Joint Education
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:38
OK welcome everybody thank you for being here. I think it's a typical Monday it's been a kind of a slow day and people are kind of wandering in so we'll go ahead and get started Welcome everybody callll 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 ask questions at the end if that works out for you guys perfect yes ma'am thank you thank you and if
Speaker 12
2:38
you'd just introduce yourselves for the record please ma'am ashlyn Abney office of the of early childhood
Speaker 15
2:47
Sacy Smith deputy commissioner with at Arkansas Department of Ed. right so we
Speaker 18
2:55
thought what we would do first you all is run you quickly through just the different funding streams that
Speaker 14
3:01
we have this is information that we have talked about before 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. OK, so I hear that you've got
it. so what we're trying to do to you just in terms of clarifying our communication is we've started color co ding 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 colored 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 bluee will be federal funding.
OK 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 124789. 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 The next slide is the Arkansas bettertter 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
2526 and we increased a bit to 23,00092 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 had the headadart early headadart 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 edd or
the officefice of earlyarly Childhood so they have roughly 128.4 million. they serve about6,449 children with 18grantees. 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. right. also you might hear of Eiddts
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 officefice 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 EiddT my team will go out and grant and approve the whole 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
PdgB5. this is done ir through ive 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 December31st 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. OK, public school districts also have federal money that come to them and you can see the ones that are listed here title one, IDAart 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 assistant sometimes you all will hear about copayments those copayments 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 the7 million to 8
million mark which is really where our budget spend has been and part of that copay has helped us to do that. The maximum reimbursement rate is in the sefifth percentile. that's what we were 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 our reimbursement rates and so we are working on that we are hopefully we'll have some information about that around
the first of the year, December, January, somewhere in there and we'll be 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 bettertter Cha side were 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 any seats that are not being used are reallocated in a different manner. Same thing here the AC 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. OK, 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 1800 roughly a little over 1800 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 9 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 of475.
and then the breakdown is underneath that. we did lose44 slots in the infinite taller capacity and we have gained 245 in preschool and roughly 266 in school age so then the question comes up about the closures of 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 nonclosures happened wo 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 they 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 a building that they no longer want to operate out of that physical location that we close that license and it's opened in a new location and under a new license Holk 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 OK, so then we had a question about enrollment and utilization this one is a little tougher for my team to answer so I'm gonna see if I can try to walk you through that Oh I apologize yes on your hand dial there was a duplicate slide for supply and
as sustainability sorry about that forgot to mention it enrollment and utilization. I'm gonna try to explain that as best as 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 license 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 really important to note that for example I not be an owner of a licensed facility in 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 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 it 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 bi 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 Gra. OK the next question was about SA 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 rule is 2010 Urban7,286 and then benton in Washington County's 1231. 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 on want you guys to think about urban even though we knowenton and Washington counties are urban it pulled the numbers separately from the urban amount. OK the same is true over on the AC side we serve for roughly 21,000 children and then you can see the breakdown there and then you'll see that there are 2310 identified as having disabilities.
so we partner with Part C andart B of IDEA that's a different office in the department of edd and we're doing a lot of partnership work with them and you can see the breakdown there as well so part C as birth through three years of age there's 1,697 children in that age bracket and then in part B which is3
years old to5 years old, there's a little over 10,000 being served. OK, so the next question was about our waitlist and so right now we have 2364 families which works out to be about3,428 children. on our waitlist and we have of those the infants which is the birth to 18 months
is how we identify the infant age bracket there's535 children toddlers which is 19 months to35 months there's 882 children and as we get with the older children you'll see the the number increase so preschool which is identified as36 to59 months. there's 958 and then school age is anyone
who is over or at the age of5 or60 months and there's 1,53 of those children. Our average wait time is 254 days. the longest one that we know of is531 days the waitlist 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 waitlist 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 waitlist are homelessness teens children with special needs children in foster care and families onaniff. so you can see the number break down 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 waitlist works a little bit different so we don't collect the data on on that because the grantees that have that or the agencies that have AC programs are responsible for the enrollment and the wait
