director Laurie Smith, DHS Executive Director John Davis and myself, Mrs. Kidd, a whiz with more than 30 years experience in the administration of economic assistance and federal programs, was given primary authority for getting the child care economic assistance program up and running.
With her knowledge of federal guidelines, Mrs. Kidd swiftly aligned distribution policy and authorized the DHS release of child care assistance in short time.
What remained of the child care infrastructure developed to serve low-income children was given a temporary reprieve!
Moving forward, Mrs. Kidd met with us, heard our concerns, provided reasonable influence in the development of child care policy and encouraged our stakeholder participation.
In fact, after sending her my thoughts on aligning new enrollment with the academic year, Mrs. Kidd encouraged me to also send a timely Email of my suggestions to Andrea Sanders who was, at that time, placing proposed CCDF policy into the required HHS structure of the CCDF State Plan.
Email I sent to Andrea Sanders Aug 8, 2018:
Because the exit of full time children is immediate, widespread and happening on approximately the same day throughout the state, the current process of issuing new enrollment simply cannot keep up in a manner sufficient to support the operating budgets needed for many rural area facilities…not to mention quality! The gains recognized for CCPP providers through the current release of funding and the implementation of the rates increase is lost for many due to the large exodus of full time children. It is often a huge source of immediate and swift financial stress.
In addition, other re-determinations scheduled throughout the year as twelve months of services expire for families are still further destabilizing and place children, suddenly, out of learning environments and readiness programs with no thought given to that child’s education.
You cannot, simply cannot, even attempt or expect truly effective preschool programs in rural programs where very large numbers of children enrolled are low-income children without aligning all re-determination and new enrollment with the new school or academic year.
The Planning and Development Districts knew this. They aligned all re-determinations for April/May and then issued new enrollment Certificates for October…thus, classes were formed and children were ready to be received at the start of the new FFY (but should have aligned with the academic year as a “‘best practice”‘ support). This was done statewide!
Further, no Change of Provider forms were received/processed from April through August.
I recommend this practice be fine tuned and the former PDD process be reinstated to align with the academic year as soon as possible even if it requires allowing for 18 months or more of services for some initially.
The PDD’s terminated Certificates while also issuing new enrollment Certificates at the same time. They understood that no business could operate without sufficient customers. McDonalds would close if too few purchased their meals!
And one year later…with precious little recovery time, we are right back where we started with No New Enrollment!
Unfortunately, we have just learned from others that since Mrs. Kidd’s return from FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act), she was given a very reduced role in matters of the CCDF; recently, she was completely removed from child care duties altogether – and it shows!
After only onechild care certification period and three months now, in to the termination of large numbers of children on assistance, DECCD Director Kristi McHale, who has been employed at DHS about twelve months, still maintains her instruction of no new enrollment even as large numbers of the children that survived Program eligibility have exited for public school!
Worse, through DECCD, DHS General Counsel Andrea Sanders – who now has taken primary authority after only two years of employment with DHS – released a memo, without proper APL, notifying of changes in the delivery of payment for child care that have already started:
What is new?
”On the first of each month, CCPS will look at the previous month to see which children had a birthday. CCPS will pay the appropriate rate based on the child’s new age. For example, if a child turns 13 months old in November, then CCPS will pay the new rate starting in December.”
Children terminated + Children moved to Part-time reimbursement status + No new enrollment + less reimbursement and squeezed payments each month rather than at the next re-certification period = predatory underfunding while requiring costly Q.R.I.S.
A child care Rally at the Capitol is being planned for September!
Dear Pre-School Collaborators, WHY ARE YOU ASKING FOR OUR INPUT NOW? A SURVEY ONLY?
Child Care Providers are now being asked to complete a survey for a SCORE BOARD (scoring our efforts in addition to the ETERNALLY AND EVER EVOLVING RULES OF the SECAC advisory only council) that some geniuses “thunked up” without our input.
Embattled: Meaningful HHS/State Court oversight is overdue.
Another round of required Standard application submissions was announced for embattled, low-income, CCPP child care providers and is underway for those who have not yet received Standard Center designation.
After submission, the applications are scored in some way by someone to serve as the basis to determine if a provider may continue to redeem funding vouchers and participate in Mississippi’s CCDF beginning October 1, 2019.
The rating processes, type-specific evaluation scales and points needed to achieve and maintain the required Standard Center designation, however, have still not been identified, disclosed, defined or adopted 32 (thirty-two) months in from Program launch.
