Joint Education
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- October 4, 2026
Speaker 3
1:00
Okay, where am I supposed to be here? You have a discussion. I think it's the easiest view that you can sit here. Perfect. I'm trying to be right there. Perfect, yeah.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:30
okay welcome everybody thank you for being here I think it's a typical Monday it's a been a kind of a slow day and people are kind of wandering in so we'll go ahead and get started welcome everybody call to order and the first consideration is to get a motion to approve the minutes and second thank you very much and then we'll go straight to our update
on early childhood Ashlyn thank you guys so much
we appreciate it and we'll get through
a presentation I know you've got questions that that we've talked about before and you know where you're going with those answers and then we'll at ask questions at the end if that works out for you guys perfect yes ma'am thank you
Speaker 12
2:36
thank you and if you just introduce yourselves for
Speaker 14
2:38
the record please yes ma'am Ashlyn Abney office of the
Speaker 15
2:41
early childhood Stacey Smith deputy Commissioner with Arkansas Department of Ed. All right so we
Speaker 18
2:50
thought what we would do first you all is run you quickly through just the different funding
Speaker 14
2:56
streams that we have. This is information that we have talked about before but we will not go line by line of it. You'll have it there on your I think you'll get some handouts or you'll have the slide deck available to you after the
committee meeting? Okay, so I hear that you've got it. So what we're trying to do too, just in terms of clarifying our communication, is we've started color coding the different funding streams in an effort to help people to really track what's federal and then what is state. So when you look at the blue sections, you'll know that that's federal, like the color federal blue. And then when you see green, I want you to think about the natural state, so like our trees. And so anything in green will be our abc funding blue will be federal funding okay so when we're talking about
ccdf this is federal funding and this is where our school readiness assistance program comes from commonly heard as sra and so you will see our total funding there is 124 million 789 We're serving about 10,527 children with 890 providers that are participating in SRA. Underneath that section, you'll see in your handouts just the different eligibility requirements on the left-hand side,
and then an overview of how the funding flows on the right-hand side. The next slide is the Arkansas Better Chance, or you all will hear it ABC. And again, this is our state-funded amount, and so we have $114 million with this coding, and we serve about 21,213 children in the 25-26, and we increased a bit to 23,092 that we are anticipating being served this school year.
And we have approximately 219 agencies that participate in ABC. And, again, on the left-hand side, you'll see eligibility requirements for this particular program. And then on the right-hand side, you'll see how the funding flows. It's a little bit different. The major difference here is with the federal money. I'm going to go back one slide so you can see that. The federal money follows the family. It's important to note. Whereas ABC, it goes to the agency.
Also into early childhood, we have the Head Start, Early Head Start funding. This, of course, is federal funding. And the main difference here to remember is that this money flows directly to the grantee. It does not come through the Department of Ed or the Office of Early Childhood. So they have roughly $128.4 million. They serve about 6,449 children with 18 grantees.
Same thing on this slide. On the left-hand side, you'll see more about who they serve. Right-hand side, you'll see how their funding flows. All right. Also, you might hear of EIDTs. This is the Early Intervention Day Treatment. And it's important to note here that these are children being served that have disabilities, and this funding flows through a Medicaid reimbursement.
Again, this is money that does not come through the Arkansas Department of Ed or the Office of Early Childhood. It actually flows through the Department of Human Services. It's a little tricky because OEC, or my office, we license the facilities, meaning when somebody wants to open up an EIDT, my team will go out and grant and approve the license, but after that, DHS takes responsibility for monitoring these facilities,
and then also they take responsibility for the funding of these facilities. Next up is the Preschool Development Grant, or sometimes you'll hear it PDGB 5. This is a birth through five years of age grant. We were so excited to get $14.751 million. The important thing to note here is that this is a yearly grant. So it runs from January 1 to December 31st of 2026.
Also, these award topics change from year to year. So right now, what we are operating on is a systems building grant. And so underneath, you will be able to see the different projects that we have been doing with the PDG money for this year. Okay, public school districts also have federal money that come to them. And you can see the ones that are listed here, Title I, IDA, Part B, Rural Education, Local Taxes.
Again, these are handled at the local level. Decisions are made there, not by OEC, but they do intersect sometimes with our program. So we've made some gains this year. And so for the school readiness assistance, sometimes you all will hear about co-payments. Those co-payments have helped us to stabilize our SRA account. We were running to the tune of about $16 million a month,
and we've been able to bring that down to around the $7 million to $8 million mark, which is really where our budgeted spend has been, and part of that co-pay has helped us to do that. The maximum reimbursement rate is in the 75th percentile. That's what we're required to do. We are currently working on a market rate survey and a cost analysis because we need to look at our rates, our reimbursement rates. And so we are working on that.
We are hopefully will have some information about that around the first of the year, December, January, somewhere in there. And we'll be coming back to you all and giving you some updates on that when we get a little bit closer. The provider payments are paid weekly, and also what we are doing is making sure that we are conducting provider checks to ensure proper funding expenditures. On the ABC side, or the Arkansas Better Chance side, we're no longer paying for seats that
are not filled. We are doing our allocations based more on a demonstrated need in the community, and we're checking the enrollment verification more frequently and making sure that NECs that are not being used are reallocated in a different manner. Same thing here, the ABC team is making sure that they are checking to make sure that we are doing proper funding expenditures. And then also on this side, we're doing a cross-check between ABC slots that are available with where the children and
families are potentially located over on our SRA side. Okay, so these are questions that we received, and so we're going to walk through those questions with you all. So the first question that we received was about supply and stability. We have 1,800, roughly a little over 1,800 licensed providers currently operating in Arkansas.
And as of August 11th, so just a few days ago, we had 16 providers that were approved to become licensed so far in the month of August. That same time range, we've had about nine licensed providers that have closed in August. So our net change in total license capacity, or think about that in terms of slots available, like seats available, capacity of childcare, we've had a gain of 475.
And then the breakdown is underneath that. We did lose 44 slots in the infant and toddler capacity, and we have gained 245 in preschool and roughly 266 in school age. So then the question comes up about the closures and why people are closing. And so we have been tracking closely those that have closed for financial reasons, but we thought it was important to give you guys an idea of other closures that we are receiving
that are typical and normal for us to receive. So on your right-hand side, you can see where those non-closures happened. Two were here in Pulaski County. One was unable to renew the lease on the building that they had, And one was an ownership change. So let me talk to you about that for a second. Many times when you have an ownership change, that building and the children are still there. They remain there. It's just that there's a requirement when there's an ownership change for one license to be closed
and a new license to be opened under the current or new business owner of that business. So two were closed in Sebastian County. one was an unknown reason. They're not required to tell us why. Most often the individuals will tell us, but this one did not. And then one was for a relocation, which is similar to the ownership change. So when an owner has a building that they no longer want to operate out of that physical
location, then we close that license and it's opened in a new location and under a new license. In Polk County, we had a closure there for financial reasons. Washington County had one closure, and they consolidated their program. Franklin County had one, and it was an owner retirement. Same for Union County, had a new retirement there. And then in Dallas County, we had a switch of ownership.
Okay, so then we had a question about enrollment and utilization. This one is a little tougher for my team to answer, so I'm going to see if I can try to walk you through that. Oh, I apologize. Yes, on your handout, there was a duplicate slide for supply and sustainability. Sorry about that. I forgot to mention it. Okay. Enrollment and utilization. I'm going to try to explain that as best that I can, you all.
So when you're talking about capacity, we thought the best way to answer this question was to look at all the licensed facilities, so 1,825 of them, and then to look at the capacity or the number of children they could serve in each one of those facilities. It's real important to note that, for example, I might be an owner of a licensed facility and my capacity is 100, but I get to select and choose if I go up to that capacity.
And so oftentimes we will have facilities that will set their enrollment lower than their actual capacity. And so when we were looking at utilization, we looked at the total number of slots across our state that could be utilized if it was fully being used. And so we matched that against the number of children that are in SRA or actually being covered under SRA.
So, on the left-hand side, we tried to give you a number of the breakdown of those children. And I did that because that's important in my own mind. I've watched closely infant and toddler. You might watch something differently. I don't know. But of the children that are enrolled in SRA, you can see the different number based on age group. On the right-hand side, when you're thinking about the total number of seats available statewide
and how many are being used by SRA, we have about 13.2% of our capacity. It's a little trickier when you're looking down then by region, because again, in some regions, you could have a higher number of capacity overall compared to a different region, so I don't want you all to really compare one region to another because that would be a difficult thing to look at.
But you can see underneath the capacity by region where the SRA utilization is happening and how much of that percentage in that particular region is being used. So it's going to vary based on the population in each one of the regions. The next question was about SRA and ABC and the reach
and the breakdowns with disabilities and then rural and urban. So again, thinking about it in your mind that there's 10,527 children in SRA. The breakdown in rural is 2010, urban 7,286, and then Benton and Washington counties 1,231. And then the number of children with disabilities is 16.
