Education- House Early Childhood Subcommittee
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
3:31
I know well surely somebody Colleagues
Speaker 4
3:34
I know that we have a little event happening
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
3:39
at3:25 that everybody would like to be out of here for so let's get started. thank you I'm sure somebody will keep us informed of what the score is I bet I bet well thank y'all so much thank you for being here and
we'll call the meeting to order this is the first meeting of the early childhood committee after visiting with Secretary Oliva to talk about getting updates as opposed to spending a lot of time and adequacy or in in the regular joint meetings to try to keep abreast of what's going on in in early childhood. most of you guys know that or maybe maybe you do maybe you don't but
we we actually got two big reports this past oh I forgot to gavel in let me gavel in thank you we got two reports within the last couple of weeks one from the US Chamber one from theomen's Foundation that's Arkansascific that is talking about a childcare crisis basically some of the information and I can get you a copy of those reports talking about
the fact that we're losing $865 million a year in revenue in the economy because women can't find childcare or families can't find childcare to go back to work that means $200 million a year in tax revenue that we're losing out on besides the fact that we have children who are not getting the developmental needs that they that they absolutely need from0 to3. so we're trying to stay a br east with the with the
federal cuts with tightening of belts here we're trying to figure out basically the changes in access and capacity, the affordability and costs we'll talk about the system the childcare system and the fact that it's a market fail I know we've talked about some of that before the true cost of care is not the same as the reimbursement. we can talk about workforce which is a huge issue rural supply the the
deserts the child care deserts program effectiveness, accountability, governance accountability, economic impact and funding needs and and then data as we look at the transparency for the data across the board I think that would be helpful so that's the purpose of this committee so there aren't any minutes to approve and oh there are never mind there are we we can approve the
meeting the minutes from the ebruary 17th. thank you. Second thank you Julie all in favor? thank you very much ok and then our director of the office of earlyarly Childhood is here and Stacy you're coming up as well great so they're gonna keep us updated and let us know what's going on and then we'll have time for questions from each one of you guys
Speaker 7
7:12
so if you'd please introduce yourselves for the record Stacy Smith deputy commissioner with Department of
Speaker 10
7:20
Education and with Desse. Good afternoon everyone. Ashlyn Abney I'm the education division director for the office of Early Childhood.
Speaker 13
7:28
so last month Ashlyn actually did this presentation for the state board ofducation and she's you're going to kind of hit some of those high points of some of the updates in the office of Early Childhood and the work that they've been doing. we're going to kind of go through the slides pretty
quickly because I know that you guys have questions and we want to make sure and and hit the hit the topics that you
Speaker 10
7:51
want us to go deeper into. Great thank you all right you also just wanted to
Speaker 17
7:56
make sure that you all understand where we fit in with the Learns Act because sometimes that is a little bit confusing so what you see on your slide is what we are charged with doing and simply this says that we will make sure that children are kindergarten ready when they hit kindergarten
age that the families will have the resources that they need in order for their children to be ready. Also that providers will provide a high quality learning experience for the children and that there will be enough affordable access ible seats for children and if we get all of that done then the state and local economies will benefit because the families will be thriving and not be worried about their childcare. so a lot of the work that we do is with the local leads hopefully you all have heard that term before and you'll be
familiar with it a local lead has a catchment area that covers all of the counties in our state now we have about 26 local leads we just recently went through a locally to recompete and have announced the new local leads which essentially stayed the same as the last go around and so they are in charge of doing a child count in their area looking at the coordinated funding requests, maintaining their local level needs assessments and a local plan in their area and then also they
have been doing a lot of work recently with class implementation. So licensing is generally when people talk about OEC they'll think about licensing as they should because that is the foundation of the work that we do. you can see on your screen there the breakdown of the types of different facilities that we have around our state. there's a little over 1800 licensed providers and they are going to be looking primarily at health and safety when our new licensing standards come out
Another task that we are charged with doing is looking at the quality of the childcare in our state sometimes that is referred to as QRIs so you might hear that term. a big part of what we're doing right now is looking at class and doing a pilot with class which looks primarily at the interaction between the adults and the children in our different classrooms. so when you think about school readiness assistance or sometimes commonly referred to
as childcare vouchers. this is a big portion of the work that we do. It is a federal grant and we talked about that a little bit last time when I was here that we have what's called a CCDF grant it's a federal grant we pulled down $127 million from that grant. that's the information that you see on the screen now. we currently have 22 million in funds that we've got we're waiting on our quarter2 payment
to come in. We serve roughly 14,600 children in SRA and we do have a waitlist which I know that that is a question that comes up a lot. for how many children are waiting so you can see that there's a little over3,000 children on our waitlist. The other program that you'll hear about uhu oftentimes is Arkansas better chance or commonly referred to as ABC. The difference between this one and
the SRA that I just mentioned is that AC programme is a state funded program and so you can see there that that ward is 114 million and we serve roughly 21,000 children through the ABC programme. so more information about that is that the center base there's about 19,800 children there and then the home visiting network which is a part of this program
there's a roughly3000 children there. So then the total number number of children served is roughly 23,000. We just recently went to the state board and got approved to increase that number to 24,000 which gives us a little bit of a leeway for any kind of flex situation that's unforeseen that might happen during the programme year. Hey, I know you won't have questions so that is the end of
Speaker 13
12:26
the overall information that I thought you might needpresentative garner clarify something real quick? The difference between the last two slides that you see because you see some different numbers so I want to clarify that one has to do with the number of students that were serving in the AC program this year that last slide is our proposed number of students we're serving within the program and the slots we're awarding going into 2627 and we had to go to the state board of education and get approval to get that permission for those