lists of their own programs OK. so they do their waitlist 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 waitlist. So when we're thinking about workforce and 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 2627 school year the information that we could gather
an ABC lead teacher makes an average of45,853 a year? and the paraprofessional or person that is supporting the teacher makes roughly 23,000 for $846? but again we do not track all of the early childhood teachers in every one of our 1800 licensed facilities and there are it's important to remember there are
some school districts that pay up at the50,000 dollars mark you can see them there just want to clarify
Speaker 17
23:16
too that when we're talking about AC they're required to be a certified teacher at least one certified teacher over is it
Speaker 30
23:24
1 to3 so if there's three classrooms at least one of those people have to be certified in most cases you'll see most of them
Speaker 18
23:34
are certified teachers then we also do a grant with Te which is a really good program
Speaker 14
23:41
y'all and so they help the workforce move through college and different degrees and different credentials and so in that teach programme 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 systemte 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 2526 school year we had
over3,000 classes across our state with 1200 s ite s 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 been6 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 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 Ac this slide covers that information again this is in the blue section so we'll talk about our CCdF SRA or school readiness assistants so it's just to add complexity to the situation the CCDF runs on a federal fiscal year while of course ABC runs on estate fiscal year. So when you're looking at this just keep
that in mind and we have one 24.8 million to for our CCDF spend we've expended66 million and we have about fi8 million remainingu add 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 reduced2.5 million. so we are very closely watching everything so that we can get to the September30th deadline successfully. and then you will also see the breakdown of services there under CCDF on the left hand side this is our current spin
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 and 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 remaining and then as of august that august date you can see where 12.2 million went to grants and contracts and about470,000 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 1800 licensed facilities and of those 1800 um890 participate in our school readiness assistance programme. Lafayette County is actually the only county that doesn't have
any licensed infant in taller care in it so we don't have a mechanism right now to know that average tuition rates across our state but again we're hoping to know more information about that because we do have a market rate surveying cost analysis coming so we are in the middle of the procurement process and that that contract will be reviewed I'm told tomorrow so hopefully we will be
Speaker 18
29:28
able to get get busy with that
So for outcomes for SA for the month of august we've
Speaker 14
29:44
had7 families that have been newly added to the SA 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 the6000 uh941 families that we serve5,819 of them are employed.
so you might wonder where's the gap there but just remember that part of the eligibility for SRA is we're working the30 hours or you're enrolled in school or you're enrolled in a on the job training so that that makes up the difference OK
Speaker 18
30:32
so for ABC outcomes we looked at just the preparedness for kindergarten or kindergarten
readiness outcomes and so this is a
Speaker 14
30:44
sessed by our work sampling or out and so you can see we're doing pretty good there in terms of percentages of course
Speaker 18
30:51
we want these to grow but not not bad. and then lastly there were a question about
Speaker 14
31:01
the Arkansas Department of Edsummit 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 we were excited to see that and then the outcomes or the feedback that received from providers that attended those successions where things that we anticipated or at least I anticipated very 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 childcare 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 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 K1el side. and then lastly we had some feedback on class in terms of meal time and to really or encouraged to take a
Speaker 18
33:39
look at what is happening during meal time because a lot of
Speaker 14
33:47
providers could be treating that maybe just as a quick passthrough time, you know, where maybe learning doesn't occur
Speaker 18
33:53
as much as we would like to see it occur. so it was interesting that providers said that themselves. right and
Speaker 14
34:03
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
34:14
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 you want talk
Speaker 18
34:32
to us about thank you for asking me thatpresentative garner. I think you guys did a great job asking the questions
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
34:39
you did good. thank you very much OK questions Representative Brown Thank you madam chairir.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
34:49
Iya this is Carolyn up here I'm on slide 2 I was just trying to understand the numbers and you probably explained it well but I got a little
confused too on the second section oh 11 did I do 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 ut can you explain to
me what that percentage represents it's a percentage of their capacity Yeah I'm going to take a shot at it because I literally right before we came over I
Speaker 33
35:45
understanding and if if I get it wrong you jump in here and correct this. It's like in central Arkansas with all the available
Speaker 30
35:55
places or slots for kids to attend OK?16% of those have an SRA in central Arkansas 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 spots 16% of those are held by families who have
Speaker 33
36:12
SA assistance. thank you I'm sure I have should have more questions because this is very
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
36:20
extensive and thank you for doing all this work but that was something I zeroed in on
thank you it's extremely helpful. thank you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
36:29
very much Representative painter thank you madam
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
36:36
chair and thank you for the report. this is great information on the B5 grant you said the topics changed from year to year. what is the advance notice timeline that we get that way our providers know what that may change.