I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that in a minute. So the way our report pulled down, I want you guys to think about urban. Even though we know Benton and Washington counties are urban, it pulled the numbers separately from the urban amount, okay? The same is true over on the ABC side. We serve roughly 21,000 children, and then you can see the breakdown there. And then you'll see that there are 2,310 identified as having disabilities.
So we partner with Part C and Part B of IDEA. That's a different office in the Department of Ed, and we're doing a lot of partnership work with them. And you can see the breakdown there as well. So Part C is birth through three years of age. there's 1,697 children in that age bracket. And then in Part B, which is 3 years old to 5 years old,
there's a little over 10,000 being served. Okay, so the next question was about our wait list. And so right now we have 2,364 families, which works out to be about 3,428 children on our wait list. And we have, of those, the infants, which is the birth to 18 months, is how we identify the infant age bracket.
There's 535 children, toddlers, which is 19 months to 35 months. There's 882 children. And as we get with the older children, you'll see the number increase. So preschool, which is identified as 36 to 59 months, there's 958. And then school age is anyone who is over or at the age of 5 or 60 months,
and there's 1,053 of those children. Our average wait time is 254 days. The longest one that we know of is 531 days. The wait list has been in effect since February of 2025 is when it was first started. So the question comes up sometimes about is anybody moving off the wait list? And the answer to that is yes, but it's under the federal categories.
So that's what's listed on the right-hand side. The four categories that get priority on the wait list are homelessness, teens, children with special needs, children in foster care, and families on TANF. So you can see the number breakdown there. And then one of the questions was, which county has the greatest unmet need? And so that county is Pulaski County, followed closely by Washington County.
Which is what I anticipated it would be. The ABC wait list works a little bit different. So we don't collect the data on that because the grantees that have that or the agencies that have ABC programs are responsible for the enrollment and the wait list of their own programs. Okay, so they do their wait list based on how many of the allocated seats they've been given,
and if they have those filled or not, then they will start a wait list. So when we're thinking about workforce in the Office of Early Childhood, in our age range that we work with teachers, we don't have a tracking mechanism right now that looks at the number of employees, their turnover, the vacancies.
We don't have that yet. I would love to have that eventually. But what we have done is partnered in the past with grantees that have looked at that. And so on the ABC side for the 26-27 school year, the information that we could gather, an ABC lead teacher makes an average of $45,853 a year. And the paraprofessional or person that is supporting the teacher makes roughly $23,846.
But again, we do not track all of the early childhood teachers in every one of our 1,800 licensed facilities. and there are it's important to remember there are some school districts that pay up at the $50,000 mark. I just want to clarify too that when we're talking about ABC they're required to be a
Speaker 17
23:11
certified teacher at least one certified teacher over is it one to three yeah so if there's three classrooms at
Speaker 30
23:19
least one of those people have to be certified in most cases you'll see most of them
Speaker 18
23:24
are certified teachers yeah then we also do a grant with teach which is a really good
Speaker 14
23:37
program y'all and so they help the workforce move through college and different degrees and different credentials and so in that teach program or the teach scholarship program we have had 172 scholars that took summer courses, and 11 of those have submitted information for graduation.
And then, of course, the summer session had just started when we pulled this information. But we've had 251 scholars enroll for fall courses as of August 11th. When you're thinking about quality and compliance, so we have started as part of our quality rating improvement system, or sometimes you'll hear that it's QRIS. We have started looking at adult to teacher interactions as being a primary way to assess what is happening in a classroom.
So in our 25-26 school year, we had over 3,000 classes across our state with 1,200 sites that received a class observation as part of the pilot year. When you're looking at just this month for August in terms of compliance, we've had 83 licensing deficiencies recorded. and there have been six serious injuries reported in that time frame.
And then the other question was about corrective action plans or a license status. So as of August the 11th, we did have two providers on a corrective action plan. We don't currently have anybody on a probationary license. We do have one facility on a suspended license right now, And it is pending other information before we can take action on that license.
So when you're looking at our spend to date for CCDF and ABC, this slide covers that information. Again, this is in the blue section. So we'll talk about our CCDF SRA or School Readiness Assistance. So just to add complexity to the situation, the CCDF runs on a federal fiscal year, while, of course, ABC runs on a state fiscal year.
So when you're looking at this, just keep that in mind, and we have $124.8 million for our CCDF spend. We've expended $66 million, and we have about $58 million remaining. We got a total of $124 million, and I need to let you know, some of you will remember, that we were reduced 8 million in the fourth quarter last year. We have been reduced again
this year. We were reduced 2.5 million. So we are very closely watching everything so that we can get to the September 30th deadline successfully. And then you will also see the breakdown of services there under CCDF on the left-hand side. This is our current spend.
And then there were questions about how does the funding flow, and again, this is on a weekly basis to the providers. And sometimes we do have occasional delays in the processing. Most of the time, those are rare, And we work, of course, as fast as we can to rectify that. So then when you're looking at the ABC or the state-funded, we have $114 million, again, on a state fiscal year.
And so we've expended roughly $12.7 million, with about $101 million remaining. And then as of August, that August date, you can see where $12.2 million went to grants and contracts and about $470,000 into operations. These are paid on a monthly basis. And again, the expectation here is that they will be fully enrolled.
So there were some questions about access gaps in which counties didn't have any care or quality deserts. And so we took a look at that, and again, we have about 1,800 licensed facilities. And of those 1,800, 890 participate in our school readiness assistance program. Lafayette County is actually the only county that doesn't have any licensed infant and toddler care in it.
So we don't have a mechanism right now to know the average tuition rates across our state, but again, we're hoping to know more information about that because we do have a market rate survey and cost analysis coming. So we are in the middle of the procurement process, and that contract will be reviewed, I'm
Speaker 18
29:23
told, tomorrow. So hopefully we will be able to get busy with that.
so for outcomes for sra for the month of august we've had seven families
Speaker 14
29:39
that have been newly added to the sra program we're still working on there was a question about how many have exited if we're still working to reconcile the number of that we'll get back with you on it and then the question was how many are employed. So of the 6,941 families that we serve, 5,819 of them
are employed. So you might wonder where's the gap there, but just remember that part of the eligibility for SRA is you're working the 30 hours or you're enrolled in school or you're enrolled in an on-the-job training, so that makes
Speaker 18
30:27
up the difference. Okay, so for ABC outcomes, we looked at just the preparedness for kindergarten or kindergarten readiness outcomes,
Speaker 14
30:37
and so this is assessed by our work sampling or OUNCE, and so you can see we're doing pretty good there in
Speaker 18
30:46
terms of percentages. Of course, we want these to grow. But not bad. And then lastly,
Speaker 14
30:56
there were a question about the Arkansas Department of Ed Summit sessions and whether or not early childhood participated in that, and I'm happy to report that we did.
You can see on your screen or in the handout there that we had these different sessions, and all of these sessions were very highly attended, and that was exciting to see, which just tells me that people or more people are getting interested in early childhood. Many of these were provided by our local leads. And so I'm also excited to let you know that. So our local leads are doing an amazing job out and about in the catchment areas across our state.
They do many things in addition to providing training. So we were excited to see that. And then the outcomes or the feedback that we received from providers that attended those six sessions were things that we anticipated, or at least I anticipated. They're very interested in pre-K and kindergarten readiness outcomes. And so we have a partner that we work with out of the Arkansas Research Center from UCA
that looks at our early development instrument to help us to see where we are in terms of being prepared. We also have feedback on class implementation and really aligning the class to the grants that we have for professional development and making sure that we're using coaching to strengthen the practices. We also had a lot of feedback around our HQIM or high-quality instructional materials
and our approved list and then how that works in terms of being reviewed. We had feedback from our session with business partnerships to expand child care access and just the different initiatives that are happening around our state to work together collectively with business partners. We also had feedback on the transition using our early learning standards and how that relates to our HQIM to make sure that we are measuring appropriately,
looking at it appropriately, and then even tying it back into ATLAS that happens on the K-12 side. And then lastly, we had some feedback on class in terms of mealtime. And
Speaker 18
33:34
really we're encouraged to take a look at what is happening during mealtime because a lot of providers could be treating
Speaker 14
33:43
that maybe just as a quick pass-through time, you know, where maybe learning doesn't occur
Speaker 18
33:48
as much as we would like to see it occur.