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
12:54
slots for this next year. great thank you Representative Mayberry
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
13:03
Thank you. OK, so can you help us understand a little bit more about the market rate survey that to my understanding has to be done every3 years by the federal government, um, for SRA can you help us understand what that is and where
are we with developing a new market rate survey is
Speaker 17
13:27
will a new one be coming out? yes ma'am so market rate survey looks at an overall
picture of the health and expense of childcare and it pulls down information from different data systems and the information that it's
Speaker 10
13:43
pulling down typically looks at tuition costs and prices of childcare that a provider would have
Speaker 17
13:48
put into a system and then the analysis is done on the on the data that's been entered and so the question comes up sometimes what's the difference between a market rate survey which doesn't give you an actual
cost of care versus a cost analysis which does give you an actual cost of care. So the cost analysis will goes a little bit deeper in
Speaker 10
14:16
my opinion and asks more specific questions from providers from parents, from community members about an actual cost of expense. so we are currently in an RfP process to procure that study. we're hoping to get it rolling no later than
Speaker 17
14:35
August. it'll it'll start being assessed and looked at
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
14:40
and the information will be given back to us. OK, so you I'm sorry sir you're saying by August you would have the results of that
Speaker 18
14:49
or you would then start we are hoping that yes ma'am we're hoping that no later than
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
14:54
August it will be started. yes ma'am can you tell us what the current rate, the current market rate is I actually do not
Speaker 9
15:01
know that one off the top of my head but I'll
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
15:07
be glad to get it for you it33 dollars per
Speaker 13
15:11
so we set our school readiness assistants rates at75% of the market rate survey right so when you look at what we reimburse right now for care with a school readiness assistance it's at that75% mark. so for our preschool age group it's probably32 dollars is what our reimbursement rate is. I think
Speaker 18
15:29
so but I hate to give you the wrong information. it is around the32 dollars
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
15:34
mark and then36 for infant care yes ma'am because
that's a little bit different so so the ABC slots are not at that market rate level.
is that correct?'s so that so it is correct so
Speaker 13
15:49
right now when you when you flesh it out our pursu amount for ABC slots is5,105. and so when you divide that out it's coming around like $28 a day so it it
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
16:01
it is lower. it it is lower. OK so
when we had this discussion before we we were talking about
when was the last time that there was an increase for ABC and I think in2018 there was like a3 million dollars kind of added added to it but then I I started asking well how much further back can we go? So we go back to 2009 that was the last time that there was an increase and I, I was looking at the increase then to what we were seeing in
foundation funding and the numbers not not exact but but a lot closer than what they are now. so the ABC funding back in 2009 was4860 per child. Foundation funding was5,905 if I've got all my facts correct ABC funding now is has increased only by $240 and here we are you know 15,16 years later and it's
at5100 and our foundation funding is at 8,162 which is a difference of 2,257 so I guess I'm trying to ask and you know and and just trying to make it apparent to to legislators that costs go up and we spend a great amount of time looking at the cost of K-12 education months and months and months of
going over those numbers and we've seen that we have said yes, those numbers need to go up. we've gone from5900 to8100 now. do we ever do that with the cost of childcare and do we need to start doing that with early childhood education if we if we want our students excelling at this earliest of age could it be a benefit by
Speaker 9
18:15
Looking at those dollars yes it's the short answer yes ma'am I think that is something definitely that you all
Speaker 13
18:24
could look at I think one of the things that that we've looked at especially in the work with the local leads is we've been trying to part of that new work is getting a real true count in the different regions around the state and and how many families are being served in different regions. another thing that happens with ABC slots is there's a request for
slots right and so we have had internal discussions about is it time to increase the amounts um, but our total allocation has remained the same, right? And so for us where we get into is it time to increase how much the school gets it's really based on I guess supply and demand, right? at this point we still have waiting lists for people trying to get the ABC slots that we're putting out and so if we increase the amount of the ABC slot that reduces the number of slots that we have and
so um, since AC has been at the Department of Education, I I do believe we've increased it like once but it was not a large amount but we have tried in this and a Miss Adney here has kind of been charged about likes squeezing everything out of the amount that we have to make sure that we're going to services for students and so that's how you were able to increase it to
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
19:38
24,000, right? What tell us some of the things that you' ve done to really stretch those dollars. OK? well one of the things that we've talked about the last time and I'm going to let Ashlyn because she she's
Speaker 13
19:51
really the the the mover and shaker in all this but one of the things that they've come out hard on is like again paying by enrollment, right? not just because you got a slot. So again trying trying to make sure that our spots are being used, gone through and really looked at the different grants that we've administered and making sure that our money is used soundly in those ways and they're they're going to grants that actually help providers and if they've done surveys and you want to add to
Speaker 9
20:15
this I would say that those were the main things that we have
Speaker 18
20:22
done and I think that anytime that we can look at any option on the table to make sure that the money
Speaker 17
20:29
is flowing exactly the way it needs to be it's a it's a good thing I did want to let you know that the cost is33 dollars it's33 dollars for preschool it's46 dollars35 cents in northwest Arkansas but
Speaker 18
20:41
for SA yes that's for the SA answer you know I think everything that Stacy said or would be what I would say too like we were doing
Speaker 17
20:53
our best to make sure that while we have this growing wait list over on the SA side that we do like a crosswalk for instance over on the AC side to see where the slots are and where they're available how we got to the 24,000 or the request for the 24,000 is because we were stopping a program that's calledederre-k we were stopping that and we needed to move those children over to ABC because we did not want to stop the continuity of care for the children and so that forcest star number to go up a little higher than the 23,000