Speaker 24
36:52
that's a great question we we have heard that we should
Speaker 14
36:57
know in September what that's going to look like so hopefully in just a few weeks we will know exactly what the states have the opportunity to apply for 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
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
37:19
it. that once we actually see it. then on question one 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 or just food for thought here for me also a great question so
Speaker 14
37:39
we have60 days to get an application approved it's a little difficult answering your question because a lot of it
Speaker 18
37:45
depends on what is happening with the building for instance what's happening in the area so fire approval has to happen healthal approvals zoning has to happen is about60 days is how
much time we have to process that application yes sir and then kind
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
38:03
of down that list too we have one in Polk County that closed due to financial. do we know maybe
it's hard we don't know is that due to the lack of funding that's been cut don't know
Speaker 18
38:14
about that one specifically but many times that is the reason that we are given when we have those kind
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
38:21
of things do providers are they're able to explain why or is it just a simple financial and and you move on it is up to the provider how
Speaker 18
38:29
much information they share with us ok and
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
38:33
and madam chairir last question I appreciate your lenience here on the suspension pending suspension license are we having children still going to that facility or how
Speaker 14
38:46
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
Speaker 18
39:01
are in child maltreatment and so there are things that we have to wait on until
Speaker 24
39:07
investigations are complete before we know which action we need to take
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
39:12
and on that do those children go to or or different providers and does that follow the children? So yes sir. so what
Speaker 18
39:21
happened in that particular case is that our SA 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 SA 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
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
40:03
and keep their children at home thank you madam
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
40:17
chairir I'll go back in the queue thank you p re s ent ative ba y ber ry Thank you madam
Chair. as we've kind of discovered through our our discussions that we've had here the ABC funding at $114 million that's what it's been funded by the state for nearly 20 years
we have not seen an increase in that amount that we've been funding. 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 I have a classroom for infants I have to have a teacher for4 infants and she said that the compensation that she receives for that that classroom is a total of about $20,000 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 every everything that it and I don't know how they're doing it to be honest with you So 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 gonna still keep rates here because we
can't increase so good question and you know I
Speaker 30
42:21
at the data for our ABC programs which is our state funded you primarily see it's preschool age3 and4. a lot of times you predominantly see it's public school districts and they're using their other funding sources to supplement right? we did have a big push
Speaker 33
42:41
for folks to try to do infant rooms and
Speaker 30
42:44
we have seen some public school districts actually start infant programs a lot of times they were doing it for retention of cert ified teachers in their districts so more of as as a benefit but not necessarily addressing infant and toddler the need for more infant toddler slots across across the the state when we get the market rate survey back and where it's going to inform us the most is
Speaker 33
43:11
over on the SA side and the per child amount we reimburse that's how we actually set those rates it does
Speaker 30
43:20
though inform us of where should we kind of place ABC right now with AC we actually had had conversations about increasing the reimbursement right there that flat amount that most of our school districts get but
Speaker 33
43:31
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 AC 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 in need throughout the state and the cost of an infant toddler room does cost more than it does for a three and four year old. So
again it'll be based on the amount of money we have and the supply and demand
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
44:22
piece. and then just kind of to add to that you 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?d do you have the rates
Speaker 17
44:47
no they are compensated on a per student rate it is lower.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
44:55
but higher requirements yeah so anyway, I I just umm I guess I'm just trying to point that out that you know equalizing things I mean the child care is what it is and it it should be a little bit more equal between all the facilities is just my overall point. so thank you thank you uhpresentative Fought
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
45:19
thank you madam chairir. I have a couple and 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 DHS is that not right? the EIdT
Speaker 14
45:40
at all ok ma thought there was one of them that y'all just got the money but they are the ones who monitor
Speaker 18
45:53
OK they also get the money we we only license them you just la and 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 todHS for monitoring for funding follow up through DhS so yeah on the medicaid reimbursement
Speaker 30
46:15
part of it you're talking about the medical reimbursement costs you'll also see Part B which is special education funding OKok orart C pushing
into those centers providing some educational benefit so there's a mixing of funds in those areas but as far as the EiddTs most of it is medical in nature and
Speaker 33
46:33
so it's a medicaid reimbursement. OK the next to the last
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
46:39
side was efficiencies and I believe you said you went from 14 million to7 million and over here is the different reasons how you got it down to7 million is that correct? and implementing the waitlist
OK. so was there other how many children no longer are able to go somewhere because of going from 14 to7 million. did that affect children we did not remove
Speaker 30
47:07
anybody from the program initi initially at any time we implemented the waitlist so it kept people from getting in the program so the waitlist is yes the whitelist grew we didn't have a whitelist.body who was was getting in and we were going in the negative and so we
Speaker 33
47:25
implemented a waitlist. We implemented copays. we changed our rates to get ourselves in a budget in
Speaker 82
47:32
line with the budget and the amount of money that was allotted. OK. cannotnos
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
47:37
continue ma'am sorryries please do you know that age groups of those children that are on the waitlist is that like3 most of them3 and four year olds or most of them think it's in here I think it's on one of the slides sorry if I missed it. No, you're
Speaker 84
47:56
ok. is it this one? right here the enrollment and utilization enrollment by age group is that right? I thoughtpresentativeough