A BLANK Monopoly game board – without the pieces and without the Community Chest rules.
It is like being required to play a game of Monopoly on a BLANK game board…only lost child care provider properties will not be the imaginary Park Place or Vermont Avenue on a game board. They will be real and hard felt bankruptcies for all low-income child care providers whose applications fail to measure up – even over time – according to SECAC’s rules – the small business losses of which were never mentioned in the Economic Impact Study DHS General Counsel Andrea Sanders publicly stated was not required in the first place!
In this make-believe Kingdom of Contempt for CCDF Service Providers, no one dare to challenge the King or it’s “Off with their heads!”
But in Monopoly, it’s just called cheating!
Therefore, we have asked to meet with the CCDFBG Federal Monitor Eric Blanchette and are waiting for his response.
In the meantime, those who have allegedly been told that they have missed the deadline to qualify as a Standard Center who are trying to contact me, you may private message me on Facebook or send me an Email at: licensedprovider@AOL.com
Remember, you only have about five weeks remaining to prevent debarment, which will be much easier than reversing debarment.
DECCD Director Kristie McHale Remains Inaccessible
I don’t even bother to directly contact or establish any kind of dialog or professional relationship with DECCD Director Kristie McHale anymore, for in the year or more she has served in that capacity, I do not believe she has ever responded or even provided her name on a memo.
Jill Dent responded.
Laura Dixon responded.
Candice Pittman responded even under most tense of circumstances (and they sacked her) – but not Kristie McHale!
Of course, she might be following the example demonstrated by those governing SECAC who have not included, but rather, greatly excluded, our organizations and peer vetted leadership from all policy making including the development of the Pre-K grant now being drafted.
I suppose they already know we will never agree to the predatory underfunding Kristie McHale has recently announced via Email in support of making an unsustainable CCDF State Plan slightly more sustainable for administrators and technical advisors only!
It has been about ten days since I copied DECCD Kristie McHale on an email explaining that Mississippi law allows children age 5 by September first to remain enrolled in private kindergarten programs and receive full time Certificates if that is the choice of the parent, and still, there has been no response.
CDNA members have now begun to make written request to Earl Scales who represents the Office of the Attorney General at DHS in order to request a public hearing (oral proceeding) to address this and other concerns outlined in the newly proposed Child Care Payment Policies Manual.
Administrative Procedures Law requires an oral proceeding if such requests are received from 10 citizens.
If you wish to participate, please let me know and I will send you a copy of the form letter being used to make the request. Just sign and send! It’s that easy!
In the meantime, a CHILD CARE RALLY is being planned for September at the Capitol.
This blog will announce the details of the Rally and more when they are available so stay tuned!
DECCD Director Kristi McHale Announces Changes in Delivery of Child Care Payment without Notice or a Hearing
There will be a telephone conference call for child care directors at 11:45 this morning. Email Deloris Suel at dsuel@comcast.net to get the call in number and access code.
EFFECTIVE TODAY
DECCD Director Kristie McHale authorized dissemination of a memo announcing changes in the delivery of the Child Care Payment System without the APL required Public Notice of an Amendment.
As an attorney, she should know that any change impacting funding to low-income parents, however insignificant SHE feels the change might be, requires the processes of proper Administrative Procedures Law.
While I understand your concerns for constant, ongoing, monthly reductions in the fees paid for child care services as children celebrate birthdays and the instability that decision causes to preschool budgets, I cannot explain the open and ongoing violation of APL.
I can only say I am of the opinion that the only understanding she has of the business operations of service providers is that such economic impacts to us are “NONE OF OUR BUSINESS”.
I also cannot explain why she is requiring us to list our rates other than to demonstrate the DECCD desire to continue to weight market rate surveys by low-income service provider rates and not the rates paid to middle and upper income programs as they are required to do.
It is so absurd to me that she would even give breath to a Comprehensive Child Care Center in such an environment.
(3)An agency may incorporate, by reference in its rules and without publishing the incorporated matter in full,all or any part of a code, standard, rule or regulation that has been adopted by an agency of the United States … if incorporation of its text in agency rules would be unduly cumbersome, expensive or otherwise inexpedient.The reference in the agency rules must fully identify the incorporated matter with an appropriate citation.
Because HHS does not require Standard and Comprehensive Centers, SECAC/MDHS should include 658G(a)(2), the code that is available in the federal statute mandating the choice of 1out of 10 quality activities from which SECAC/MDHS were to have allowed a proper(and not manipulated) Mississippi needs assessmentto determine:
Evaluating child care programs’ effectiveness, including positive impacts on children.