slots so we didn't foresee that happening or that need and so learned a lesson and that's the reason why we asked for the 24,000 slots just in case something unforeseen comes up but that we're still ok with the number of slots that we were given but I think the biggest thing is paying based on what's actually being s provided in terms of a service would be the biggest thing in the way I would answer that question I have other questions but I'm going
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
21:53
to let others chime in and I'll get back in the queue
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
22:00
and before we before we leave the cost in the market rates could you just give a quick overview about the cost of care versus market rates so not only are we not getting 100% of the market rate but we're not getting anywhere close to the cost of care just kind of give an overview for those of those of us who don't are not involved in in early childhood funding just an overview of how that works it's and its what I'm
trying to get at is that all of this is this isn't y'all's fault or anybody's fault it's a it's a faulty system so and I think folks don't understand or may not understand about how childcare is funded and the difference in
Speaker 13
22:42
cost I'm gonna let Ashlyn answer that question but one thing I do want in so we're in the process of working with procurement right now for an RfP and for a mark a new market rate survey and we're required to do those every three years because we take federal dollars rightart of that RfP right now that they're building in that's
not a requirement in that RfP is also to do a market rate survey along with a cost analysis so that we have a better picture of what it is across
Speaker 33
23:08
the state. OK? so that's that's those are things we're working on. I'll let her explain kind of the
Speaker 10
23:13
difference between the two am super excited about that because we haven't done that in the past but or in the recent past I should say we have only done the market rate survey so like Stacy said this time we're going to be looking at both of those and I think it will be interesting and it'll give us some great information back on what the rates should be like
and so just a different so here's some notes that I that I have anyway. So a market rate survey it will look at again what the providers are charging the families so the providers will put that information into what's called our ELS system and the market rate survey will pull that data down and they'll do an analysis based on that and I I apologize to anybody in this room that is the data analysis because this may be really an oversimplification of that and I don't mean it to be the cost analysis study that will
actually look at the the cost the true cost that it would take to run a program effectively the market rate survey looks at the private marketing pricing as opposed to a cost analysis study looking at the real live real time reality of the cost of living one of them in terms of policy the market rate survey supports family access and choice while the cost analysis looks at the providers sustainability and
quality the data on the market rate survey looks at provider reported tuition as opposed on the cost analysis study looks at modeled programs using actual cost drivers and then there's a list of other things that goes on along but you can kind of see the difference there that they really look at two totally different aspects of the childcare system which is one of the reasons why we made the decision. let's look at both of them so we can have a holistic picture of really what is happening in Arkansas and how
much it costs for there to be
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
25:10
a quality program for the children. Does that help a little bit? I think it does and think I think the main thing is that we just need to know that we've got to have access and if we don't have providers that can stay in business then we're not gonna have anything available and and and that's the system not what we're doing or not doing but there may be some ways that we can stabilize the system so so yes I think that's exactly what what we needed and then if there's any other
questions program folks can ask that umpresentative Jones in it sorry thank you you'll always
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
25:47
bejones to me thank you thank you for providing this information for us and if you if you've already addressed this forgive me what level of funding is required to eliminate the waitlist be sta stabilized providers
Speaker 18
26:10
I think I will know the answer to that better when we do get the
Speaker 10
26:15
market rate survey and the cost analysis because right now to me it is a very much struggling to find out what that is we are my office is taking in information all the time from providers from parents and I want to make sure that I point out that we're trying to get a a look at all providers in our state because there are some providers who don't accept any SRA
don't participate in ABC and so it's important I think to get that information as well so
Speaker 18
26:48
I think I can address that question better a little bit later in the year if that's acceptable to
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
26:57
you yeah we'll know more p re s ent ative painter thank
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
27:05
you madam chairir. I'm just trying to understand excuse me the
last two slides here it looks like to be almost a7 million dollars difference in that but am I reading that right? between I'm sorry I'm gonna go back and look with you so it looks like an fy $26114114 million was awarded and then moving
Speaker 10
27:32
from 26 to27107 million is that am I understanding that right a little bit different so 114 million is the
Speaker 67
27:37
total amount of our award that it's our allocation that's the allocation that's the allocation thank you
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
27:44
for that and this is not my wheelhouse also
Speaker 10
27:51
increased this tell me about the slots so we increased the slots because currently in this this fiscal year we have a program called Federal PreK. and federal pre-K was another multifunding to that got paid on top of an AC amount. It was particularly for
infant and toddlers. It was always funded through the CCDF funding through the money so totally separate although it came into AC and so we needed to stop that program again just looking at our costs looking at what we could afford so what we didn't want to do is stop any kind of care for the children. So because we didn't want to do that then we made the decision to take our federal preca slides and to move them over to aBC slots so those children can continue to go to the sites that
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
28:52
increase is at the centers compared to homeba I would say yes yes and thank you for doing that I
think it's a applaud to you guys for not stopping that no fault to the public's you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
29:05
know and so I appreciate its madam chair thank
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
29:11
you Representative Mcgruder thank you madam chairir. thank you ladies for being here today
have a question in regards to the counties that are having issues with this and what specific areas of the state are struggling with their childcare providers and also which areas are having difficulties having with infants in care would say that's a fair
Speaker 10
29:33
question by the way and I would say that infant and taller care in our state is a challenge across the board and that that is something that we do need to focus on in my opinion and we