So it was interesting that providers said that themselves. all
Speaker 14
33:58
right and so that is the end of our presentation but happy to take any questions that you all may have before we take questions
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
34:09
just quickly is there anything that wasn't on that list that you feel like you need to tell us or that we need to be looking at more that was just a list that we kind of pulled together so is there something else that needs to be there or something else that
Speaker 18
34:25
you want to talk to us about thank you for asking me that representative Garner I think you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
34:34
guys did a great job asking the questions you did good thank you
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
34:42
very much okay questions representative Brown thank you madam chair I am this is Carolyn up here I'm on slide two I was just trying to understand the numbers and you probably explained it well but I got a little
confused. Two on the second section. Oh question two of 11. Did I get that right? As
of August 2026 there are 10,527 children enrolled in SRA program across all age groups what I didn't understand was about the utilization and those
percentages can you explain to me what that
percentage represents it's a percentage of their capacity yeah I'm going to take a
Speaker 17
35:38
shot at it because I literally right before
Speaker 33
35:40
we came over I was asking the same question so my understanding and if i get it wrong you jump in here and correct this so like in central arkansas
Speaker 30
35:50
of all the available um places or slots for kids to attend okay 16 of those have an sra okay in central arkansas thank you okay some might be abc that's not accounted here some might be private pay that's
not accounted here but we know of all the available licensed
Speaker 33
36:07
spots 16 of those are held by families who have SRA assistance thank you I'm sure I
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
36:15
have should have more questions because this is very extensive and thank you for doing all this work but that was something I zeroed in on thank
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
36:24
you it's extremely helpful thank you very much
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
36:31
representative painter thank you madam chair and thank you for the report this is great information on the v5 grant you said the topics change from year to
year. What is the advance notice timeline that we get that way our providers know what that
Speaker 24
36:47
may change? That's a great question. Um, we, we have
Speaker 14
36:51
heard that, uh, we should know in September what that's going to look like. So hopefully in just a few weeks, we will know exactly, um, what the states have the opportunity to apply for. Um, preliminarily, what we have heard is that it's going to be on data systems but i would feel better about that once we actually see it right
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
37:14
i appreciate that um then on question one um the reasons for closures and
so forth when you're having an ownership change what how long is that timeline to get that new owner licensed or just food for thought here for me also great question so we
Speaker 14
37:34
have 60 days to get an application approved it's a little difficult answering your question because a
Speaker 18
37:40
lot of it depends on what is happening with the building for instance what's happening in the area so
fire approval has to happen health approval zoning has to happen but the average is about 60 days so 60 days is how much time we have to process
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
37:58
that application perfect yes sir and then kind of down that list too we have one in polk county that closed
due to financial do we know maybe it's card we don't know is that due to the
Speaker 18
38:09
funding that's been cut i don't know about that one specifically but many times that is the reason that we
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
38:16
are given when we have those kind of things do providers are they're able to explain why or is it just a simple financial and you move
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
38:28
much information they share with us okay and madam chair last question i appreciate your lenience here um on the suspension pending suspension license are we having
Speaker 14
38:41
or how does that work great question so when a license is suspended no children may come no children may attend the license remains suspended until we take an action on it this particular suspension involves law enforcement and so there are and
Speaker 18
38:57
child maltreatment. And so there are things that we have to wait on until
Speaker 24
39:02
investigations are complete before we know which action we need to
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
39:07
take. And on that, do those children go to different providers and does that follow the children? So yes, sir.
Speaker 18
39:16
So what happened in that particular case is that our SRA team, if there were children there on SRA, our SRA team reaches out to those parents, gives them the options of all the other facilities in the area that
are accepting SRA, and helps support the parents getting their children in an appropriate place. If they're not involved in SRA, then parents will sometimes call our office and ask, you know, for recommendations, which we will provide them all the licensed facilities that the children can go to and then sometimes we will see where parents choose to stay at home and keep their children at home gotcha thank you madam chair i'll go back
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
40:00
in the queue thank you representative
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
40:05
bayberry thank you madam chair um as we've kind of discovered through our our
discussions that we've had here um the abc funding at 114 million dollars that's what it's been funded by the state for nearly 20 years um we have not seen an increase in that amount that we've been funding um i spoke to a a facility not too long ago and she explained to me let me let me put this in
this perspective she said um i have a classroom for infants i have to have a teacher for four infants and she said that the compensation that she receives for that that classroom is a total of about twenty thousand dollars that year and that money has to pay for the teacher it has to pay for supplies for curriculum for toys for electricity just the overhead the building the water you know ever everything that it run i don't know how they're doing it to be honest with you
so um they have hope in a market rate survey which i know that you're in the process of doing which is wonderful but my guess is that that market rate survey will show that we need to compensate at a higher rate so if it comes back and it says we need to compensate at a higher rate because those rates haven't changed in so long and we know everything is more expensive just common sense what does that mean to the stability of the program because unless legislators set aside
more money for this does it mean less even less children or are we going to say yes this is
what the market rate survey shows but we're going to still keep rates here because we can't increase So, good question. And,
Speaker 30
42:16
when you look at the data for our ABC programs, which is our state-funded, you primarily see it's preschool age three and four.
A lot of times you predominantly see it's public school districts, and they're using their other funding
Speaker 33
42:31
sources to supplement, right? We did have a big push for folks to try to do infant rooms, and we have
Speaker 30
42:39
seen some public school districts actually start infant programs. A lot of times they were doing it for retention of certified teachers in their districts, so more as a benefit, but not necessarily addressing infant and toddler, the need for more infant and toddler slots across the state.
When we get the market rate survey back, and where it's going to inform us the most is over on the SRA
Speaker 33
43:08
side. and the per-child amount we reimburse. That's how we actually set those rates. It does, though, inform us
Speaker 30
43:15
of where should we kind of place ABC. Right now with ABC, we actually had had conversations about increasing the reimbursement rate there, the flat amount that most of our school districts get.
Speaker 33
43:29
But we had enough school districts asking for the slots at the price we were paying, and so instead of cutting, we went forward with what we had. and made as many slots as possible. We did have kids that were on the waiting list that our team went through and looked at that were three- and four-year-olds that could move off of the SRA waiting list over into current ABC programs that had openings. So, again, just the efficiency piece of our team trying to get folks put where they need to be.
But infant and toddler seats are a need throughout the state. The cost of an infant-toddler room does cost more than it does for a three- and four-year-old. So, again, it will be based on the amount of money we have and
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
44:17
the supply and demand piece. And then just kind of to add to that, the ABC program, just to make it really clear, has higher requirements for the facilities. Teacher ratio, certified teachers, I mean, I can go on and on and on.
compared to the SRA however they are compensated lower is that correct do you have the rates no they are
Speaker 17
44:42
compensated on a per student rate it is lower but higher
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
44:50
requirements yeah so anyway I just I'm I guess I'm just trying to point that out that you know equalizing things I mean, a child care is what it is, and it should be a little bit more equal between all the facilities is just my overall point.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
45:07
So thank you. Thank you. Representative Falk. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple. Can we go back to your slide on early intervention day treatment? can you explain to
me why the money flows through y'all but
Speaker 14
45:35
the EIDT money does not come through it doesn't come through y'all at all okay no man
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
45:41
I thought there was one of them y'all said that
Speaker 14
45:46
y'all just got the money but they are the
Speaker 18
45:49
ones who monitor? Okay, they also get the money. We only license them. You just license who they are. Yes, ma'am. We approve or deny license of the program. Once we do that, that is the only piece that we have, and then it moves over to DHS for monitoring, for funding, follow-up through DHS. So yeah, on the Medicaid reimbursement
Speaker 30
46:10
part of it, you're talking about the medical reimbursement
cost you'll also see part b which is special education funding okay or part c pushing into those centers providing some educational benefit okay so there's a mixing of funds in those areas okay but as far as the eidt most of it is medical in nature and
Speaker 33
46:28
so it's a medicaid reimbursement okay the next to the
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
46:34
last side was efficiencies and i believe you said you went from 14 million to seven million and over here is the different reasons how you got it down to seven million is
that correct yes and implementing the wait list and okay so was there other how many children no longer are able to go somewhere because of going from 14 to 7 million did that
Speaker 30
47:02
affect children we did not remove anybody from the program initially initially at any time we implemented the wait list so it kept people from getting in the program. Okay. So the wait list is, yes, the wait list grew.
We didn't have a wait list. Everybody was getting in, and we were going in the negative, and so we
Speaker 33
47:21
implemented a wait list. We implemented co-pays. We changed our rates to get ourselves in
Speaker 82
47:27
line with the budget and the amount of money that was allotted.
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
47:32
Okay. Can I continue, ma'am? Sorry. Please. Do you know the age groups of those children that are on the wait list? Is that like most of them three- and four-year-olds or most of them? I think it's in here.
Speaker 84
47:46
I think it's on one of the slides. Sorry if I missed it. No, you're okay. Is it this one right here? The enrollment and utilization? Enrollment by age group, is
Speaker 18
48:03
that right? No. No? I thought, Representative Vaught, we had that broken down to the wait list numbers. Give me one second. Is it question 4 of 11? Sorry. Oh,
Speaker 84
48:12
there we go. It is on page. Okay. Let's go there.
Speaker 18
48:17
There you go. Yep. So here's the wait list age range. It's on question 4 in your handout. Yeah. And so we've got currently 3,428 on the wait list. Ann, I can run back through those numbers if you want me to. No, that's okay. That's okay. It's kind of scary
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
48:35
to think that we have that many kids that's in the toddler preschool area that's on a wait list instead of in a
seat, and we want them to read by a certain age,
and we want them to be ready to do certain things in kindergarten, and it seems as though they're already at a disadvantage because they're not in a
seat. I understand the $14 million to $7 million and us having to stay within a budget. I do get that. I do have one more question, though, on the following, Representative Painter here, on the retirement, the ones that say owner retirement, owner retirement, I think it's Franklin and Union, if
I remember right. What happens to those seats?