Speaker 18
48:08
we had that broken down to in the waitlist numbers give me one second of 1 sorry there we go yeah it
Speaker 18
48:20
you go yeah so here's the waitlist age range it's on a
question4 in your handout. Yeah and so we've got currently3,428 on the waitlist and I can run back through those numbers if you want me to OKok it's kind of scary to think that we have that many kids that's
Representative DeAnn Vaught
Unverified
48:40
in the toddler preschool area that's on a waitlist instead of in a 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 to7 million and us
having to stay within a budget. I do get that. I do have one more question though on the following representative paintner here on the retirement the ones that say owner retirement owner retirement I think it's ranklin and union if I remember right what happens to those seats
does somebody try to buy his get the license what happens in those instances when those facilities are no longer there
Speaker 14
49:35
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 the gamut
Speaker 18
49:49
of different things that are happening. Children will either go to another licensed facility that are there if they well
Speaker 14
49:58
there's SA and then there's AC right so
Speaker 18
50:05
if they have srA the SA will typically follow them if the parent has chosen to pick another licensed facility that accepts SRA
Speaker 14
50:14
whereas the ABC slots will come back and be reallocated out depending on the need. thank you madam chair thank
Speaker 84
50:21
you ladies 11 thing that our group has really the OEC team has done is they've really
Speaker 33
50:27
by using our local leads 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 AC slots we're taking that into consideration so if we know that you've had centers that have closed, right? whether that was an SA 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
51:07
those local leads are they in every one of the buildings or are they through our co ops or are they through the school systems where are
Speaker 84
51:15
those people located they're through out the state we have a total of how many go ahead
Speaker 18
51:22
23 local leads they're all of our counties are covered under a catchment area of a local lead. They're housed in different areas but some are at the co ops some
Speaker 14
51:31
are not but we do have coverage across our state everyone has a local lead
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
51:38
thank you ma'am thank y'all for the information yes ma'am Senator Love thank you madam chairir'm over here so I want to go back to the question what is a seventyfifth percentile and how how much does that how much is that kind of the equivalent to OK, so the federal government
Speaker 36
52:09
sets sets that standard for us so I'm trying to think so the se fifth percentile I believe is of the federal or the federal poverty
Speaker 18
52:20
level I think I'm saying that correctly I want to check on that I have so many numbers in my head
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
52:29
if you could'm just trying to to determine like what what the impact is to that family, how much the copay is because listened to you talk about the copay and how much we
reduced so as far as this year how much have families paid altogether as do you all talent the copays I mean like how's this how's that system working? we have not compiled the
Speaker 14
52:55
copays that I know of but I can check on that for youa.
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
53:00
OK I would I would really like to know that I had several questions OK, here
we you know I'm heard many different numbers in regards to centers closing childcare center's closing and so
I guess what I would like to ask you said there was like 9 that closed this year none that have closed this month
Speaker 36
53:32
so far so what are we looking what are we
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
53:35
looking like as a total OK, so for you know if you if you have the numbers for 2025 and2026
that would be great but if you just have them 226 that'd
be fine as well. OK.
Speaker 36
53:51
I do not have it for 2526 but I can get
Speaker 18
53:56
that for you I can tell you that closures as ofoctober of2025 there have been 170 total of that 17034 were closed because of financial reasons. OK but I do want to clarify a lot
Speaker 33
54:19
of times when it's a closure it's they've sold the business so it it's not
Speaker 30
54:22
actually closed or they moved to a different location but when they are citing for financial reasons then that would be an absolute closure closure if that makes sense it's it's kind of misleading sometimes when we say it's a closure winds they just sold their business or they moved down the street and had to get a new license. that's true madam share what I'll do is as I get back in I'll get back in the
Senator Fredrick J. Love
Unverified
54:51
queue because I do have some more
Speaker 2
54:53
questions. OK, great. thank you thank you senator
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
54:58
hammer thank you madam chairir some quick questions.umber one, do you on on page or says question nine of 11 and this kind of goes to representing Maybeyrry's question. there's a statement in there that says currently there is no mechanism to identify average tuition rates are y'all working on getting one or can you kind of give us the status of that
Speaker 18
55:24
we are looking at our data systems across the board and we are
Speaker 14
55:30
hoping to start collecting that more adequately let me say so hopefully in the future we would be able
Speaker 18
55:37
to give you guys and we would know ourselves the average tuition rate and that'll be of all
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
55:46
it's 1825 licensed childcare providers regardless of where they participate in the in the voucher program or now is
that correct? Yes, sir OK 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 yes absolutely it's something
Speaker 18
56:33
that my team talks about a lot frequently it's being able to track that information and no sir not currently we cannot track
Speaker 36
56:39
it currently. OK cause I know that was one of the big arguments about expanding is
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
56:46
that we're losing people out of the workforce and I I just think that'd be critical if we want to make the argument to get more money what's the financial impact of businesses not being
able to get employers etc etc. So I'd encourage you to add that and then my last question and thank you ma'am chair is this I think I saw there's 890 providers that accept SRA and is SRA the voucher program is that what that stands for? sir it's stands
Speaker 18
57:16
for school readiness assistance and it's the federal voucher programme. so it do you have
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
57:21
is there anything in here or do you have any way
of comparing childcare 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 AC are you are you able to track that or is that too deep in the weeds for y'all to be able
to access? we make an attempt at that over
Speaker 14
58:01
on our AC side. so we do some screening, some assessing of children that are in an
Speaker 18
58:07
Arkansas bettertter chance or ABC programme we currently don't have a way across our board at all lessons 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 edd so it is something that we're talking about because that that's one thing and y'all know
Senator Kim Hammer
Unverified
58:35