need to pay attention. I would I would say that because our local leads are in play now this will be like the third year that they've been around they have been doing an excellent job in their catchment area so every county is covered by local lead so they are constantly looking at where the need is in in a system that's called coordinated funding requests we're about to start a new one which I can talk to you about later but right now they do a needs assessment for their for their counties I don't
have a list of one particular county that's struggling more than another county I think that you would kind of anticipate and know that our southern part of our state it's where it's maybe more difficult to find providers but that's not necessarily true for all this the counties there. So I can get you a list but there's not been anything that I've been looking at just specifically in terms of like deserts for no childcare
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
30:51
available. thank you and I would greatly appreciate that information I also would like to know do we have a plan for rural Arkansas of how we're going to address
Speaker 76
31:02
the rural areas of Arkansas because I'm sure there's a need in those
Speaker 9
31:08
areas also. that is something that we are constantly looking at and
Speaker 10
31:12
so let me give you an example. if you're talking about ABC programs in general. when we get the child count we're
looking to see how many children are being served and we're looking at the allocation of AC seats then we look to see in that particular county what the percentages of children that are being served and then we decide where those slots need to go so when a county only has40% or around the40% mark of children being served, they would be the first ones that we would look at in making sure that there were seats available for children
to attend so that's one example of how we look but we're constantly looking at rural Arkansas
Speaker 13
32:00
all of Arkansas really do think that would be a helpful document. we'll get that document to the the chair so you guys can see the where we have the percentage of being served in an area. and again that's the information that we use when we're awarding slots with AC we look for who's the lowest areas in the regions to get those thoughts first. before we had local leads established, we
didn't necessarily have all that information. our local leads are literally out knocking on centers that don't participate in AC or SRA to find out how many students are being served in their centers or how many children or babies or infants and again all that information is kind of for the first time learns required us to do that and so we're getting a better truer account of what we have in the state
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
32:48
Thank you and my last question is are there any areas of the state where there is no care
Speaker 9
32:57
that's a very good question it has not been brought to my attention if there's
Speaker 10
33:01
absolutely no care. I do know that there are some where we wish there would be more providers
Speaker 13
33:08
available but in terms of no care I'm not aware of that some of those centers may be homebased you know OEC office they they not only do they license your typical childcare centers but they also license homebased care centers and different programs like that so we may have a varying degree in different regions of the state. You may
not see your typical centerbased in all areas of the state but that's
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
33:33
definitely something we can look at the data for and that's what was going to say can you add
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
33:43
that to the information that you share. Thank you so much thank you madam chair p re s ent ative Brown. thank you very much I'm curious so we have facility I'm up here I'm sorry I apologize that's ok so not all facilities or childcare facilities participate
in SRA or AC do any of them participate in both programs or
Speaker 18
34:07
are they just eligible for one or the other it's a great question we do have programs that do both and
Speaker 10
34:15
so typically what you see there is it'll be an ABC program ABC programs typically run during the school year and they also run during the school day and so you will have some situations where I might have my
child in the AC program but as a parent I work until6:30 and so I don't want my child to have to move a location from their school campus over to a childcare facility so we will do what's called a wrapparound service and so it will it'll be a situation where the child's covered under ABC for the school hours and then covered under SRA for the afternoon hours until a parent can come pick up. So
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
34:58
that's just one example. so there's a in that situation there would be
a differential in what the school would receive for that short period of
Speaker 10
35:08
time that's a great question to you so ABC is paid to the school in allotted seats SRA is paid on behalf of the parent so it's a little bit it's a different situation so the
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
35:23
money goes to the parent and the parent
Speaker 17
35:25
pays the school it does go to the school and there is a differential there but it's not
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
35:33
it's two separate programs Did I confuse you well I'm not
Speaker 13
35:39
gonna say I know it all at this point you are you are correct in there is a rate difference between AC and SRA primarily when you look at AC programs about 90% of the ABC programs are ran by either a school district or an educational service cooperative. The state funded AC program runs on 178 day it's very similar to your K12 calendar
right? It has different requirements that require certified teachers and then when you get over into SRA that's where you're seeing more of your private businesses running childcare centers and then the money we have a a portal built where the the centers get reimbursement for a child attending the program and then we send the money to the center but the parent has to apply for SRA assistance. So when you have a child who attends an ABC program during the school year
but then maybe after school they're going to another program for after school you know you're talking about three or four year old they're going to be a private center and that private center's getting that differential or you have school programs who might apply for a grant with us or summer programming and we're pulling that funding out of a different fund and it could
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
36:56
be a different reimbursement rate. I think that I just need to those answers are good and then I'll just keep listening but I have one more question so there's a particularly
well it doesn't necessarily have to be particularly rural areas so there is no way we're
not mandating that every child0 to3 be participate in one of these programs so there's really no way to know how many children who are not getting the benefit of one of these programs they might is that correct that is correct we're
Speaker 10
37:31
currently trying to look at how many children do we have in the state
of Arkansasirth to five years of age and we are
Speaker 9
37:41
trying to figure out where are they if they're not in one of these licensed facilities where are they? so that is something
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
37:49
that we're looking at so if if you did that you would somehow like to try to provide some sort of enrichment
for that child or make sure that the parents know how to provide that that kind of of the support
Speaker 17
38:01
for their child make sure yes ma'am, making sure that the that the parents at least know and understand about early childhood.