Supporting voluntary accreditation.
Supporting quality health, physical activity and nutrition standards in child care settings.
Any other quality improvement activity that can be measured.
The quality determined by SECAC, is written to allow for the annual elimination of small business service providers (most of whom are members of a protected class – the other elephant in the room) who do not demonstrate ongoing and ever more…and still more…costly national standards over time without mention of the fact that those to be most impacted receive only 75% of 2015 market rates enacted in 2018 – the first increase in as much as 15 years and possibly the last one for 15 years more.
SECAC/MDHS implemented this CCDF State Plan without identifying or providing the rules by which centers will be determined eligible to continue to serve low-income children.
Further attempts to redress this again would likely not be any less exhausting or any less heated than it was when I first raised this primary concern with policymakers.
In fact, it would likely just be said, as it is usually said by state actors, academia and others when we dare to question, that self-employed child care providers do not care about children. We are only interested in making money.
“I can rise from the ashes like a phoenix only so many times.”
Demoralizing child care providers while financially defeating small businesses providing LICENSED child care services will NEVER sufficiently serve the needs of work force development or bring about quality child care or school readiness in Mississippi and has not justified any one competing early learning model, quality grant, technical assistance team, or agency as ”THE most worthy of CCDF quality funding” or as ”THE leading edge of leadership”.
More than two years in, I have not seen that this leadership can administrate a cost prohibitive quality rating system with any more expertise and success than the QRIS previously in place. Costs to low-income providers are still costs! Unstable CCPP funding is still unstable! More bias, prejudice and contempt for self-employed providers serving low-income children is, no less, bias, prejudice and contempt whatever the reigning early learning model!
What I have seen is that such conduct and conflict has driven state actor personal agenda and ambition, fostered a hostile and disruptive work environment for CCPP providers and low-income families, violated the privacy rights of private citizens working for private companies and prevented any meaningful discussion of reasonable policiesand assurances needed for expanding quality resources in the existing small business infrastructure developed by the CCDF to provide LICENSED child care services to low-income children.
Just weeks ago, SECAC asked a legislator to sponsor a bill to abolish the SECAC and replace it with a Children’s Cabinet which would remove child care representatives completely from the policy making ROOM and thus, take away all Program ownership – a quest I see as more so for power than for vested quality and improvement.
Fortunately, it died on the calendar.
Given the level of contempt and disrespect all leadership has demonstrated for CCPP child care providers and small businesses over the years, it is no wonder that costs and sustainability of QRIS activities and the huge burden to providers and economic impact QRIS causes them to realize has always been the elephant in the room!
“Truth isn’t truth”- the Final CCDF Public Hearing!
Just when we begin to trust that new, high-ranking appointments at MDHS are at least trying to adhere to the fair and lawful treatment of much abused low-income child care providers, here comes Jacob Black!
As self-important policy makers use the power of position to move this kerfuffle that is “the SECAC Plan” one step closer to “legitimacy”,“unworthy low-income child care providers” are still anxiously waiting to receive full approval of the Standard Application they were required to complete eight months ago in order to continue to do business in this state!
While it may seem a minor fix to Mr. Black, it was not minor to the President of the state-wide organization, CDNA’s Deloris Suel who shared comments that although she was fully approved months ago, she received a call last week from NSPARC, representing itself at MDHS, saying that although she had been fully approved, they had concerns and felt she needed technical assistance. (Mrs. Suel uses the Frog Street Curriculum and her staff completed certified training in that Program’s alignment of Early Learning Guidelines with Jackson Public Schools.)
HOW WOULD NSPARC KNOW WHO NEEDS TECHNICALASSISTANCE?
NSPARC has no prior experience in early learning and licensed child care and may have been the least qualified agency in this entire state to lead the CCDF.
NSPARC’s forte is data collections and data mining. Perhaps then, it’s time would best be spent reviewing Privacy Law and the collection of Social Security Numbers and personally identifiable information without the statutory authority to collect it and the proper disclosure of each routine use its new system of records contains…including the categories of users and other like things a data company is just expected to know and follow.
HOW WOULD MDHS COUNTY DIRECTORS AND ELIGIBILITY WORKERS KNOW WHO NEEDS TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE?