that board president of the501c3 nonprofit daycare center. I'd, 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 AC to see what the 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 you all might shop you know 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 a friendly suggestion and I do appreciate what y'all do y'all
have 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
Speaker 24
59:47
I appreciate it thank you for that comment and thank
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
59:52
you for the recommendation I'm gonna 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 childcare 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
1:00:20
so mean yeah I don't think that is something that has been kept. I know as we are looking at doing our quality pieces as we're looking at the definition of kindergarten readiness as it is underneath learns and with our standards there those are conversations we're having. we can pull
you know kids who've been in ABc right but we don't have a single standard system now we do have a system in terms of families that had SA's right we have that information but we have a whole bunch of facilities that are licensed but they're not accepting SA's or they're not participating in AC and we don't have that data pool other than school districts doing interviews with parents when they're taking their child for kindergarten. I know anecdotally we saw after COVId
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:01:09
the superintendents were saying boy is there's a huge difference for these kids that have been at home for two years and have not been in childcare but I didn't think there was any way that
we really know whether we have been in that is
Speaker 33
1:01:25
not something unless it's a specific program and anecdotally I mean we were hearing stories about you know, even just bathroom habits and just preparedness of just basic skills coming into to the schools. I mean we've heard the same thing thank you for that representative
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:01:46
thank you madam chair and thank you for allowing me to ask a question on this committee so I've got a question along a different lines
more so towards workforce so if you'll look at the slide the preschool development grant B5 that particular grant shows that roughly 14 million was received in funding and one of the things that it could be used for our workforce
retention incentives 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 it it doesn't appear as an I got you it's 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 our monies for retention but then we don't track it. Help me understand that gotcha. OK so
Speaker 36
1:03:10
under the pdG we do have a workforce stopins and bonuses going out which is super
Speaker 18
1:03:21
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 and trying to rectify that in the meantime we partner with
Speaker 14
1:03:42
the Teach scholarship who and AECA or the Arkansas Early Childhood association and they have been great partners to us to help us
Speaker 18
1:03:53
to figure out 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
Speaker 14
1:04:04
with them and we put out to the workforce all the information via our partnership with the ACA for applications for all providers it's available for all providers and so to date we've had roughly or
Speaker 18
1:04:17
I should say this is probably August 11th when we talked to him so a few
days back we've had roughly 1800 applications to be sent in that of of providers or 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 AUCA they're going to verify that that information is correct and then we will release that money. So that a part of that 899,000.
so I can understand where you're coming from in terms of we don't we don't track it hoping to track it soon but we have a partnership that we think can help us with that thank you cause I was like so yeah it's about $900,000 that we
Speaker 146
1:05:10
award and we will begin tracking what those numbers look
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:05:12
like ok thank you cause I was like so yeah it's about $900,000 that we award and we will begin tracking what those numbers look like ma'am thank you that's a requirement for this grant if because we put
Speaker 33
1:05:22
that in our budget we'll have to turn that into 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 onystems 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 so this
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
1:05:47
was our first year receiving it for for this purpose, yes ok thank you Representative Brown thank you madam chairir
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:06:00
I have a few questions 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 AC. it's and I know that you all just took over this ABC program recently do we know
I know the cost like everybody's costs on everything in the world has gone up in 20
years do we know if the number of children is increasing are
Speaker 18
1:06:50
you talking about the number of children population wise or born yes we looked at that a few months back. we tried to do some partnership over with the
Speaker 14
1:07:02
department of healthalth and I believe at the time there was actually a decrease but I I can double check on that for you you mean I've heard that
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:07:10
the number of children being born in the in America is is going down but I didn't know if that had reversed recently or or not that's what I've continued to hear too is that that we've been on a decline
Speaker 33
1:07:22
for a couple of years but I'd'd I don't have the report in front of me or anything like that and I know that the early childhood education centers
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:07:35
do not want to be called daycares. so is there a difference in
their licensing requirements or do we still have I think the the
Speaker 18
1:07:49
term daycares was used it wasn't really todd actually it was way back I can only speak to the early 90s so the 1990s when I was a licensing specialist the the licenses actually did read daycare center or daycare family home
since then I think it's just been
Speaker 14
1:08:10
our in our vernacular to use the word daycare and so I agree and recently
Speaker 18
1:08:16
there has been a a school of thought that that he it's a subtle it's a subtle difference between saying a daycare or a childcare center or an early childhood education center because I think we're trying to move away from early childhood and our license facilities being just babysitters
and so sometimes that term daycare causes individuals to think more along the the babysitting line as opposed to the educational side and we've learned so much through research about how quickly and fast children to brains are developing and I could go on and on and I won't bore you all with that. so if we can to the extent say early child I know but say early child hood education centers, I
would love it. I would love it
Speaker 14
1:09:13
but it does not impact a license in and
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:09:17
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 Cory Whites and you we've learned that there is money available in workforce services for parents who need
childcare have we been able to see if there's any linkage there that that could help with this shortage of places for children Yes ma'am. first of all
Speaker 159
1:09:53
thank you so much for calling me and and talking
Speaker 18
1:09:59
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 letting us know.