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
38:11
right well thank you very much. I will keep listening ma'am thank you Representative Steele thank you madam chair may not be a very direct question he probably won't say it's a good question but what is your communication method I am getting since we kind of started this and thank you madam chair and madam vice chair for staying on top of this. done a good job but I get a from a
lot of my constituents that we're not hearing anything we don't know what's going on so what is your communication method both to the providers and the parents so
Speaker 10
38:52
we have monthly provider calls so that if you're a licensed childcare provider in the state of Arkansas. we get
Speaker 17
38:59
on the first Tuesday of every month at noon that's open to everyone actually not just providers sometimes we do have family members who will join that
that is posted to our website on our website we also put out all of the information that we've been working on for families what we try to do is we we do rely on our local leads that are in the the particular catchment
Speaker 10
39:29
areas where they're local and they've been doing a lot of work to get out communication as well so I know that that has been a challenge both internally and externally our communications
and we're trying to make as many gains as we can as quickly as possible but
Speaker 17
39:47
if you ever come across that and you've got people that just don't know you can give them
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
39:54
my name and I'll be glad to talk with them your office has been very responsive when when call are the calls that that you all make are they after normal business
hours for the providers I just say a scenario where kids are being kids and
Speaker 17
40:15
so we we do have teams that work non traditional hours like our licensing specialists they will go out all different kinds ofhowists they're looking at different things. So for instance transportation. it's very common for a licensing specialist to be out at a licensed site at6 o'clock in the morning and the evening time is the same it's common for them to be out at6
Speaker 10
40:38
p.m. If you're talking about families that need assistance those are traditional hours typically 8 to4:30. we have coverage in our
Speaker 17
40:48
office from7:30 to5, so there are a few calls that
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
40:53
that happen you know, not in that 8 to430 block. and last question madam Chair do you provide any training from your your
Speaker 10
41:02
office for the providers yes sir so we typically do that in a couple of ways we have a staff that are employed by the officefice of Early Childhood that will provide training but then we also do contract work or grantee work where we get in
Speaker 17
41:18
partnership with grantees that will provide professional
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
41:24
development. you're welcome thank you and I've I've got a quick follow up on that so the monthly communications are generally during working hours for the providers. What about for the parents one of the one of the stories I heard was that a a woman had been or her family had been removed from the voucher system because they didn't do a 10 minute
training video. how are you how are you getting that kind of information to the parents, especially in some of these parents that may not have internet or may not have computers or may change telephone numbers how do you get that information to the parents especially
Speaker 10
42:06
the the voucher parents so whenever they fill out an application, our team gets in a communication and contact with a particular family and they are assaded to someone and the
Speaker 17
42:20
family would know exactly who their case representative is and so they can communicate back and forth with that person if
Speaker 10
42:28
it was outside of typical hours then our team typically says to the parent, what is a good time to call or where can I contact you? what's a good way to contact you or what's your preference for contacting and so we try to be very responsive to the family on their work schedule hours
Speaker 17
42:46
or just in the way they want to communicate with us whether
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
42:51
that's a phone call or an email. and I guess my question is that in in my experience with folks that are that are living in poverty they don't know from many times they don't know what their communication is going to be like and if if there's an issue with the voucher then do you ever contact the center because they're the kids are there every day or what is the what is the emergency how much
are we trying to contact them before we
Speaker 10
43:27
cut off their services oh my goodness we are in constant contact with them before we would do that we would have multiple uhhos that we've communicated with them to get them either via
Speaker 17
43:36
phone, via email to give them the information and then even when we do get in contact with them Representative garner then we give him a time on like 10 days like we we will tell them and notice them up every step of
Speaker 10
43:54
the way so that there's an opportunity for us to work together to figure out whatever is going on or missing that we can make sure that the child keeps care so oftentimes what I'll hear in in terms of that is there's missing paperwork for instance and so we will work with them to get that paperwork uploaded however we we need to in order to keep the care in place. Great great thank you yes ma'am Representative Mayberry you're back up
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
44:24
thank you so the ABC program different than the SRA can you help members to sort of understand the requirements of the ABC because they're they're it's a lot stricter. you you have to have personnel that meets a higher standard than the SRA can you just
kind of help us understand that to begin with and then I'll go
Speaker 17
44:50
from there. OK. Well you named the very top one that is
the biggest difference between the programs is that on staffing for the ABC program there has to be a certified teacher that is available whereas with SRA you do not the other thing is the the PD requirements are a little bit different in terms of the hours that they have to receive the ratios are a little bit different in terms of there's a lower staff student ratio over on the AC side than there is SRA
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
45:30
so those higher requirements but they actually get compensated less is that correct?retty significant amount less so if we were to because I think just overall one of the things that's just so confusing about all this is
payment here is this and this is the all these different programs and it's like oh my can we not kind of consolidate it and and just make it simpler to understand so if we used even just and I realize you're getting a better market rate survey that's going to include this
cost analysis in the future and all that but even even just at bare minimum if we took the current market rate amount that's out there that that is being used for the SRA and use that same amount to increase ABC funding to to to just make it equal. you don't have to do the math. I've already done the math and it's about $12 million. I want to let our legislators know because I realize you can only provide what we say hey here's
some money to do something with OK so I'm not asking you to say I'm sure whatever money is given to you you are going to make the best use of it. I know you are. but at bare minimum that just brings the standards to where it's all the same OK? that doesn ' t increase the number of children out there who can receive the care so the next part of that you have3000 on a waiting list and what can we do
again taking little steps to work towards eliminating that waiting list and even if we just say let's say half 1500 for this goal adding that in to the AC and making sure that it's not just the public schools making sure that we are involving the communitybased providers so that they can make use of this if you do 1500 there that's about another $10 million.
so I'm just giving the math out there, OK? I'm just throwing this out there if you want to come up with different math or a different way of doing it but that's about $22 million that could could be done in this fiscal session and if we do that in this fiscal session, I think it is a great starting point for the next session to clean some more things up. I'm just saying you don't have to agree but
do you have any comment on any of that that you're willing to share?
Speaker 10
48:09
Would that help in any way yes ma'am that would help. let me just say any time that we can support young children it's a good thing and I think that and I know in the research
Speaker 17
48:28
is there that the trajectory for them is much better based on what happens to the children in the younger
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
48:37
ages thank you and again I know
you're not asking for it you you aren't bringing it up. I'm using this opportunity to talk to my fellow legislators and to talk to anybody that's listening. we need to invest this. We need to take the time if we truly care about improving the learning that that you know0 to3 years old that's when your brain expands the most and we need to put that investment there. when we talk about Mississippi miracle they invested in early childhood education as well. we're
duplicating some of those things here in the state. I'm glad to see that but but they also invested in some early childhood education too so I I just you know I I'm just throwing that out
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
49:29
there Thank you Representative Painter. thank you madam Chair. just a game update we're up by 17 you how many you you just mentioned a minute ago about certain facilities that are not participating in either program?