TRUTH – the categories of users assigned to determine if your Standard Application was or was not fully approved were MDHS County Directors and MDHS Eligibility Workers – the individuals whodetermine if you are eligible for economic assistance and NOT curriculum or early learning specialists.
Now, these individuals had to receive some kind of training from someone in order to even begin such determinations.
When I requested that I be provided that very same training in order to review my own work (the highest form of evaluation is self-evaluation), Mr. Black took center stage to explain that “curriculum” was not a factor in determining whether or not a provider was approved.
TRUTH ISN’T TRUTH!
TRUTH – no one can fail the Standard Application – you just may not be fully approved and if you are not fully approved, you will not be able to serve low-income children going forward.
Providers succinctly refer to the effective result of the MDHS review as “passed or failed”.
Following exposure, MDHS County Directors and eligibility workers are no longer reviewing Standard Applications for approval. However, no one has disclosed who is doing that now and what their credentials are.
ALL HANDS ON DECK REQUIRED!
Jacob Black began his window dressing of the Standard Application saying MDHS is going to provide the technical assistance needed to fully approve all.
Tell that to the hundreds of providers who are suffering great angst, stress and worry at this very moment as they wait, eight months in, for very limited technical assistance necessary to full approval!
He notes that Mississippi Building Blocks, the former employer of the SECAC Executive Director who has guided this CCDF State Plan, has been added to the Child Care Academies to make technical assistance readily available.
I advise Mr. Black that when Q.R.I.S. was voluntary and not required, as it is in this plan, the Early Years Network and Mississippi Building Blocks combined could not service every facility!
This required Q.R.I.S. will require all hands on deck. It will need every true, recognizable and experienced early learning professional throughout the state! The Child Care Academy should also bring in Dr. Cathy Grace at Ole Miss, Dr. Louise Davis of Mississippi State Extension Family and Consumer Sciences, J.S.U., Alcorn, and more!
If Q.R.I.S. and National Standards are to be required for all by NSPARC, there are more qualified professionals who can bringgreater expertise and experience to the table. To exclude that talent and to monopolize all TA is to diminish customer service and the respect (if any) shown to providers and limits the spirit of excellence, diversity, creativity, and most unfortunately, the competitive advantage that allows initiatives to strive to set the work of their organizations apart from the rest.
In light of required Q.R.I.S., it is no longer clear to me why the EYN should have ever been removed from CCDF participation in the first place.
Waiting eight months or longer for technical assistance is not even close enough for government work!
RACE TO THE TOP WAS NOT BUYING IT!
I would refer Mr. Black to former Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge comments where Mississippi plans, including this one, were not highly rated nationally or selected for funding due to failure to demonstrate the plans as sustainable.
That is why an economic impact statement is critical to andrequired of this process before going any further.
I certainly hope MDHS is not counting on the President’s “jobs growth CCDF funding” – short-term money over two years – to embed behemoth long-term goals and costs.
Even under Mr. Black’s watch, the defunding of the CCDF Certificate Program, for the fifth consecutive year, and the extreme vetting of low-income parents during redetermination terminating approximately 10,000 children demonstrated what I believe was a desperate attempt to build this new bureaucracy (Cabinet or agency) and fund all the new state appointments this plan will require (priorto Congress’ recent act to double CCDF discretionary spending).
It was not and would not be conducive to this State’s economy and job’s growth to revert back to such hostile and improper funding decisions…ever!
DEVOTED TO CHILDREN
Mr. Black began his explaining of the Standard Application debacle by “taking center stage” and proclaiming his passion for children.
While I have no doubt as to his sincerity, I would note that Mr. Black is an attorney. His forte is the law. All due respect, but perhaps, given that he is a member of the Mississippi Bar, he should devote most of his time in lawyering and advising the legal requirements of all the components making up the CCDF Final State Plan.
I would suggest that he begin with review of the following:
Administrative Procedure Act
UNITED STATES CODE § 552a – Any organization proposing to establish a new system of records, or to enlarge an existing system,shall give public notice long enough in advance of the initiation or enlargement of the system to assureindividuals who may be affected by its operation a reasonable opportunity to comment (i.e., NSPARC’S Standard Application Data Set).
Administrative Procedure Act
UNITED STATES CODE § 552 – To the extent feasible, each rule should be written in clear and concise language understandable to persons who may be affected by it and each agency shall make a reasonable effort to make known to persons who may be affected when a rule becomes effective before any date established by subsection.
Administrative Procedure Act
MISSISSIPPI § 25-43-3.105. Economic impact statement, requirement and conditions.
