Budget impasse crippling early education, affecting jobs, business, economy Now that we are two months overdue for a budget for this fiscal year, our communities are feeling the pain of what cuts to early education would mean for families, businesses and communities.
I urge our legislative leaders to move quickly to pass a responsible budget that protects early education programs such as Child Care Works, Keystone STARS, PA Pre-K Counts, Head Start Supplemental and Nurse-Family Partnership. Because of the budget stalemate, the Child Care Works program, and other programs that support childcare, are not funded. Child Care Works provides assistance to the working families of Pennsylvania to offset the cost of childcare.
In Clearfield County alone, the program serves approximately 397 children under the age of five. These subsidy monies are sent directly to the childcare providers that care for and educate children. Despite the fact that many childcare providers across the commonwealth are not getting paid, there are many home-based providers that are continuing to provide quality care and education to the children and families they serve. Many providers continue to expend their personal funds to provide activities and learning opportunities for the children.
However, some programs, especially those who have committed to a high enrollment of vulnerable children, are laying off staff, closing classrooms, and shutting their doors. Children’s Aid Society of Clearfield has started to lay off staff but if the budget impasse continues, more drastic cuts may need to be made. PA Pre-K Counts and Head Start classrooms, and the 761 children they serve in Clearfield County, are also in jeopardy. Because of the impasse, programs are being forced to lay off or reassign teachers to other positions. In the best scenario, those classrooms will open with new teachers and lose the experience of the previous teacher.
At worst, those classrooms will shut down for good. One local PA Pre-K Counts provider, Cen-Clear Child Services, Inc. has had to put 50 percent of their state funded Pre-K Counts classrooms on hold. While half of the classrooms in this program resumed services at the start of the school year, the other half did not start. Staff within these programs have been laid off or reassigned to other positions. Well over 100 children in this program will not receive services due to the impasse.
Cen-Clear is also a provider of state funded Head Start classrooms. Due to the budget impasse, this program is in the same financial predicament and half of these classrooms did not start at the beginning of the school year. More than 50 of the children in this program, and their families, will not receive the high quality services offered by Cen-Clear.
This impasse is giving us a terrifying look into the future if our state decision makers choose to pass the drastic cuts proposed by Senate bills.
Our families and their employers rely on early education to keep our economy running today. We all rely on early education to prepare our future workforce for tomorrow. I urge our legislators and Governor Rendell to quickly pass a responsible budget that gets adequate state money to our early education system without decimating it.
Susan Bloom
Clearfield