Does somebody try to get the license? What happens in those instances when those facilities are no longer there? Yes,
Speaker 14
49:30
we will have that where the current owner that is retiring will try to sell their business. Sometimes they do not want to do that. So it just depends on what's happening in that particular community. But, yes, you will see across
Speaker 18
49:44
the gamut of different things that are happening, children will either go to another licensed facility that are there.
Speaker 14
49:52
If they have a seat. Well, there's SRA and then there's ABC. Right. right so if they have sra the sra will typically
Speaker 18
50:01
follow them if the parent has chosen to pick another licensed facility that accepts sra whereas the abc slots
Speaker 14
50:09
will come back and be reallocated out depending on the need okay thank you madam chair yes
Speaker 84
50:16
thank you ladies one thing that our group has really the oec team has
Speaker 33
50:22
done is they've really about using our local leads um and trying
to make sure that we're having a better understanding of the needs in different communities so that when we are allocating the ABC slots we're taking that into consideration so if we know that you've had centers that have closed right whether that was an SRA center right and now there's that will be they take that into consideration when they're distributing then the ABC slots so again that's trying to get to our coordinating funded request and where the slots are throughout the state again trying to get better data at a local level of what the need is
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
51:02
those local leads are they in every one of the buildings are they through our co-ops are they through the school systems where are those people
Speaker 84
51:10
located they're throughout the state we have a total of how many go ahead uh
Speaker 18
51:17
23 local leads they're all of our counties are covered under catchment area of a local lead they're housed in different areas but some are at the co-op some
Speaker 14
51:26
are not but we do have coverage across our state everyone has a local lead thank you ma'am yes thank y'all for the information yes ma'am
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
51:38
senator left thank you madam chair I'm over here so um I want to go back to the question yet what is the 75th percentile and how much does that
Speaker 36
52:01
how much is that I'm kind of the equivalent to okay so the federal government sets sets that standard for us so I'm trying to think is so the 70 75th percentile I believe
Speaker 18
52:14
is of the federal or the federal poverty level i think i'm saying that correctly i want to check on
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
52:24
that okay i have so many numbers in my head yeah if you could because i'm just trying to to determine like what what the impact is to that family how much the co-pay is because i listened to you talk about the co-pay and how much we reduced so as far as this year how much have families paid all together as do you all talent the co-pays i mean like how's this how's
Speaker 14
52:48
that system working we have not compiled the co-pays that i know of but i
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
52:55
can check on that for you okay i would i would really like to know that okay um
i had several questions um okay here we you know i've heard many different numbers in regards to
centers closing child care centers closing and so i guess what i would like to ask you said there was like nine
Speaker 36
53:25
that closed this year no none that have
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
53:30
closed this month so far oh so what are we looking, what are we looking like as
a total? Okay. So for, you know, if you, if you have the numbers for 2025 and 2026, that
Speaker 36
53:46
would be great. But if you just have them 2026, that'd be fine
Speaker 18
53:51
as well. Okay. I do not have it, uh, for 2526, but I can get that for you. Um, I can tell you that closures as of october of 2025 there have been 170 total of that 170 34 were closed because
Speaker 33
54:06
of financial reasons okay but i do want to clarify a lot of times when it's a closure
Speaker 30
54:17
it's they've sold the business so it's not actually closed or they move to a different location um but when they are citing for financial reasons, then that would be an absolute closure closure, if that makes sense. It's kind of misleading sometimes when we say it's a closure when they just sold their business or they moved down the street and had to get a new license.
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
54:43
Madam Chair, what I'll do is I'll get back in the queue because I do have
Speaker 2
54:48
some more questions. Okay, great. Thank you.
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
54:53
Thank you. Senator Hammer. Thank you, Madam Chair. Some quick questions. Number one, do you, on page, it says question 9 of 11, and this kind of goes to Representative Mayberry's question, there's a statement in there that says currently there is no mechanism to identify average tuition rates. Are you all working on getting one, or can you kind of give us the status of that?
Speaker 18
55:18
Working on it. we are looking at our data systems across the board and we
Speaker 14
55:25
are hoping to start collecting that more adequately let me say so hopefully in the future we would
Speaker 18
55:32
be able to give you guys and we would know ourselves the average tuition rate okay and
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
55:41
that'll be of all uh it's 1825 licensed child care providers regardless to where they participate in the in the voucher program or not
is that correct yes sir okay and then the other question would be have you have y'all been able to measure or maybe in what you're working on developing you could include this component how many have dropped out of chair child care facilities that subsequently have also dropped out of the workforce because they couldn't afford to continue to work and pay child care at the same time do you currently have any way to identify that number or could you maybe consider putting
that in the in the system program you're developing
Speaker 18
56:28
yes absolutely it's something that my team talks about a lot frequently is being able to track that information and no
Speaker 36
56:34
sir not currently we cannot track it currently okay because I know that was one
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
56:41
of the big arguments about expanding is that we're losing people out of the workforce and I just think that'd be critical if we want to make the argument to get more money what's financial impact to businesses not being able to get employers etc etc so I'd
encourage just add that and then my last question and thank you ma'am chairs is i think i saw there's 890 providers that accept sra and is sra the voucher program is
Speaker 18
57:11
that what that stands for yes sir it stands for school readiness assistance
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
57:16
and it's the federal voucher program okay so do you have is there anything in here or do you have any way of comparing child care facilities as far as their outcomes for students when they go to school say
from say from child care facility xyz the kids that come out of there are proficient at a higher rate than those students that come out of daycare abc are you are you able to track that or is that too deep
in the weeds for you all to be able to
Speaker 18
57:52
access we make an attempt at that over on our abc side
Speaker 14
57:57
so we do some screening some assessing of children that are in an arkansas better chance or
Speaker 18
58:04
abc program we currently don't have a way across our board at all license providers to look at that It is something that we talk about needing to do and really interested in connecting in with our K2 side of the Department of Ed. So it is something that we're talking about.
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
58:26
Okay, because that's one thing, and you all know that board president of a 501c3 nonprofit daycare center.
I'd be really interested to see the comparison between the programs that are in the ABC against the programs that are not in the ABC to see what the comparison rate is. and and I'm not real big on I got the message I'm not real big I'm not real big I'm not real big on spending money to bring in consultants and all that kind of stuff for certain things but given the impact that this has on so many
constituents it might be something they all might shop you know a you know a contract for so that we could get this information sooner than later if you guys don't have the manpower to do it because for the next session I think if we're looking at giving out money that would be a really good thing to have that information but that's just a friendly suggestion and I do appreciate what y'all do y'all always been responsive you guys have been great and I just want to shout out publicly from personal experience you got you guys are
great about being responsive and I appreciate
Speaker 24
59:42
it thank you for that comment and thank you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
59:47
for the recommendation I'm going to interject just one second just kind of a follow-up from Senator Hammers do we even know do we have the data for kids that have been in any pre-k program or any child care program coming into the public schools is there a way do we know that do we have any idea who's been in in pre-k and who hasn't once they get to the public schools
Speaker 33
1:00:12
so i mean yeah i don't think that is something that has been um kept i know as we are looking at doing our quality pieces as we're looking at um the definition of kindergarten readiness as it is underneath learns and with our standards there those are conversations we're having um we can pull um you know kids who've been in abc right right right um but we don't have a single standard system now we do have a system in terms of families that had sras right we have that
information but we have a whole bunch of facilities that are licensed but they're not accepting sras or they're not participating in abc and we don't have that data pool right other than school districts doing interviews with parents when they're taking their child for kindergarten I know anecdotally we saw
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:01:01
after COVID, the superintendents were saying, boy, there's a huge difference for these kids that have been at home for two years and have not been in child care. But I didn't think there was any way that we really know whether
kids have been in, unless it's a specific program.
Speaker 33
1:01:20
Yeah, and anecdotally, I mean, we were hearing stories about, you know, even just bathroom habits and just preparedness of just basic skills coming into the schools. I mean, we've heard the same thing. Right. Thank you
Speaker 47
1:01:34
for that. Representative Shepard. Thank you, Madam Chair, and
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:01:42
thank you for allowing me to ask a question on this committee. So I've got a question along the different lines, more so towards workforce.