Each agency proposing the adoption of a rule or significant amendment of an existing rule imposing a duty, responsibility or requirement on any person shall consider the economic impact the rule will have on the citizens of our state and the benefits the rule will cause to accrue to those citizens. The economic impact statement shall include the following: An analysis of the impact of the proposed rule on small businesses; A determination of whether less costly methods or less intrusive methods exist for achieving the purpose of the proposed rule where reasonable alternative methods existwhich are not precluded by law.
Mr. Black, it is also your duty to make certain that the rights of persons dealing with the agency are not substantially impaired!
Please let us know when you have developed the rules and the requirements of Standard and Comprehensive facilities.
Dr. Rhea Bishop of the Kellogg Foundation Lends Support and Encourages A Strong Child Care Provider Network Across the State of Mississippi!
(MECA Conference)
”Vote. Show up politically and raise some san when it comes to the children and families you serve.” Dr. Rhea Bishop
See video below.
Between the workshops and Conference Ballrooms, the topic most discussed among the more than 300 child care providers attending the MECA Conference was the extended HHS deadlines by SECAC/MDHS and failure to yet release the Child Care Development Fund and the necessary resources to generate just the operating capital needed to maintain the full day, full-year work-force support (low-income child care) system developed and deeply embedded in the private sector.
Proponents of the former QRIS and the Early Learning Collaborative administered by the Department of Education were quick to say, ”We told you that CCDF administration under the leadership and guidance of the State Early Childhood Advisory Council (SECAC) was going to be worse.”
Truthfully, I have not forgotten the leadership promoting a QRIS that continued to use a method of scoring known to have failed even some of the few (10%) centers across the nation worthy of costly accreditation by NAEYC!
When the rest of the country adopted the new and more flexible QRIS scoring method developed after that finding which allowed the award of points for improvements made, Mississippi policy makers did not!
As a result, many providers serving low-income children who were indeed making quality gains in many areas continued to be consistently barred from Early Learning Collaborative Pre-K participation.
I have not forgotten, and never will, the very aggressive and negative lobby they supported and contributed to through the Hechinger Report newspaper series, ”Crises in Child Care” where in every case of noted ”crisis”, there appeared a photograph of a Black owned and operated facility with posed staff and in the one case of a ”good” program, there appeared a photograph of the African-American worker doing as instructed by the white director of the white owned child care facility…institutional racism as I saw it and very unfair to those providers agreeing to be interviewed only later to learn that they had depicted in such a poor light. (Click here.)
The message they hoped to be conveyed to our legislators and all Mississippians was: ”The Low-Income Child Care Industry does not have capacity to prepare little children for school”.
In that way, all the more reason to justify a Pre-K Collaborative policy makers’ wish to propose an Interagency Council which would assume the duties of CCDF administration, licensing, determine how the CCDF quality dollars would be spent and remove child care providers from the policy making table!
Proposed in the Senate by Senator Brice Wiggins, the legislation failed.
So, this past Saturday, I responded that I still believe that the SECAC plan is a better fit for the low-income child care industry and that some very good policies had been adopted as a result.
Adverse child care payment policies began long ago under previous administrations and have progressively become more harsh.
I did concede, however, that we had expected the Governor’s policy makers to follow Administrative Procedures Law.
They did not.
They did not identify the Quality Needs Assessment required by HHS to determine how the quality dollars should be spent. (Click here.)
They have not filed an amended state plan with the Secretary of State which would have outlined NSparc’s role, market rates, and discretionary spending.
There was no public hearing.
They did not and have not provided an Economic Impact Study outlining the impact the SECAC plan will have on small businesses.
The rules of a Standard and Comprehensive Center have not been provided.
They just did not and have not followed the law, including privacy law and HHS guidance on the collection of Social Security numbers in a new system of records…so, yes…bad… alarming… destabilizing…irresponsible…unprofessional and possibly the greatest disparate impact ever for needy parents and disadvantaged small businesses in Mississippi.
Therefore, it should be no surprise to anyone, just as the Pre-K Collaborators had done, the Governor’s SECAC policy advisor recently proposed a Children’s Cabinet – an Interagency Council which would assume the duties of CCDF administration, licensing, determine how the CCDF quality dollars would be spent and remove child care providers from the policy making table.
When Representative Deborah Dixon moved for the House of Representatives to reconsider this legislation which had stalled, the NAYS presented so loudly, the Speaker did not even have to open the voting machine. The proposed legislation died on the calendar.
