Dr. Rhea Bishop of the Kellogg Foundation Lends Support and Encourages A Strong Child Care Provider Network Across the State of Mississippi!

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 infrastructure to 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.

Please come and stand with us.