So if you look at the slide, the Preschool Development Grant B-5, that particular grant shows that roughly $14 million was received in funding, and one of the things that it could be used for are workforce retention incentives. if do you know and you may not know the answer to this exactly how much funding goes towards that workforce incentive and what the reporting requirements are
and and I'm gonna ask this follow-up question at the same time so that it doesn't appear as and I got you just to help me understand because if you will go to the slide then on workforce it specifically says that you all do not track and I'm saying you all will please correct me that you don't someone doesn't track teacher or director vacancies or turnover rates so I'm confused if we're giving out monies for
retention but then we don't track it help me understand that I
Speaker 36
1:03:05
can't I gotcha okay so under the PDG, we do have workforce stoppings and bonuses going
Speaker 18
1:03:12
out, which is super exciting. We have $899,000 set aside of our PDG money, so you're correct. We can use it in that way, and we plan to use it that way. While we don't internally track it, it is something that we're
talking about and trying to rectify that. In the meantime, we partner with the TEACH
Speaker 14
1:03:37
scholarship and AECA, or the Arkansas Early Childhood Association, and they have been great partners to us to help us to figure out
Speaker 18
1:03:46
a mechanism for getting more information like you mentioned. And so you'll notice on that slide, on the PDG slide, we currently are in partnership with them,
Speaker 14
1:03:59
and we put out to the workforce all the information
via our partnership with the AACA for applications for all providers. It's available for all providers. And so to date, we've had
Speaker 18
1:04:12
roughly, or I should say, this was probably August the 11th when we talked to him, so a few days back, we've had roughly 1,800 applications be sent in of providers or individuals, providers in this definition, meaning anybody that works in a licensed facility, where they can fill out a very simple application to say this is where they've worked.
And then through our partnership with AECA, they're going to verify that that information is correct, and then we will release that money. So a part of that $899,000. So I understand where you're coming from in terms of we don't track it, hoping to track it soon. But we have a partnership that we think can help us
Speaker 146
1:05:05
with that. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yes,
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:05:07
ma'am. I know. Yeah, it's about $900,000 that we award,
and we will begin tracking what those numbers look like? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. That's a requirement for
Speaker 33
1:05:17
this grant. As we put that in our budget, we'll have to turn that in to the federal government too, how we allotted that money and who it went to. Are they just now requiring that? Well, this was a one-year grant. that was on systems pieces, and it allowed this workforce piece, but at the end of the year, when we have to report back to the federal government how we use these funds, we'll have to have that in our reporting piece.
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:05:42
- Oh, so this was our first year receiving it? - For this
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:05:53
purpose, yes. - Okay, thank you. - Yes, ma'am. - Representative Brown. - Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions. And I don't know how relevant this question is with regard to, it was regarding Representative Mayberry's concern about the funding not being increased for ABC.
And I know that you all just took over this ABC program recently. Do we know, I know the cost, like everybody's cost on everything. in the world has gone up in 20 years
do we know if the number of children is increasing
Speaker 18
1:06:45
are you talking about the number of children population wise being born yeah yes um we
looked at that a few months back we tried to do some
Speaker 14
1:06:55
partnership over with the department of health and I believe at the time there was actually a decrease but I can double check on that for you thank you I
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:07:05
mean I've heard that the number of children being born in the in America is it's going down but I didn't know if that had reversed recently or or not no that's what I've continued to
Speaker 33
1:07:17
hear too is that that we've been on a decline for a couple years but I I don't have
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:07:22
the report in front of me or anything like that. And I know that the early childhood education centers do not want to be called
daycares. So is there a difference in their licensing requirements? Or do we
Speaker 18
1:07:44
still have daycares? I think the term daycares was used. It wasn't really tied actually it was way back I can only speak to the early 90s so the 1990s when I was a
licensing specialist the the license actually did read daycare center or daycare family home since then I think it's just been
Speaker 14
1:08:05
our in our vernacular to use the word daycare and so I I
Speaker 18
1:08:11
agree, and recently there has been a school of thought that it's a subtle difference between, say, a daycare or a child care center or an early childhood education center, because I think we're trying to move away from early childhood and our licensed facilities being just babysitters.
And so sometimes that term daycare causes individuals to think more along the babysitting line as opposed to the educational side. And we've learned so much through research about how quickly and fast children's brains are developing. And I could go on and on. I won't bore you all with that. So if we can, to the extent, say early childhood, I know, but say early childhood education centers, I would love it.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:09:12
impact a license in and of itself. My third question is something that we did not cover in your report today, but we have talked about just in conversation over the phone. And in my conversations with Corey Waits and you, we've learned that there is money available in workforce services for parents who need child care.
Have we been able to see if there's any linkage there that could help with this shortage of places for children to be
Speaker 159
1:09:48
cared for? Yes, ma'am. First of all, thank you so much
Speaker 18
1:09:54
for calling me and talking to me about that. We have a meeting set up with him. I believe it's Thursday. It's sometime this week, if I'm remembering correctly. If it's not this week, it's very soon to sit down and talk with him about any connection that we can make
or partnership that we can do regarding that. So thanks again for
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:10:17
letting us know. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate y'all talking about it because I know we want to get parents back to work and we want children to receive good care and early childhood education. So I'm hoping that that will be something that can be productive. And thank you for talking with him about that and meeting, and I'm looking forward to hearing what comes
Speaker 160
1:10:39
to that meeting. And that's all my questions.
Speaker 18
1:10:44
Thank you. I wanted to go back real quick and do some follow-up answers that my team has sent me. So the 70th percentile is the price point at which 75% of the providers charge that amount or less. So that's what I had that confused in my own mind and I apologize to you all. So that's where the 75th percentile comes in.
And so that will be important when we look at the market rate survey. And then also, just as a reminder, I think I mentioned this, but if I didn't, let me say it again. When we're looking at readiness, where children are coming out of licensed facilities and being ready for kindergarten, I think that we talked about ABC, that that's where we do have the majority of our information. And we have been participating in a longitudinal study with that. So
Speaker 14
1:11:44
that's on our ABC side. So we'll work towards knowing all children, regardless of where they are.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:11:51
And we'll make sure that Senator Love gets that information. But I do want to say that we've known for a long time that market rate does not take care of child care. And we keep, I mean, it's a broken system. And we keep talking about market rates and 75% of market rates, 100% of market rate does not pay for child care. It is not the true cost of child care. So what can we do, and I know it's a big system, is there anything that we can do at the state level that would help with the true cost of daycare or with child care?
Are we even looking at the true cost of child care, or will we in this market
Speaker 33
1:12:33
analysis? So in the contract that comes to you guys tomorrow, there it's a market rate survey and it's a cost analysis report. And so we have actually put that in the procurement bid that we put out. And so that's what we'll be awarding or coming before you guys tomorrow to get approved for an award so that we can begin that work. And
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:12:54
I just want to say one thing, too, and you've obviously alluded to it, but
prenatal to three is the most important time in a child's brain development.
Eighty-five percent of your brain is developed by the time you're three. And we're putting all of our efforts into putting Band-Aids on an amputation. If we don't take care of zero to three,
and this is the infants and toddlers that we're going to lose out of
these child care centers, we've got, I was just, I lost the numbers now, but we've got 500 infants and six whatever for toddlers, and that's the most important time.
We subsidize every level of education except the one that is very most important. And the market rate, even at 100%, isn't going to reimburse enough to take care of these kids. So I just want us all to be thinking about how we can change the system because the system does
not work. In Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I'm a brain development person and in an area that's supposed to be streets lined with gold and working with early child
care providers, my three-year-old granddaughter did not get into a program until she was two years old.
there was no there were no slots in Fayetteville and so I guess I'm so excited to see this information
and I think it's something that we can compare and keep looking at but I don't think that we've really even in looking at this realize the deficits that are out there and I just get frustrated because I don't know what to do what can we do as a state to try to figure this out and so that we can get and we do have we've got the data we've got data from the chamber we've got
data from the Arkansas Women's Foundation we have the day we know that
it's costing us billions of dollars in tax revenue with people that can't go to work because they don't have early childhood for their for their kids so what can we do as a legislature to try to to find out that data do we need more data do we need um you know do we need worse
what do we need it's not just money yeah well obviously we need money yeah I think
Speaker 17
1:15:24
the presentation following us yeah I think the
presentation following us is kind of hitting on
Speaker 33
1:15:30
some of those points great so that may be something that they could share um and we know just even in the information that we put together for you we were trying to provide you uh something in your hands today so that you could go back to especially with the different funding sources and kind of, because that's what I think happens so many times is we get questions and we're like, oh, they're talking about ABC, but
Speaker 30
1:15:52
we're putting it over here on SRA, or they're talking about Head Start, but it's really over here. So just trying to clarify what are all the different funding sources out there. And again, we're
Speaker 33
1:16:01
talking about the data we're showing you is families qualifying who are in poverty. And we've talked about this before. We know families who are middle-class families are having a hard time paying full price for child care, equating to what they actually make in their jobs. We've seen it with classroom teachers. We've seen it with all kinds of professions. And the information we're giving you here does not even touch that. So as we look at the services or what can we provide, we want to ensure, one, that it's quality. And two, we want to make sure we're addressing
the need. And again, I think the contract that's coming tomorrow will help. I think the report following this will kind
Speaker 30
1:16:41
of give some insight to that, but there still is a lot of work to be done.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:16:47
Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Representative Painter.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:16:54
Thank you, Madam Chair. Do we have an idea that the
number of the children that are on the waiting lists for the sra is that did we incorporate that just that 2.5 million that we just lost
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:17:07
or is that was that before are you asking it i don't think
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:17:22
i'm on i'm not on yeah it is on but the
Speaker 18
1:17:25
microphones aren't working all right we'll just use our outdoor voice yeah um i think what you're asking is was the wait list already going yes before
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:17:33
yes okay so it would be safe to assume that we're going to see a little bit of an increase now with
Speaker 18
1:17:39
that okay so again we when we're talking about the wait list the wait list grows as parents are applying right and whether or not they're eligible or not the current children that we have we will continue to pay for and so the 2.5 million we're just going to have to be we're not going to be removing anybody that we're already providing right but if people continue to apply and there's no
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:18:03
funding there it's it's yeah it's going to continue yeah it'll be yeah yeah starting
Speaker 33
1:18:10
when we get our funding for next year beginning in october it's going to be two million dollars overall just even less and i kind of want to go down at this
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:18:41
year You know, the certified teacher pay or anything else, like, do we have an idea of how we compete
with our surrounding states in that area, and if not, can we maybe take a look at ...surrounding states with, why not this? Yeah, and I will say that
Speaker 33
1:19:05
even what we have in here by teacher pay, again, is only our
Speaker 30
1:19:10
state-funded ABC program in which we have a requirement for certified teachers. So when you get away from just the ABC program where you don't have a requirement for a certified teacher,
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:19:21
You're probably going based on minimum wage, hourly rates. But other states, I'm sure, have exactly what we're – if Arkansas is doing it, I guarantee you somebody else is doing it before us, unfortunately. But maybe
we can find out how we can compete. Yeah, we can pull the information that's available and see. And then I would echo also, too, as I agree with you, Madam Chair, I hope we can sit down and look at different variety of ways to really, really take a look at doing something, increasing funding or something like this.
