Build Back Stronger

PRE4CLE, in partnership with Groundwork Ohio, hosted a virtual Town Hall conversation with Senators Matt Dolan and Nickie Antonio to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Northeast Ohio’s early childhood system and how policymakers at the state level are addressing the urgent needs of young children and families. Participants also heard from early childhood educators about the issues facing the child care system, and was part of the discussion with Senator Dolan and Senator Antonio about what’s in store for early education in the upcoming legislative session and state budget process. Featuring:

• Senator Matt Dolan, Ohio Senate District 24
• Nickie Antonio, Ohio Senate District 23
• Lynanne Gutierrez, Assistant Director and Legal Counsel, Groundwork Ohio
• Michelle Curry, Executive Director, Merrick House
• Karla Martin, Quality Enhancement Director, Starting Point

View Video

This year’s Annual Report, “Preschool Reimagined” details the ways in which early education, like most industries, has been hit hard by COVID-19. Widespread closures, safety concerns, staffing shortages, and changes in parental employment have caused unprecedented disruption within early education, and are threatening the viability of a system that is critical to our community’s ability to recover.

View 2020 Annual Report

View Press Release

Cleveland.com | August 7, 2020

Child care providers keep Ohio running. They nurture and care for children while their parents work. They help to prepare our children to enter kindergarten with the skills they need to be successful in school.

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ideastream | July 10, 2020

PRE4CLE, the program aimed at expanding high-quality preschool for Cleveland children, has a list of recommendations to help Ohio’s child care providers weather the deep impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Gongwer | July 10, 2020

Additional funding for child care providers is the focus of a push made Thursday by a pair of Ohio advocacy groups.

Both PRE4CLE, which supports early childhood education programs in Cleveland, and Policy Matters Ohio held calls in support of efforts to shore up the state’s child care programs.

PRE4CLE unveiled a two-phase Building Back Better [now called Build Back Stronger] plan that envisions significant investments to support the industry during the pandemic as well as expansions and improvements to ensure it becomes more stable and effective.

“I think one of the things this crisis has done is laid bare the weaknesses in many systems,” Executive Director Katie Kelly said in a call with reporters.

The child care system faces issues of chronic underfunding, low compensation for staff and a lack of sustainable revenue sources, she said. “Addressing those is going to be so critical to making sure that as this current crisis drags on and potential new crises arise, we have a system that stays strong.”

Short-term proposals include directing more relief money toward child care – such as the $50 billion proposal currently before the U.S. Senate, she said. The industry could also benefit from an advisory committee or task force to help the DeWine administration guide policy.

In the longer term, the plan calls for continuing to prioritize the quality of early learning through the Step Up to Quality program, an expansion of eligibility for publicly funded child care up to 200% of the federal poverty level and finding sustainable long-term funding streams.

Much of the increased funding toward child care in the current budget (HB 166) came from the administration spending down a balance in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families dollars, she said. That money won’t last long.

“While it’s great that they’ve prioritized it in that way, we also know that we need a more sustainable source for the long-term,” Ms. Kelly said.

Increased funding will help programs pay teachers more, which is especially important considering they’re seeking staff with higher credentials who could get paid more by school districts.

“What we’re seeing now is definitely teachers who are making more on unemployment than they would if they returned to their sites, and that’s just not something that should be happening,” she said.

Jacklyn Chisholm, president and CEO of the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, said her programs, which are largely funded by federal Head Start dollars, face difficulty retaining staff.

“We have lost teachers for a dollar extra to the school system,” she said. “Because we’re now requiring more credentials, we’re competing with school systems, K-12. If we don’t continue to bring those salaries up, we’re going to start losing teachers.”

Michelle Curry, executive director of Merrick House, said her facility has had difficulty obtaining protective equipment and has spent about $5,000 so far on it and sanitizing equipment.

Despite the difficulty, the experience they gained while serving children of essential workers during the pandemic has helped.

“We learned from being a pandemic provider and it enabled us to reopen more prepared to meet the challenge of this time,” she said.

Policy Matters Ohio hosted its own call to announce the release of a report detailing stress the pandemic has placed on child care and calling for Congress to appropriate $50 billion to support the industry. They also urged state officials to allocate $60 million in coronavirus relief dollars for the same purpose.

“We need to prioritize kids, families and the child care infrastructure and industry,” PMO budget researcher Will Petrik said.

A panel of people connected with child care also urged increased federal and state funding for the industry on the PMO call.

Garri Davis, director of Water Lily Learning Center in Cincinnati, said her facility has had a hard time buying PPE supplies and has struggled with lost revenue because it has fewer children attending and many are staying part time.

“What I think would be a solution would be we would be paid based on enrollment and not based on attendance,” she said.

Child care should be considered as critical infrastructure, said George Goddard, with the Corporation for Ohio Appalachian Development.

“Unless we do something soon, I don’t want to say that we’re not in a crisis right now, but it’s going to get a lot worse,” he said.

Child care remains an essential part of Ohio’s economy, said Jasmine Henderson, an organizer for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. Her organization surveyed child care providers and found many are facing serious questions about their survival.

“This workforce behind the workforce needs to survive. We have no choice if we want Ohio’s economy to be healthy and whole,” she said.

Read Article on Gongwer Website

Hannah News | July 10, 2020

With new expenses for pandemic precautions and falling income from mandates for smaller classes, child care providers are facing a crisis that could see nearly half of them close absent state and federal help, child care advocate and providers said Thursday.

In Cleveland, there are 16,000 fewer early childhood education and after-school program slots available, according to PRE4CLE, which works to expand the number of Cleveland children in high quality child care and early learning programs.