Speaker 10
49:41
Do we know how many facilities across the state there's about 8 so roughly500 the
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
49:47
last I counted. thank you for that and going downpresentative stillle avenue about communication you know there's 135 legislators here and if I'm sure many of us if we could be of help getting some of that communication back to our district. I think that may behoo of you guys to do that and communicate with us and let us know. I guarantee half of us at least have Facebook pages
we know our local providers and so forth so if you know I had the same complaints too as not everybody in mountain home in north central Arkansas is always getting communications from maybe
your department or where to go so if we can be a resource of that
Speaker 13
50:28
please let us know that's that's thank you for offering that and I'll I'll tell you one thing that we'll do on our end is we'll create kind of a one pager that has our hours in which she has her monthly calls, contact information, that we can readily give to you so when you're getting contacted you can immediately push
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
50:45
something back out to them as well or post please do because I know your counterpart's and other agencies do this do that and cause I
Speaker 114
50:53
share a lot of that and so just want to help out
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
51:00
as best we can we'll be glad to do that thank you for that suggestion Representative Andrews thank you madam chairir. won't want to go back to the underserved area because I I'm the guy who lives in South Arkansas kind of somewhat
underserved area does the state have a roadmap or a game plan to figure out how to really build out providers whether it's a on a you know government state model or use private sector contractors type deal do y'all have any plans for that? or idea
Speaker 10
51:32
that is something that we're working on now it's not something that we've had in the past at least
Speaker 13
51:38
not to my knowledge anyway but that's that's the beauty of the local league OK so that whole concept of setting up these local leads
within the different regions of the state is to identify the needs in those regions. the question earlier there you know if if there's no childcare anywhere if they're all homebased what do we need to bring in where you've seen this done in other states it's allowed local communities to come together to say we've got to set something up or or get with our local chamber to you know look at the needs in that area. so the local leads piece right now again this is the beginning of the3rd year where that's rolling. it's the first time that we're getting truer data on what's actually
happening in our state and so through the local leads work is where that
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
52:29
kind of stuff could happen. OK thank you Representative Barnett thank you madam chairir. I would like to get some additional insight on the wait list. Are there caps on the wait list you're talking about in terms of so and and then I guess my other question is I see that they were there was a waitlist mentioned
for SAs but also aren't there are there not
Speaker 17
52:58
districts sometimes will have wait lists of of children and families that are trying
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
53:03
to get into that particular campus. yes sir. OK and I was just trying to get an understanding of how those one whether or not there are caps on the waitlist and then how are they developed iss it by region is it by student teacher ratio or teacher availability or facility space
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
53:26
so you're talking about SA or you talking ok so both but I get what you're saying about the AC school may be based at the school district
Speaker 10
53:38
level so let's just say for SRA OK so for SA it is a statewide waitlist so this would be for families who have filled out the information who we know are eligible for the program but we just don't
have the capability to serve that child. so when that happens then they will go on the waitlist there's no cap if you're asking about is there ever a line that we say we're not taking any more on
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
54:11
the waitlist no sir we do not have that
thank you you're welcome Representative Springer thank you madam chair and good afternoon and thank you madam chair and co-chair for heading of this com committee I think it's something that's very necessary
to the members that are present here to answer questions I don't know if you all will agree or disagree but as I listened to the information that has been provided I'm of the opinion that there are certain things that have come out of our discussion today that there there are not enough slots we don't have enough workers and then there's definitely not enough funding to align with the real costs of making sure that we provide these services do you agree or disagree?
Speaker 13
55:02
the need in the state? I think we're still in the process of trying to get a really true picture of that, right? within our state program of AC and the the the allocation that's there right now you know at this point of the 114 that's allocated to us we've committed 107 from the department right now that we've got planned next
year going to schools and centers who have requested slots, right? So there definitely is a demand the other amount there is you know operational and some grants for professional development and support on the SRA side. again we are coming out of where it was at a too high of a spin rate, right? and so we all had that impact the last year,
right? We we spent this $127 million grant that the state receives really that money doesn't expire for three years. but because we were spending at such a high rate beforehand we've spent through to the point that we're now year to year and so that is why our state has had to shift and get very very tight on where we're spending our money in the program. I will say that Miss Abney and her team, we are we are getting to the point where we have evaluated every grant. I feel
like we have identified where there has been waste. I feel like we have shifted from federal program to state program and vice versa what makes sense I'm trying to make sure that we're serving as many students as possible within the program if this body decides that they want to look at funding different programs or different you know we as a department will take those recommendations that you give us and and we'll go from there but you know we're going to proceed with our cost analysis and our market rate survey and when we
get that information we will er most certainly share
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
57:07
that with this body. follow up and I didn't mean to say that you all weren't doing what you were supposed to do I just wanted to outline the things that I've heard so that you know we can move forward and getting
Speaker 82
57:20
that rate surveys how early childhood is a very important to this state. all right thank you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
57:25
thank you madam chair thank you and I just want to say as a follow up to that
first of all thank you guys for taking a chance with with visiting with stakeholders across the across the state to figure out the best ways to do that to to take the money that we have and reallocate it to make it the best the best it could be with our limited funds. thank you for that my question is do we have the data since we've made those changes about how many families are not are are not able to stay in childcare because the voucher
copayment how many how many workers are not able to stay in the job because they're not getting vouchers anymore for working in the field. those kinds of things how many providers
are are how many providers have we lost if any those kinds
Speaker 13
58:26
of questions can you we definitely have a spreadsheet of centers that have closed and a spreadsheet of centers that have opened not as many. it's pretty
pretty even. I mean it's at one point I think they weren't people were saying like there's been 100 places that have closed that's that that's not accurate we do have centers that cited that they closed due to changes within the SRA but I I will say when we came out with a rate adjustments with SRA there was you know, so much conversation that occurred then that we definitely went back and made changes. we kept the copays in but there's not been a significant significant decrease into what providers could receive and when we kept those quality payments
pretty high. they're more than that38 dollars and so we can definitely pull those spreadsheet pieces and look as far as actual families that have rolled out of the program or changed one of the pieces that we did do is we increased the work requirement to30 hours to 20 so up on a renewal families that are not at that30 hours would not qualify for the program so we could probably ris give get you information on upon renewals which of those families have had