I'm pro-life as you can get. And for me, that's from conception to death. And we have to take care of our most vulnerable. And I think it's time that, as a state, that, you know, if we can pay consultants to tell painters how to paint a wall in the contracts that we see in ALC review, I think we can definitely put a couple of quarters in the bucket and increase this funding so we can help our children. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Mayberry.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:20:25
Loud. Yeah. I don't know if this is working or not. so I'll just talk really loud
okay first of all I need to apologize because you know sometimes when you start asking questions you intend to say something and and I let it go on to some other questions so I want to say thank you very much for this packet of information it is filled with stuff that we need to know and see and it's so easy to understand so thank you so much for that it's so fantastic that i would love for it to be emailed at least to all of the education committee
um because obviously not everyone is here and there might be you know anybody else here that might
want it but at least to education committee members if i can make that request that it gets forwarded um the other thing um i think kim hammer had asked about um which i wholeheartedly agree and it sounds like there's several saying yes we want to see what happens to these students who are in pre-k programs and what what it looks like for them k-12 but i wanted to just make sure we're
we're noting on um let's see question 10 of 11 i mean we know that um at the abc facilities and i realize that you you're this is not everybody but we do have fantastic statistics there 71 to 88 percent proficiency I mean that's unbelievable as an education committee member I would love to see that in our k-12 so just wanted to say kudos you know to you all and to
the people who are making this happen um in k-12 one of the things with the learns act is that it was a big push to make sure that we are incentivizing that we are giving bonuses to schools that are doing well to teachers specifically who are doing um exceptional work so i guess my question might be is there some way in a pre preschool level um if we're looking at the average pay being $45,000 for the teacher or even the para-pros, because let me tell
you, para-pros are so very needed, and the teachers couldn't do their job without those para-pros, and they're making $23,000 a year on average. Is there some way to incentivize that, that if, you know, at a certain level, some type of program that could be patterned after what is in our existing K-12, is that an idea that's ever been explored or could be explored it's
Speaker 33
1:23:09
definitely been talked about um you know and as we look at redesigning what quality is um that's where those quality monies come in to
incentivize outcomes to incentivize um folks doing things differently to produce student outcomes and like how that gets measured so that's part of that quality
Speaker 30
1:23:27
conversation okay well i just i won't be
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:23:31
here next time to help that so i'm just trying to say this is you know maybe the the direction that we need need to go um let me look at my other nose because i think i oh also thank you for the stability that you have added because around this time starting last year things were starting
to kind of fall apart and i know you all have worked very hard to provide some stability and to work within the means that you have so i just wanted to say thank you um there's still more work to do but thank you for providing some stability for us to be able to provide what we are providing given the same amount of resources so thank you thank you I think the livestream
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:24:18
can hear us it's just in this room that we're
having some difficulty so thank you guys I've got one last question and it we've We've talked about what you guys do with ABC and
SRA. Who in the system deals with, or is there anybody that
knows how many early childhood centers and or homes are open without licensure? Is there any way to know that?
Speaker 78
1:24:52
I didn't think so. We apparently do not know that. We only come
Speaker 18
1:25:00
a complaint about an unlicensed home. But other than that, there's no way right now for us to know, hey, there we go. I
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:25:09
didn't think so, but I just wondered if there
was any. Anyway, so unless somebody calls and complains, then we don't know about any of the places where kids are being housed.
That's correct. Or taught or whatever. yes thank you very much thank you I'm not seeing any other questions so just appreciate you guys so much this is so such helpful information and appreciate that Jamie yeah so come on up thank you very much
Miss Jamie Rayford is here from Forward Arkansas and if you would introduce yourself just for the record and then tell us a little bit about
Jamie Rayford
Unverified
1:26:08
Forward Arkansas and the early childhood work that you guys
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:26:16
are doing that would be great sorry there we go hello everyone my name is Jamie Rayford
Speaker 188
1:26:21
I'm the executive director for the center for early learning solutions at forward arkansas and if
you're looking around thinking to yourself i have no idea what that is that's okay um we just started up this year so we launched in april of this year after a landscape analysis that we did in the fall of 2025 and are being incubated at forward arkansas which has been around for over a decade in Arkansas as an education intermediary that supports implementation on the ground of the policy work that you all do here. In addition to bringing innovative practices to education and
elevating best practices in our classrooms in Arkansas. So we have a brand new CEO second week Miss Edie Stewart who is sitting over here. So we have a great team and we are diving into the early learning space. I am not new to the early learning space. I've been working in this space system-wide for about the last decade. From the local systems side, I'm a professional community and economic developer by trade, but happy to be diving in a lot deeper into these systems and
supporting these systems in our state. Okay, so I have about 10 minutes worth of content, so I'm going to drive really fast and then hopefully can answer any questions that you all have. Just to familiarize you a bit with our team, myself, Molly Hill, who's our early learning initiatives manager and daniel hetrick who works with us in operations and analysis and as i said before before we designed the center for early learning solutions we dove into a landscape analysis last year in 2025 which consisted of working with a stakeholder engagement
process that drove about a thousand families 70 providers and additional 25 26 partners in the the field stakeholders that were other partner organizations that support early learning in Arkansas so what you the slide you see in front of you is what we heard from folks families consistently described difficulty finding care especially for infants and toddlers as you all have already discussed today along with long with long wait list and limited options for non-traditional hours providers described a system that was difficult to navigate operationally
Many talked about staffing challenges, administrative paperwork, lack of clarity, fragmented systems that consume much of the time that they spend rather than where they would like to spend it, which is in the classroom with children. But the engagement wasn't just about identifying problems. Stakeholders were also really clear where they saw opportunity. And they expressed interest in shared services models, better administrative tools, modernized data systems, and resources for the quality educational experiences they envisioned in their classrooms, as well as support for building stronger partnerships in their local systems.
The feedback directly informed the design of our launch portfolio, which I'm going to share with you in the next slide, for a more coordinated early childhood system. So the purpose and approaches are really clear for the Center for Early Learning Solutions. We are looking to identify, implement, and elevate best practices in close partnership with the stakeholders who have already been working in the sector, driving innovation, solving collective problems, specifically around operational excellence and system performance,
and leveraging the data and information and insights to strengthen the decisions that are being made for the system. So to bring good information to folks like you who every day have to make decisions and policy around education. We're not starting with the assumption that one solution will work everywhere. Our role is to work alongside the partners in the space, providers, communities, and our friends at the Office of Early Childhood who have done a magnificent job in the last year of really thinking about the system and where we're at
and thinking about what needs to happen next. to solve for those challenges so the project portfolio that you see in front of you now which has a lot of really small text is not important for us to go in depth into detail about i'm going to move through the slides in a way that you'll be able to see that but you do have a handout or should have access to this slide deck which really just lays out the entire portfolio and the interconnectedness of the different projects so that you can see what were the problems we're
we're trying to address with this portfolio of work what is the specific sales project that's going to address those challenges and how will this work help the system as a whole so starting with the first piece of work which is supporting the local leads network the challenge here is that communities are working through similar early childhood challenges and as miss Abney stated before there are 23 locally local leads that are covering the state of Arkansas to help support early childhood work, but are doing so often independently
while many of our communities are experiencing the same challenges and trying to work through the same problems. So what we're testing is creating a statewide peer network amongst those local leads where they can exchange solutions, identify recurring barriers, and strengthen their implementation capacity in addition to reducing duplication. So we don't want someone who's working on something very specific in one area of the state to not be leveraging those solutions in another part of the state, if that makes sense.