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:10:22
Well I appreciate that I mean I appreciate y'all talking about it because I know we want to get parents back to work and we want children to be receive good care and early childhood education so I'm hoping that that'll be something that can be productive and thank you for talking with him about that and and meeting and I'm looking forward to hearing what comes to that meeting.
Speaker 160
1:10:45
and that's all my questions thank you.
Speaker 18
1:10:49
I wanted to go back real quick and do some follow up answers that my team has sent me. so the se0 man he left I'll go ahead and just let you guys know in case you were interested too the seventyfifth percentile is the price point at which75% of the providers charge that amount or less so that's what I had that confused in my own mind that I
apologize to you all so that's where the sefifth 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 though when we're looking at readiness where children are coming out of loensed facilities and being ready for kindergarten. I think that we talked about AC that that's where we do have the majority of our information and we have been participating in a longitudinal
Speaker 14
1:11:47
study with that so that's on our ABC side so we'll work towards knowing all children regardless of where they are
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:11:58
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 childcare and we keep, I mean it's a broken system and we keep talking about market rates and75% of market rates,100% of market rate does not pay for childcare it's not the true cost
of childcare. so what can we do and I know it's a it's a big system. Is there anything that we can do at the state level that would would help with the true cost of daycare. are are we are with childcare are
we even looking at the true cost of of childcare or will we in this market
Speaker 33
1:12:38
and 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 our own award so that we can begin that work and and
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:12:59
I just want to say one thing too and you've you've obviously alluded to it but
prenatal to three is the most important time in a child's brain development.85% of your brain is developed by the time you're3. and we're putting all of our efforts into putting band aids on
an amputation if we don't take care of0 to3
and this is the infants and toddlers that we're going to lose out of these childcare centers
we've got I was just I've lost the numbers now but we've got 5500 infants and six whatevers 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 gonna cau is
isn't gonna 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 you know, I'm a brain development person and in an area that's supposed to be streets lined with gold and working with early child with early childcare providers
my three year old granddaughter did not get into a program until she was 2 years old. There was no there were no slots in Fayetteville and so d I guess I'm so excited to see this
information and I think it's something that we can compare and 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 date 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 you know do we need worse what do we need? it's not just money obviously we need
money yeah I think the presentation following us yeah I
Speaker 17
1:15:29
think the presentation following us is kind of hitting on some of those points so that may
Speaker 33
1:15:35
be something that they could share and we know just even in the information that we put together for you we were trying to provide you 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 as we get questions and we're like oh they're talking about AC but they're we're we're putting it over here on SA or they're
Speaker 30
1:15:57
talking about headadart but it's really over here so just trying to clarify what are all the different funding sources out there and again we're talking about the data
Speaker 33
1:16:05
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 childcare 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 the the contract that's coming tomorrow will help take the report following this we'll kind of
Speaker 30
1:16:46
give some insight to that but there still is a lot of work to be done thank you
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:16:52
thank you thank you Representative Painner Thank you madam chairir.
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:17:03
do we have an idea that the number of the children that are on the waiting lists for the SRA is that do we incorporate that just that 2.5 million that we just lost or is that was that before are you asking don't think I'm not on
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:17:23
It is on but the microphones aren't working if you don't right we'll just useer
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:17:27
out outdoor boys use our outside voice I think what you're asking is
Speaker 18
1:17:35
was the wait list already going before yes it
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:17:38
was already so it would be safe to assume that we're going to see a little bit of an
Speaker 18
1:17:45
increase now with that so again we when we're talking about the wait list the weightless grows as parents are applying 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
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:18:07
already providing as people continue to apply and there's no funding there it's it's yeah it's gonna continue it'll be
Speaker 33
1:18:13
yeah starting when we get our funding for next year beginning in October it's going to be $2 million overall just even less and I kind of want to go down this year
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:18:47
and 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 if not can we maybe take a look at it's surrounding states with why not this yeah and and I will say that even what we
Speaker 33
1:19:10
have in here by by teacher pay again is only our state funded ABC program in
Speaker 30
1:19:17
which we have a requirement for certified teachers. so when you get away from just ABC program where you don't have a requirement for a certified teacher you're probably going based on
Speaker 33
1:19:24
minimum wage, hourly rates it's going toshift so yeah but other states
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
1:19:31
I'm sure have exactly what we're if if Arkansas's doing I guarantee you somebody else is doing it before us unfortunately but we maybe we can find out how we can compete yeah we can pull the information that's
available and then would echo also too as I agree with you madam chairir 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 prolife 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 revieww, I think we can definitely a couple of quarters in the bucket and and increases funding so we can help our children. thank you madam chairir.