to drop out of the program at one point our daily spend daily our monthly spend rate with SA was around 16 million to be within budget we needed to get that program down to more like7 million and we're there right now, OK? so as we're continuing to look at that and watch that number and look at our program now we're going to go to
Speaker 82
1:00:01
the waitlist and try to start getting families off the waitlist. and I guess that
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:00:06
that was my question as well where do we find that information so that we know those things
Speaker 82
1:00:13
yeah we we can pull that as far as but as far as the number of families that have like pulled off on the work
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:00:20
that is something that I think their team could probably go back and do. what about what about the childcare workers who were getting those
Speaker 10
1:00:29
vouchers for working in childcare is that is there a way to find that out we stopped to doing that yes ma'am and they we went back to just being eligible the typical criteria for being eligible to
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:00:39
SRA do we know how many how many of those workers
Speaker 19
1:00:44
left the field because of that that's that's
Speaker 13
1:00:46
what trying to do not know the answer yeah we're not sure we can we can see if we can dig to find that. I don't know that we'll be able to but we can definitely dig to find that. I think some of the bigger concerns around the way we were doing the childca ca re worker qualification was once we qualify you with an SRA you're then eligible for a full year until your renewal. So if you worked at a childcare center for three months and then decided to go work somewhere
else you were still getting free childcare even though your eligibility was because you were a childcare worker. OK? and so when we started looking at who was on our waitlist we we quickly decided that that was probably an area we needed to address. The idea of providing our childcare workers with this ability to have free childcare or or or reduced rate was a way to get workers into the field. great idea, right? But at the cost of you know that that childcare worker may have
not been eligible by their own income base, right? they may have a spouse who's making a much higher income and traditionally they wouldn't have qualified but they're taking the place of someone on the waitlist who is in poverty, does have an infant and can't get in. and so these have been very hard decisions and and debated decisions throughout but we felt like that was an area that we could cut to try to make sure that we were getting the right families and children into the program. but again, did it
Speaker 82
1:02:16
impact workers and centers at most certainly probably did. Do we have those numbers? I can
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:02:21
look to see if we can find figure it figure that out and my and my whole point is to is and maybe
maybe you guys can elaborate just a little bit about how difficult it is to get childcare
Speaker 13
1:02:33
workers. what is what is the rate of pay? Yeah so child so this is where you you a lot of times get in those conversations or debate about early you know, ABC has to have a licensed teacher.liccensed teachers in early AC childcare centers they don't they're not
guaranteed50,000. that's not part of the K12 piece, right? you do see a lot of the educational cooperatives in school districts actually paid those teachers50,000. you do have some areas of the state where they did not happen but a lot of them did make that happen. when you get into your private centers you're looking at hourly employees that are not required to have any type of degree. so you're going to talk about a a the pay rate's gonna go much less
so is is it hard to
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:03:21
find quality child care workers probably so. and one of the things that one of the things that you mentioned was that the center base that the schoolbased centerbased folks that are taking3,4,5 and6 year olds and after school in summer are we doing anything to help those folks that then end up with without the way to subsidize
infant and and and toddler what what's happening with infant and toddler. I know in Fayetteville, Arkansas my three year old did not make it off of a waiting list to get in into a to an infant or a toddler. she was 18 months before we got her into anywhere and so it's not just rural areas it's the demand for it right it's everywhere across the board so if we're if we're taking away the way that that home care and and childcare centers whomever is subsidizing that infant and toddler care,
what are we doing when we put more of our our ABC kids into those school-based programs and I love that idea but when we do that we're taking away any way to pay for infant and toddler and it's a broken system. it's not y'alls
fault obviously it's a broken system but what can yeah
Speaker 33
1:04:38
think it's the I think that's where we have to define what the priority is
Speaker 13
1:04:43
and what for for each of these programs, right? And if if
you know the priority for if we were able to create more A B and C slots for three and four year olds, right? Does that open up more slots over in SRA for infants that at a higher rate and and I think that's what you've seen when Miss Abney's talking about that federal pre-k that we moved over to AC that was purposeful to move over kids that are at this higher age at AC to be able to open up and free up SA funding, right? And so I don't know that there's a
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:05:21
perfect answer Representative Ggarnerner. Well, I'm and and I think I think those of us in here want to figure out what we can do to help we know that you guys are doing everything you can do with the money that you have. we're trying to figure out in in as much real realism as we can what we can what we can do to help stabilize at least stabilize because those I mean those reports were pretty frank about
folks that can't just can't afford childcare. I mean it's 27% of a lot of households and they can't afford to go back to work they can't afford to have quality care at home whatever whatever it is so I guess that's that's my frustration is that we can't just wait and hope and decide that we're going to do something later. we're in a crisis now and we're trying to figure out what we can do now to help stabilize until we can come up with some of these great ideas. I know there's some great ideas that
are going on that I love the mini centers and and the incubators and those kinds of things to help I'm worried about all these new places that are coming up. do they have business plans? Most businesses don't survive three years any business so and and the early childhood is an extremely difficult business do do we know that these folks have business plans are we just going to open them up and then they're not going to be able to make it and then stop what can we do what can
Speaker 13
1:06:50
we do that that is one of the things that that's
probably one of the first things that Secretary Oliva came in and and really asked about like how is our office supporting our our state supporting the business side of childcare centers you know and so again as we look at contracts and things that we're putting out there, what are things that we're putting out with the funding that we have that could be useful for that business side you know some type of management for their accounting or their financing or just even their own HR tools. where can we leverage statewide
you know RfPs and contracts for private centers to be able to opt into so so that is definitely something that he has has asked questions about on the business side because you're right it's it's it's not just like opening up the door and saying let me come keep your kids. there's a whole business side to this that people need support with and our we do try to provide technical assistance with that and again the whole local lead concept is again trying to be able to build some of that capacity in local regions so that people can push in and be able to provide that technical assistance at at a
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:07:56
closer range. Do you do you guys have an open sourcece curricula or are you looking at open sourcece
Speaker 13
1:08:03
curricula to help with these with these folks that are those are conversations that we're having right now with where could we provide a statewide curriculum for our for for all centers whether they're private or we don't have one right now we do have some we do have a a a curriculum list and there is a free one right now but again we're looking at how can we improve quality and at the same time we're proving that quality be providing
training for people using those materials in an effective way just because you
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:08:36
have good materials doesn't mean you effectively use them. Great thank you Representative Brown thank you madam chairir. just two quick questions so I easy ones ABC requires a certified teacher Did they require a ser
is that like one certified teacher per school or per daycare childcare or is that per class?