This can definitely help inform what the top themes are of local plans in different regions and helping understand what are the top priorities amongst the state and what's popping up more frequently in different areas across the state. The second project that I want to tell you about is our Early Childhood Governance and Finance Project, which I know you all have spent a ton of time today looking through this data and trying to understand, wrap your minds around all of the different funding streams that come in to support early childhood education.
The challenge that we all see before us is a very fragmented view of early childhood funding, which limits our ability to be able to align resources, maximize the existing investments that we have, and inform where future investments can best strengthen the system. And I think that's something we're all wrestling with and have been wrestling with is where does the next dollar go, not just where does it come from, but where does it go to make the best impact. So this is a huge project that we have been really, really excited to embark upon. We are in partnership with the Office of Early Childhood in doing this work.
we were granted by the new venture fund which is a nationwide philanthropic organization $250,000 and then we had an additional philanthropic investment that came in and matched those funds to give us the dollars to pull together a guiding team in Arkansas to begin to look at how do we look across these funding streams think about the opportunities that exist to make this easier for families to navigate to maximize the funding that's there to help providers on the ground use the funding that's there to the best of their ability and then to
look at where should the next dollar go and that includes looking at things like trade-offs if we're investing in quality versus we're investing in direct services if we're investing in the workforce versus investing in direct services all of these things are things that I think all of us agree are worthy investments but we have limited resources and so trying to figure out what what is the process for analyzing all of that information across the streams and also knowing where are we meeting the needs in communities and where is there unmet need that isn't getting
appropriate attention so we're doing a comprehensive fiscal analysis right now to help us understand where funding flows and where max where resources are being maximized but also to identify gaps and and ultimately moving into being able to model what future investment strategies might look like so if you're familiar with dynamic modeling where you can actually go in and sort of change numbers and change information to be able to spit out a number that says this is what you would be investing if you wanted to increase teacher wages in the early
childhood space or here's what you would need to be investing if you wanted to increase direct services in this specific county or across our state as a whole. That's the type of modeling that we're trying to build with the project. What are we learning so far about this is that across the state there is significant variation in the amount of funding that is available to serve low-income children and low-income children is defined by our project as children that are falling below 200 percent of the federal poverty level so similar to the ABC guidelines and then counties with similar geographic and demographic characteristics experience very different funding
levels so there's no rhyme or reason and this is pretty true nationally by the way this project that we've been funded to do this is the third full cohort of that we are one of seven states in this current cohort and there have been two others before us and this is pretty common nationally of trends. It is not because of anything that our agencies have done or anybody has created. It is because of the patchwork of all of the different funding programs that you all just learned about, right? It's really hard to get all of that together and stream on it.
This project can inform state systems by strengthening the governance. As you heard, the office of early childhood is only responsible for what they're responsible for there are a number of other streams outside of the of the office of early childhood that play a role in the funding system that we have for early childhood yet that interagency coordination is really done voluntarily or willingly when folks have the time and can come together to kind of think about that as a system so it can definitely help with governance coordination and then certainly
identifying where we're strong in data and where we have gaps in the information that we need and want to have to be able to better align the system. Funding alignment by identifying opportunities that could streamline programs, policies, and family eligibility, which again goes back to navigating and maximizing. And then it can also inform funding strategy by informing how existing investments and future investments can support shared statewide early education goals and I
think that's what we're trying to do primarily with the guiding team is really get to a place where we have a shared fact base and understanding of what's happening and then further from that what types of shared goals do we have. If you're curious we're also doing some local demonstration work in conjunction with this project where we have accepted some local leads into a cohort model and we are working alongside them and coaching alongside them in their local catchment
areas to identify they have already identified in their local plan that they want to improve something whether it's access or affordability and so they were able to apply for this opportunity to work with us so that we can see real-time demonstrations of this the barriers and problems that we have while the guiding team is working at the system level so those that creates a really nice feedback loop where the local system is feeding information back up to that guiding team to see say here's where we're seeing the majority of the issues or barriers um the work that is
Speaker 191
1:37:58
happening the map in front of you kind of shows the coverage of the
Speaker 188
1:38:06
different counties that we're working with as a result of that. If I move to our tech-enabled solutions pilot, this work is about helping providers who often lack access to the operational tools and support that's needed to efficiently use data and sustain their programs. We are testing how a child care management system or a CCMS can help them with support and can reduce administrative burden, maximize the revenue
really strengthen provider operations and strengthen their data-informed decision-making day-to-day. This is really about running a sound business and being able to have the tools to be able to do that while also being able to not have to run a separate system in for reporting for compliance, etc. So we have been afforded the opportunity to have several CCMS licenses that we're being able to go out and push to the ground for free to providers and then support them
in being able to get their system up and running so they have a better a better operational system and this can help us inform the shared services models that are needed to support the administrative burden of providers the technology investments that can strengthen provider operations on the ground but could also feed up into state systems for a more streamlined reporting of data and use of data and it can give us some implementation strategies that support successful statewide
adoption of operational innovations. So that's that project. And if you're wondering where we're piloting those things, we primarily have licenses to support Northeast Arkansas and some in East Arkansas as well. And then we're also doing quite a bit of work in the central region as well. And then last but not least, currently the Office of Early Childhood is going through and supporting providers through an HQIM adoption process.
And we heard during the landscape analysis that many providers lack affordable access to those materials that are commercial, that they can be very expensive, and they were concerned about that requirement coming down. And we've really looked at it as this is something that's very much needed for the quality of education for children. So we wanted to come in and sort of look at the gap and see where we could provide implementation support for providers to be able to access HQIM and use it effectively. So what we'll be testing is an open source evidence-based HQIM model supported by educator feedback and implementation that can create a pathway to statewide access.
And so that was a lot of jargon to say that we have had the opportunity over the last year to dive into what is available in the early childhood landscape in terms of evidence-based curriculum. And we had the opportunity to look through a database of rigorous studies and have selected one of those curriculum or the only curriculum that has evidence-based behind it called Focus on Early Learning that is free. And we are partnering with those creators of that curriculum to bring that to Arkansas as an open source or free curriculum to providers.
And we will also be piloting it in classrooms as we begin to think about how to scale that statewide in the future. The educators, what we're learning is for sure on the ground, we haven't quite jumped into this. we have selected an implementation partner and we are partnering with an evaluation firm that will also be doing an evaluation so we can really understand the impacts on the classroom in that pilot year in the pilot year but we are learning what educators need even just now to implement this free curriculum what implementation supports they prefer and how they're reacting to adoption
and then what conditions might need to be necessary in order for us to make this available to providers across the entire state and then you can see the items that it will inform not just hqim adoption for the open resource but what we will learn from the pilot document and evaluate will also be useful to the office of early childhood as they think about how to implement any curriculum any instructional support across the the state and so we'll learn what teachers
respond to best what they need what geographical limitations are to coaching and technical assistance and all the things that are required in order for them to be able to implement with integrity if you're curious about any of this and want to learn more which i hope you all do you are more than welcome to email us anytime we would love to talk about this with you and or there is a QR code on screen, which you can scan.
It will ask you what projects you're most interested in. And if you select those, then you can continue to get updates from us throughout the year as we
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:43:14
continue the work. Wonderful. Thank you so much. I'm so excited about this partnership. I'm so excited to see you in that audience and look forward to seeing you over and over again for all of our education needs with Arkansas Forward. So thank you. I'm so excited about this project. I've got a couple of questions. First of all, how long is your grant or is your funding for this particular project?
Through June of 2028. That's a lot.
Speaker 196
1:43:41
Yeah, it is a lot of work. We have been
Speaker 189
1:43:45
running since the day that we announced. We have funding through June of 2028. Okay, great. You've bitten
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:43:51
off a lot. There's a lot of information here. So let us know what we can do to help. Sure. And then we
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:43:58
do have a few questions. Representative Brown. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for this presentation. It's very interesting. In listening to the conversations previously and your presentation,
early childhood education is going to need a whole lot more funding in order to accomplish what we know
can be accomplished for children in the early years. is anyone talking about additional funding that you're aware
Speaker 188
1:44:30
of yes I think every day I hear more and more conversations about additional funding I think what I would and have cautioned everyone who has brought ideas and thoughts and things forward we're really running them through the
analysis that we have available to us which uses FY25 numbers the comprehensive analysis that we've been working on through the early childhood governance and finance project because the worst thing that we could do right is not vet the unintended consequences of continuing to invest dollars in one particular stream or program without understanding how it impacts the other we have a very we have an amazing mixed delivery system in arkansas right we want to think about what are the best ways to continue to bolster leverage and grow that mixed delivery system in
the way that best supports the demand that's out there for it. What we don't want to do is get really hasty and just do something and put a lot of dollars in a stream that causes an immediately opposite effect.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:45:35
One of the concerns that I've had, and of course I haven't had much time to research this and delve into it, is that with all this emphasis on early childhood education, it's almost going to become mandatory like K-12.