“That’s due to a couple of factors. The first one being, as sites reopen, they have a mandate to have smaller class sizes and also a smaller teacher-to-child ratio in order to try to provide some social distancing within these sites. And also … some sites have decided to wait to reopen until they feel more ready and safe,” said Katie Kelly, head of PRE4CLE, in a videoconference on the topic.

Kelly said federal funding the state is using to provide supplemental payments to child care providers amid the crisis is set to end in a few weeks. Ohio faces a wave of closings without replacement funding, she said.

“It is estimated that as many as 45 percent of programs in Ohio could close permanently, which would equal about 100,000 slots or more,” she said, citing a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and analysis of the survey data by the Center for American Progress.

Kelly said she does not support simply lifting the class-size restrictions as a way to get centers more funding, citing reports out of Texas of hundreds of children and staff contracting the virus.

“We do have some evidence from states like Texas that did not practice social distancing that spread in child care is going to be a significant factor,” she said.

Two providers joined Kelly on the web conference, discussing the challenges they faced in remaining open, finding staff and navigating the state’s mandates for operation in the pandemic.

Jacklyn Chisholm, president and CEO of the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, said her program has spent about $10,000 to $15,000 so far on personal protective equipment (PPE) and faced major challenges in even finding adequate equipment and cleaning supplies. “Amazon is my best friend now,” she said.

Michelle Curry, executive director of Merrick House, said it costs about $2,500 per month for deep cleaning and sanitization of the building at her program.

Noting the challenges Chisholm mentioned in sourcing materials, Kelly said the plight of child care providers has not been enough of a focus for the state in comparison to schools and health care facilities, saying their needs should also be more of a priority when it comes to testing for the virus.

Despite the additional challenges, Kelly said she does not support any relaxation of Ohio’s quality requirements for child care providers. Publicly funded providers face a deadline this year to be rated in the Step Up to Quality system, and by 2025 must be rated high quality, which equates to at least three out of five stars in the rating system.

The training puts a focus on professional expertise in areas like child development, social-emotional development and trauma-informed care, which Kelly said will be even more critical as children have undergone the stresses of the pandemic and the attendant problems of poverty, hunger and abuse.

“This is the time, we think, to double down on those goals, not move backward in any way,” she said.
At the same time, the state needs to address the fact that even before the pandemic the sector offered fairly low wages to professionals with bachelor’s level education, Kelly said.

Chisholm said she’s had staff leave her programs to join a school system for as little as a dollar more per hour. “Because we’re now requiring more credentials, we’re competing with school systems … we’re cannibalizing each other, which is unfortunate,” she said.

Curry said her program has called applicants for positions to schedule interviews, only to hear they applied simply to maintain their unemployment compencompensation eligibility. She said the additional pandemic unemployment benefits are making people not want to return to work.

“We’ve got families that need our services, but we can’t assist them because we can’t hire the staff to be able … to provide that service,” she said.

PRE4CLE has condensed its recommendations for short- and long-term ways to address the pandemic and ongoing concerns in the child care sector into a plan titled “Build Back Better” [now called Build Back Stronger]. It is available at www.hannah.com.

View Article on Hannah Website

Cleveland.com | November 15, 2021

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A bill in the Ohio House would provide nursing homes $300 million in coronavirus relief money, with no guardrails around how it would get spent.

House Bill 461, sponsored by Cincinnati-area Republican Rep. Sara Carruthers, would provide nursing homes a one-time payment from the American Rescue Plan Act by Dec. 31. The bill contains a formula specifying how the money would get divided among the state’s nearly 1,000 homes.

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Crain’s Cleveland Business | November 14, 2021

We are at a crossroads in Ohio in terms of early childhood education. COVID caused a perfect storm of dips in enrollment, a shortage of early childhood teachers and high costs of providing care during a pandemic. Child care centers are at risk of closing their doors or have already done so.

Read More…

November 11, 2021

Federal Relief Must Be Released to Address Ongoing Pandemic Challenges

CLEVELAND, OHIO – The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated Ohio’s child care crisis, with many child care providers struggling to remain open due to the high cost of providing care, low enrollment, and the inability to find early childhood educators. In a series of video interviews produced by PRE4CLE, Cleveland’s providers share how they’re struggling to stay open so parents can have quality child care as they return to work. Download Provider Videos Press Release 11.9.21.

September 20, 2021

At their breaking point, child care centers are closing and families are losing access

CLEVELAND, OHIO – The State of Ohio has yet to distribute $800 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act grants that are ear marked to provide immediate relief to child care providers. These dollars are critically needed to stabilize Ohio’s early learning sector. PRE4CLE, which works to expand access to high-quality preschool to every child in Cleveland as part of Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools, urges Governor Mike DeWine and the members of the Ohio General Assembly to put together a plan and release the funds immediately to ensure Ohio’s workforce will continue to have access to essential and quality child care. Download PRE4CLE ARPA Funds Press Release.

November 19, 2020

PRE4CLE, Cleveland’s plan to expand access to high-quality preschool, released its annual report today. The report shares details of PRE4CLE’s outcomes during the past year and outlines a comprehensive framework to support Ohio’s early care and education system during the COVID-19 crisis and recovery.

”Preschool Reimagined” details the ways in which early education, like most industries, has been hit hard by COVID-19. Widespread closures, safety concerns, staffing shortages, and changes in parental employment have caused unprecedented disruption within early education, and are threatening the viability of a system that is critical to our community’s ability to recover. Download Annual Report 2020 Press Release.

If you are a member of the media and would like to talk to PRE4CLE about “Build Back Stronger,” contact:

Michelle Connavino

Director of Communication and Special Initiatives, PRE4CLE

mconnavino@pre4cle.org

216-901-4214