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:20:23
Representative Mayberry Yeah I don't know if this is working or not so I'll just talk really loud
first of all I need to apologize because you know sometimes when you start asking questions you intend to say something and and I I let it go on to some other questions so I wanna 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 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 gets forwarded the s other thing I think Kim Hammer had asked about 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 let's see question 10 of of elev. I mean we know that at the AC facilities and I realized that you you're this is not everybody but we do have fantastic
statistics there.71 to88% proficiency. I mean that's unbelievable as an education committee member I would love to see that in our K12. So just wanted to say kudos you know to you all and to the people who are making this happen in K12 1 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
exceptional work so I guess my question might be is there some way in a pre preschool level if we're looking at the average pay being45,000 for the teacher or even the paros because let me tell you pararos are so very needed and they the teachers couldn't do their job without those paros 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 K12. Is that an idea that's ever been explored or
Speaker 33
1:23:14
could be explored it's it's definitely been talked about you know and and as we look at redesigning what quality is that's where those qualitymons come in. to incentivize outcomes to incentivize folks doing things differently to produce
student outcomes and like how that gets measured so that's
Speaker 30
1:23:32
part of that quality conversation. OK Well I just
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:23:36
I won't be 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 let me look at my other notes cause 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 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 I think the live
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:24:23
stream 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 Ac and and SA 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 I didn't think so so
Speaker 18
1:25:03
connection with that when we have a complaint about an unlicensed home. but other than that there's no way right now for us to know hey there we
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:25:14
go I 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 where kids are being housed that's correct or taught or whatever OK 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 So come on up. thank you very much it's JamieRayford is here from Forward Arkansas
and if you would introduce yourself just for the record and then tell us a little bit about For
Jamie Rayford
Unverified
1:26:13
Arkansas and the early childhood work that you guys are
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:26:21
doing that would be great Sorry there we go hello everyone my name is JamieRayford. I'm the executive director
Speaker 188
1:26:26
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 OK. 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 Fortord 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 Eie Stewart who is sitting over here so we have a great team and we are diving into that early learning space. I am not new to the early learning space I've been working in this space systemwide for about the last decade from the local system side I'm a professional community and economic developer by trade that happy to be diving in a lot deeper into these systems and supporting these systems in our state. OK? so I have about 10
minutes worth of content so I'm gonna 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 inannell 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 1000 families70 providers and additional 2526 partners in 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 longwi long waitlists and limited options for nontraditional 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 the 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. Um, so the purpose and approaches are really clear for the Center for Early Learing Solutions we are looking to identify and implement and
elevate br 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 gonna 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 in the interconnectedness of the different projects so that you can see what were the problems 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 local 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 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 in addition to reducing duplication so we don't want someone who's working on something very specific and one area of the state to not be leveraging those solutions in another part of the state 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 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 into 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 spending 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 tradeoffs 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 their 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 informations 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% 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 the3rd 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 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 factbase 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 the work that is happening
Speaker 191
1:38:03
the map in front of you kind of shows the coverage of the different counties that
Speaker 188
1:38:11
we're working with as a result of that. if I moved 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 childcare 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 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 and 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 that 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 it'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 HQ am 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 sourcece evidencebased HQI am 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 s elect ed one of those curriculum or the only curriculum that has evidence base behind it calledo 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 a selected an implementation partner and we are partnering with an evaluation firm that'll also be doing an evaluation so we can really understand the impacts on the classroom and that pilot 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 h Q m adoption for the openo 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 continue the work. Wonderful thank you so much I'm
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:43:19
so excited about this partnership EDm'm so excited to see you in that in that audience and look forward to seeing you over and over again for for all of our education needs with Arkansas forwardward. so thank you I'm so excited about this project I I've got a couple of questions first of all how long is your is your grant or is your funding from
for this particular projects June of 2028 there's a lot of it is a
Speaker 196
1:43:46
lot of work we've been running since the day that
Speaker 189
1:43:50
we announced we have funding through June of 2028. great. bitten off a lot there's a lot of information
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:43:56
here so let us know what we can do to help for sure and then we do have a few questions uhpresentative Brown
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:44:03
thank you madam chairir. 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. it's anyone talking about additional funding that you're aware of Yes I think every day I hear
Speaker 188
1:44:35