And I would think, and I'm not saying that that's, I'm not judging that, but I would think if we did put more emphasis on early childhood education and children are starting kindergarten and already able to read, we might lob off a few years on the other end, like maybe students wouldn't go to high school as many years, like K-12.
They might wrap up in K-whatever, 10th grade. And I know that that's kind of happening these days with all the academies and the simultaneously earning your college credits along with your high school credits. We're kind of moving in that direction anyway. Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean, what
I would say is I think
Speaker 188
1:46:55
that we see through at least analysis that we have
in looking particularly at children that are below the federal poverty level. I mean, many of these children are the furthest away from opportunity to start with. that that is always our concern is that we have a lot of children with unidentified disabilities and delays a lot of children that are not getting the opportunities and they're on the wait list or they're doing everything that they can to navigate the system to be able to get a slot the slots are just not there because the funding is just not there I don't think I'm you know in the neighborhoods that I can think about walking through in Pulaski County even just recently and hearing providers
say I have slots but I can't get families in them because they don't have an SRA voucher that they need and they have to have that assistance to be able to go to to go to my program I don't walk around those neighborhoods and have a whole lot of concern that those are the children that are gonna you know want to graduate in 10th grade I have the concern that those are the children that are going to be retained in third grade because they're not getting the opportunity to to get to the educational setting that's needed I think we definitely through the comprehensive analysis and you could see it today in the numbers you saw the part c numbers those zero to two children with
delays and disabilities were serving about 1600 of those kids right now and then if you look at part b by the time they're three to five we're serving 10,000 kids at that age they didn't suddenly get a developmental delay or disability they just got access to services so those are those are the things that I think about um you know I can't I don't I haven't really thought about an opinion on the back end of folks being um i guess above above the the threshold i think a lot about the demand that we have that are they're below it well thank you for that and i i'm understanding
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:48:42
you know our society has changed so much um typically you know for many many
years up until recent years most I'm gonna say most mothers you know stayed at home and they spent time with their children and gave them a lot of enrichment and not all of them did but a good percentage did so I can see that our society has changed so much with so many with both parents working all the time thank you appreciate your work fair and I just I just want to say that I think that
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:49:17
I think that that's true, but we also want to make sure that anyone who can stay at home and wants to stay at home have the resources that they need to make sure that their child is enriched developmentally. So it's not, you know, it's all about choice and that we make sure that those opportunities are available. And that's part of the issue, and I'm so excited to see this, is that not only is the funding coming from different places, but a lot of the programs are coming from different departments.
We still have Department of Health with the Home Visiting and UAMS and Arkansas
Speaker 188
1:49:53
Children's. CACFP and the Department of Agriculture
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:49:55
for Food Programs. Exactly, so this information is something that I've been begging for for years. So thank you for
facilitating that effort and let us know what we can do to help
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:50:10
with that. Representative Mayberry. Thank you. I'm just curious, when you were showing the graph here, it says tech-enabled solutions pilot.
One of the counties highlighted is Grant County, and there might be, that's a county that I serve, and there might be some other counties that other members are here. Can you explain that to me a little bit more? What do you
mean? Are you helping one provider there, or is this just overall,
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:50:40
like, who specifically does that grant go to, and how does it help? Sure. So any provider in any of those counties that are highlighted
Speaker 188
1:50:48
up on that map has access to a free child care management system license and our additional technical assistance and support, as well as our software partners' account executive support.
So getting them up on the child care management system, helping them get all of their children enrolled, all of their billing put in correctly, all of their procedures and policies, and all of the pieces that go along with running the child care side of the business, we will do that for free and happily do that with a smile on our face. As we also work through that process, there are opportunities to strengthen the provider's operations, as you can imagine, when we start asking, you know, where is your policy for this? And they're like, oh, I don't actually have one of those.
Okay, great. Let us get you a sample policy. Let's look at that. Let's get it in place. You know, the connection between the business side of child care and the sustainability with the financial reasons for closure that you just heard from Miss Abney earlier, there is a very clear connection between someone's ability to operate and sustain that business and that closure, right? And so what we find is that we often don't have child care providers that went into business because they love business.
They went into business because they really love children and they want to see children thrive. And so going into their business sometimes is shocking. I mean, you find that they, you know, they haven't maybe collected tuition in some time. Their billing records are very, you know, it's when they could get to them, if they could get to them. They're not reconciling their payments with the department. There's lots of pieces that we don't know if they're maximizing their revenue. We don't know if they're accounting for all their expenses. They don't know if they're covering their cost of care because they don't really know what their costs are.
And then they're making decisions every day, just as you or I would if we were running a business, on what to do and what to spend without having that operational information. And so a big part of wanting more dollars to go into the system is to make sure that we can all be good stewards of those dollars and that they're sound operationally and being able to push those dollars to the spaces that we need them. So that is the work that we're doing with the tech-enabled solutions pilot. The benefit of that is pretty much there's very little that they would put into a child care management system that they wouldn't already be putting into another state system.
So we're kind of exploring, too, this idea that where could we reduce duplication for the providers so that they're not having to, they can operate their business and put all that information into a CCMS and that that information could then feed what information the state needs from them as well. So that's an exploration, big question mark. Let's think about this and see it on the ground. But we see a lot of states have gone this direction
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:53:43
and been fairly successful with it. Okay, so this is not the public school that's offering preschool education.
It can be. It can be. That's correct. Okay. And then in-home, I mean, because you said any provider. That's correct. So I'm just trying to clarify.
I know the definition of any, but just make it really clear. even someone who's providing that care in their home that's correct um
how do they apply for the it's a grant that would run out in 2028 when your funding runs out and then what
Speaker 188
1:54:15
do they do yes so um we are working within the system to help folks understand ccms to help us all understand
the benefits of ccms we only have funding for the year but you will see a lot of um what we call learner hours or opportunities and webinars for us to get this information out across the state we're building a demand list so we have had a lot of people actually that are in counties that we're not serving with the project reach out to us and say hey how do I get a license I really need that we're capturing all of that demand so that we can take that back to the office of early childhood and our friends that have the opportunity to hopefully write for data systems through the
pdg b5 opportunity that might come out in september to say this is an area where we see great demand and we can really modernize our data systems if we're being intentional and strategic about it and we're not the first state to do it that's actually a good thing in this case with technology sometimes it's best to let other people go first and figure out some of those kinks which many have and so yeah we're excited to be able to do this for any provider that's interested in the counties where we're doing the pilot we are still capturing demand so it's not a big deal
it gets out to somebody who's not who's not in one of the counties that we're serving because we're still collecting their interest
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:55:33
as well and how are how are they finding out about you are
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:55:38
you sending something to them individually or do we is so we are everything from like direct mail phone facebook um their local lead in their region
Speaker 188
1:55:45
we were on the provider call um recently and will continue to be probably these pilots be featured on the provider call as well but we are any and every avenue i was joking to someone the other day i was like i will show up at your front
door um so we're just making sure that we're getting to the ground as quickly as possible through any avenue um that we have
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:56:08
to get to those providers okay and just curious the ones who were on this list how did they get qualified was it the areas
Speaker 188
1:56:17
with the most need so we looked at the market share for who was already using ccms in different parts of the state and we looked at what could be the greatest impact so if someone was for example go their market share was 10 but we could
with the licenses that we had available for their area we could boost to 50 of the providers in their area utilizing so utilization was a bit of the methodology it was um an opportunity that we gave to every local lead to apply so all 23 local leads had the opportunity to apply 65 percent of the local leads did apply to participate in the pilot with us the rest that did not we received you know lots of emails about we're just very busy with the other things we have to get done will this come back around we want to you know we want to make make this available as well um
so we there has been a high need we had a methodology for how we looked at where the usage was who your local lead was what their reach and partnerships were like could they help us get the word out did they have the capacity to do it and then we also want to specifically hone in on programs that are serving low-income children and so we also looked at what if they were accepting SRA ABC things like that okay thank you yes and
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:57:33
I think that's the last question thank you guys so
much thank you so much for the presentation
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:57:38
thank you for hearing from me I appreciate it so much and all of the work that you all are doing so diligently for
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:57:45
children. Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other business? I don't see anything in that case. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you very much.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the June 17, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Update on Early Childhood Education from the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) - Ashelyn Abney, Education Division Director, Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, ADE
D. Presentation of Early Childhood Initiative at ForwARd Arkansas [Exhibit D] - Jamie Rayford, Executive Director, Center for Early Learning Solutions, ForwARd Arkansas
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Speaker 3
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 14
Speaker 15
Speaker 18
Speaker 17
Speaker 30
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Speaker 33
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Speaker 24
Speaker 54
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
Speaker 76
Speaker 82
Speaker 84
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
Speaker 36
Speaker 2
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
Speaker 47
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
Speaker 146
Speaker 159
Speaker 160
Speaker 78
Jamie Rayford
Unverified
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Speaker 188
Speaker 191
Speaker 196
Speaker 189