it's one certified teacher for every two classes. OK. And then the other question is and I hadn't heard this mention before so ABC and SRA serve different age groups? it's from your last previous conversation that's
Speaker 10
1:09:19
what it sounded like to me I would say that predominantly ABC programs serve three and four year olds while SA covers birth through5.
Speaker 17
1:09:30
five years of age and that yeah that's true and
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:09:37
after school age children as well So a fourth or fifth grade age student could participate with SRA. yes ma'am
Speaker 27
1:09:45
for after school or summer care yes ma'am thank you that's all I
Speaker 138
1:09:49
had. Representative Mayberry just another little side note
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:09:55
besides trying to come up with more money in a fiscal session.
I'm just going to repeat that again but that's not to y'all that's to them we seem to like incentives. you know we're doing things to incentivize our teachers incentivize our schools and I'm just curious if there would be any idea of incentivizing our early childhood educators
that if the students meet a certain benchmark before kindergarten. that there could be some
extra funds for them has that has that ever been explored? Is that an idea that that if they meet certain pre-Kle just before entering kindergarten like at kindergarten they're all tested they have some type of literacy testing, right? and if the students who are receiving that testing score higher could there be some sort of incentive to that
Speaker 10
1:11:04
preschool I'm just curious, has that been thrown out? That is something that we talk about actually what we need to do first
Speaker 17
1:11:14
is get our hog quality instructional materials in place first we think before we can start looking at benchmarks. So while we talk about is the curriculum first then
Speaker 10
1:11:24
getting an assessment piece in then looking at growth of students. So yes ma'am we are talking about
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:11:37
I'll take one more question and I know I know we've asked this before I'm gonna ask it in a little bit different way because I I don't want to put you guys on the spot by any means at all but if we gave you5 million dollars right now and I'm just trying to get to priorities if we gave you5 million dollars what would you do with that money right now? the priority for us right now is providing access to kids and program. and do you have any idea how much5 million dollars would help that?
Speaker 16
1:12:08
I mean if you based it on the current so if you based it
Speaker 10
1:12:17
on the current go ahead it costs us roughly 1.6 million a week for the number of children that we serve right now for SA just to give you a little
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:12:29
idea there and then if we gave you50 million
Speaker 17
1:12:32
what would you do with it same same thing we would look at providing direct services to children.
Speaker 129
1:12:42
and that would that be enough to stabilize providers and
Speaker 13
1:12:48
children and educators don't know that can answer that at this moment yeah I mean I think when we have more information with the marker rate surveys you know get closer to that
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:12:56
closer that's fair thank you any other questions Anything else y'all would like to add? Oh I'm sorry Representative
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
1:13:07
Springer thank you thank you madam chairir. how long do you think
Speaker 10
1:13:13
that that market rate survey is going to take to complete we are hoping to have some answers and information back by December and towards the end
Speaker 16
1:13:31
of the year. hopefully sooner but no later than that. thank you Anybody else anything else y'all want to say to us that
Speaker 13
1:13:37
we just appreciate you letting us to continue to come over and give you information about early childhood. as I'm sitting here, I just want
to again point out this lady right here she's been in the job for5 months she's doing an excellent job. I hope those of you that make comments today about communication. I hope in a couple of months you don't hear anybody saying anything about needing any information from OEC because they are communicating very well but we appreciate that the comments
Speaker 82
1:14:00
and hopefully that we we will continue to do a better job
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:14:05
in that area. well we hope to do this once a month
during ALc so y'all let us know what what we need to be asking and
we'll I'm sure talk to our providers and educators and parents and have a few questions as well but thank you for your willingness to do this thank you to Secretary Oliva for for making the suggestion and we're thrilled to to be able to do it so thank you very much you ma'am you. Is there any other business come before the If not we are adjourned thank you
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the February 17, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Update on Early Childhood Education from the Arkansas Department of Education [Exhibit C]
D. Other Business
E. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — EDUCATION - HOUSE EARLY CHILDHOOD SUBCOMMITTEE, Mar 19, 2026 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| EXHIBIT B - Minutes 2-17-26 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| EXHIBIT C - Office of Early Childhood Presentation | Exhibit | 8 | Official source ↗ |
| HANDOUT D1 - Arkansas Better Chance Funding and Expenditures FY1999-2025 | Exhibit | 1 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
| HANDOUT D2 - Arkansas Early Childhood System Key Oversite Questions for Legislators | Exhibit | 3 needs OCR | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 4
Speaker 7
Speaker 10
Speaker 13
Speaker 17
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Speaker 18
Speaker 9
Speaker 33
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
Speaker 56
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Speaker 67
Speaker 70
Speaker 35
Representative Jessie McGruder
Unverified
Speaker 76
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
Speaker 114
Representative Wade Andrews
Unverified
Representative Lincoln Barnett
Unverified
Representative Joy Springer
Unverified
Speaker 79
Speaker 82
Speaker 19
Speaker 27
Speaker 138
Speaker 16
Speaker 129