Perhaps, the majority of Representatives, like many Mississippians, do not feel any additional layer of costly and overbearing bureaucracy, whether proposed on behalf of the Pre-K Collaborative or those representing the SECAC Plan, is a justifiable expense or truly necessary to best administrate Programs for children.
Apart from that, I believe the SECAC plan, with the right leadership, could be developed as the most inclusive and effective early learning model for child care early learning programs…with a little more work and law-abiding consideration of stakeholder input through proper and transparent APL (Administrative Procedures Law).
The current policy makers, more than 15 months in, appear to be unprepared for the enormity of effort and the time frame required and needed to sufficiently implement the plan.
So, we wait and many have fallen because no industry can be so severely under enrolled and underfunded for such a long period of time without irreversible harm.
Large numbers of child care providers are now needed for proper industry representation on the South Steps of the Capitol, Thursday, February 22, 2018, 10:30 AM, in Jackson. (Please sign in beginning at 10:30 AM and wear purple! RSVP to info@mssecure.org .)
Tell the Governor low-income parents cannot work or complete job training without child care assistance.
Tell him barriers and draconian redetermination policy is counter-productive to work force development. It will not Keep Mississippi Working.
Child Care Keeps Mississippi Working!
Tell the Governor that on Feb. 10, 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported: Historically low unemployment is forcing headway on an issue that has been around since women entered the workforce: child care. Businesses increasingly see it as an issue vital to their operations and communities, and policy makers from New Hampshire to Michigan to Colorado have identified it as key to freeing up workers to fill stubborn vacancies and building a talent pipeline.
Tell the governor that in Louisiana, a coalition of corporate and university leaders delivered a blunt assessment in a mid-January op-ed in the Shreveport Times : “One of the fixes to our labor shortage is as obvious as the fact that the snow is frozen: Make it easier for parents to get quality, affordable child care.”
Tell the Governor that Child Care Aware recommends that legislators at the state and federal level invest in the child care industry’s infrastructureto prevent gaps in supply and demand and the creation of Child Care Deserts.
Tell the Governor it is not appropriate, in a democracy, for his policy makers to say they have not released CCDF funding because they do not yet know how they wish to spend the money when such expenditures were required to have been outlined in an amended state plan with an Economic Impact Study including the impact to small businesses, filed with the Secretary of State and commented upon in a public hearing. Even the Governor’s policy makers must follow Administrative Procedures.
Tell the Governor we are losing an experienced and certified work force due to a forced reduction in employee work hours and that cause and effect is exactly opposite the quality building his advisors and policy makers purport.
Ask the Governor to imagine what would become of his heavily touted Charter School Program, also embedded in the small business private sector, if Charter Schools were expected to receive only a percentage of the per pupil spending set in 2003.
Ask the Governor what the fate of his heavily touted Charter School Program would be if they did not receive funding for new enrollment for more than four academic years!
Tell him that we have experienced no new enrollment for low-income children in more than four fiscal years and no market rates increase as were required by the CCDF Reauthorization Act and originally scheduled to have gone into effect more than a year ago.
Ask the Governor to remove all obstacles today and make all necessary changes needed to bring about the immediate release of the CCDF discretionary funding received months ago.
Dr. Bishop understands how far reaching SECAC/MDHS policy is for families, providers and communities and like most early learning people of goodwill, I think is concerned for inefficiency ($13 million lost due to failure to match in-kind funds) and the many extended HHS deadlines in the administration of Mississippi’s current CCDF.
She lifts us up with the following appreciation of facts:
Child Care is a work force support system!
Child Care small business ranks among the top five businesses driving local economies.
The soft skills (empathy, negotiation, communication, making decisions, skills which characterize one’s ability to build relationships with other people) that we develop in young children go on to drive the national economy through a functional and efficient work force.
You are needed.
You are loved.
Listen to her inspiring message below and plan to join us in representing the child care industry at the Capitol on Thursday!
We also welcome the support of our colleagues who do not accept Certificates for this industry-wide, state led market disruption may impact you in time.
Promoting business-friendly public policies that support parental employment with quality early learning opportunities for the Delta's childcare-age population.
overbearing bureaucracy, whether proposed on behalf of the Pre-K Collaborative or those representing the SECAC Plan, is a justifiable expense or truly necessary to best administrate Programs for children. 
Delta Licensed Providers 
Recent Comments