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 fy 25 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 streamer 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 st re am that causes an immediately opposite effect one of the concerns that I've had
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:45:40
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 K12. and I would think and and I'm not saying that that's not judging that but I would think if if we did put more emphasis on early childhood education and children
are starting kindergarten already able to read. we might lob off a few years on the other end like maybe students wouldn't go to coll high you know school as many years but it's like K12 they might make wrap up in t you know whatever 10th grade and and I know that that's kind of happening these days with all the academies and the 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 that we see
Speaker 188
1:47:00
through at least analysis that we have in looking particularly at children that are below the federal poverty level. I mean these are 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 waitlist 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 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 those0 to2 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're3 to5 we're serving 10,000 kids at
that age they didn't suddenly get a development al delay or disability. they just got access to services so those are those are the things that I think about you know I can't don't haven't really thought about an opinion on the back end of folks being I guess above above the the threshold I think a lot about the demand that we have that are that are below it well thank you for
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
1:48:45
that and I I'm understanding you know our society has changed so much typically
you know for many many years up until recent years most I say most mothers you know stayed at home and they spent time with their children and and gave them a lot of enrichment and not all of them did but a good percentage did so I can see that our With both parents working all the time thank you appreciate your work and just I just want to say that I think that I think that that's true but we
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:49:23
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 in enriched developmentally so it's not it's you know it's all about it's all about choice and 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 a lot of the programs are coming from different departments we still have Department of Health with the homeme visiting
anduaMs and Arkansas Children's and and the department
Speaker 188
1:49:58
of agriculture for food so this information
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:50:00
is something that I've been begging for for years. so thank you for for facilitating that effort and let us
know what we can do to help with that. Representative Mayberry thank you I'm
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:50:15
just curious when you were showing the the graph here it says tech enabled solutions ilott. um, one of the counties highlighted is Grant
County and there might be it that's that's a county that I serve and there might be some other counties that are their members are here that 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 like who who specifically does that grant go to and who how does it
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:50:45
help? Sure so any provider in any of those counties that are highlighted up on that map has access to a free child care management system license and our additional
Speaker 188
1:50:57
techno technical assistance and support as well as our software partners umc 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 childcare 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. OK 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 Saie 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 childcare providers that went into business because they loved business they went into business because they really loved children and they want to see children thrive and so going into their business sometimes is is shocking I mean you you find that they you know they haven't maybe collected tuition and sometime 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 dayy 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 that we can all be good steers of those dollars and that they're 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 ilott the benefit of that is pretty much there's very little that they would put into a childcare management system that they wouldn't already be putting into another state system so we're kind of exploring to 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 we're 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 and
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:53:48
been fairly successful with it so ok so this this is not the public school that's offering preschool education can be it can be that's correct and then inhome, I mean because you said any provider so I'm just trying to clarify the
definition of any but just making sure really clear so even someone who's providing that care in their homes how do they apply for
the it's a grant that would run out in 2028 when your funding runs out and then what do they do? Yes so
Speaker 188
1:54:20
we are working within the system to help folks understand CCms to help us at all understand the benefits of CCms we only have funding for the year but you will see a lot of
what we call learnner 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 were 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 demands 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 as well. And how how
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:55:38
are they finding out about you? Are you sending something to them individually
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:55:43
or do we as we are everything from like direct mail phone, Facebook their local lead in their region. We were on the provider call
Speaker 188
1:55:50
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 I was joking to someone the other day I was like, I will show up at your front door
so we're just making sure that we're getting to the ground as quickly as possible through any avenue that we have to get to those
Representative Julie Mayberry
Unverified
1:56:13
providers. OK and just curious the ones who were on this list, how did they get qualified? Was it the areas with the most need so
Speaker 188
1:56:22
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 the area we could boost to50% of the providers in their area utilizing. so utilization was a bit of the methodology it was an opportunity that we gave to every local lead to apply so all 23 local leads had the opportunity to apply65% 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 so we there has been a a honey we had a methodology for how we looked at where the usage was, who your local lead was, what their reach in 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 thank you and I think that's the last
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:57:39
question thank you guys so much thank you so much for the presentation thank you
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
1:57:43
for hearing from me I appreciate it so much and all of the work that you all are doing so diligently for children. you thank you. Is there
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
1:57:50
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
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 12
Speaker 15
Speaker 18
Speaker 14
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
Representative Tara Shephard
Unverified
Speaker 146
Speaker 159
Speaker 160
Jamie Rayford
Unverified
Senator Breanne Davis
Unverified
Speaker 188
Speaker 191
Speaker 196
Speaker 189