House Education Early Childhood Subcommittee
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
0:24
Thank you guys and I'm sorry for all of the technical issues but we really appreciate you being here and appreciate you guys it's been a long couple of days with very long meetings and they're not done yet so we're gonna go ahead and get started I just first thing is to take a look at the minutes and need a motion to approve the minutes. thank you. Second. all in favor? thank you very much and the next thing I know we've talked several times about theomen'soundation
report and we have our expert here to talk to us about it and some specifics about how they got the information that they got and what it means for Arkansas so Miss maddie if you would introduce yourself for the record and hit your presentation. that'd be great. thank you It is now you're on if you pull your pull your mic
just a little bit closer I don't think it's working or
Speaker 9
1:42
or turn that one off now see if yours works
Maddie San
Unverified
3:07
Testing there we go yaay thank you everyone. sorry for those technical difficulties
Maddy Sanjuanan
Unverified
3:11
pleasure to be with you with you here this afternoon my name is Maddy Sanjuanan I am the director of strategic initiatives for theomen's Foundation of Arkansas thank you so much Representative Ggarner for inviting me to speak today and share about our latest research report that we commissioned at the Women's Foundation of Arkansas entitled Holding it allgether Working moms and childcare in Arkansas in partnership with Ingeborg
initiatives and so I'm gonna go through this fairly quickly for the sake of time but let's dive right in so the Women'soundation of Arkansas's mission is to ensure economic security for women and girls throughout the state we've been a part of Arkansas since 1998 and we do all kinds of things including commission our own research on the status of women and girls to better understand our needs and challenges across Arkansas so that we can better respond to those we really wanted to
dive in more to childcare and what that means for women's labor forcece participation right here in Arkansas and so our key findings of this report are that Arkansas moms want to work and are working childcare costs are critical barrier to employment, flexible hours was the most desired workplace support, maternal leave is inadequate for many and the invisible mental load is real and unsustainable.
so looking into what existing data tells us about working moms in Arkansas The Arkansas laborboor forcece participation rate is consistently about4 to5% below the national level for women when we look at when we compare working moms in Arkansas to working moms in the US though Arkansas moms are working about the same amount so that gap of
about4 to5% disappears This table here shows a breakdown between women with kids and without kids and their employment status that kids now column refers to women who have children under the age of 18 who are a part of their household and the no kids refers to women who either have never had children or whose children are over 18 and no longer living in the household so this table
shows that in every category women with children are more likely to be working both part time and full time jobs than women without kids and so we found through our research that moms in Arkansas are working primarily We looked at a variety of factors with employment status including marriage, race, metro versus rural areas and educational attainment you can see all of those tables in
our full report which I believe you have a copy of but I wanted to highlight this table in particular which looked at rural versus metro areas in Arkansas rural women are less likely to be employed full time than women in metro areas and rural women are more likely to be working part time self-employed or looking to looking for work then they metro women counterparts and this is true for both those prime working age women and all women. We defined prime working age women as ages
25 through54 so not that early career and not the later career closer to retirement age so we will refer to that throughout our research. In addition to looking at existing data on how women are working in our state. we wanted to talk to women here in Arkansas and hear from their perspective as well so we conducted an online survey with over 800 respondents we conducted 16 virtual focus groups7 inperson focus groups and ate one on one interviews to
really hear from moms across Arkansas what their needs are and we found especially through our focus groups and in our conversations that a lot of the women you know, shared stories that revealed delight and parenting and the desire to spend more time with children with their children. We heard that over and over again. I wish I had more time with my kids. I wish I had more time with my kids and we also heard that they found fulfillment with their professional work and a lot of instances and want their kids to see them working hard on
important things so both working and raising children were equally important to them So when we asked what they wished they had more support for. We heard over and over again that flexibility was the number one most requested workplace support. Over half of the women we talked to cited inflexible schedules as standing between them and a fuller workforce participation 80% of
the moms that we talked to said that flexible working hours are the most important support they need to accept or maintain full time work. So we also asked employment preferences of those prime working age women 25 to54 years of age and this graph showed that of the women that we talked to most of them want to work when we asked what their ideal
job situation would be, respondent's most often indicated a full time position outside of the home so they would go to an office they would go to a hospital. they would go to the school or wherever their workplace was moms with kids in the home over overwhelmingly want to work full time but the desire to go to work outside of the home was slightly behind a remote option or a hybrid role. so we also talked to moms and
they would like to have remote positions or part time positions much more frequently than they actually reported being employed in those arrangements So we also know that child care is expensive. it's expensive in Arkansas it's expensive across the United States we heard over and over again that the childcare costs are a workforce barrier.69% of Arkansas moms cited childcare costs as a
barrier to their employment and this quote I think sums it up perfectly here. One mom that we talked to said I don't really know why I work my entire paycheck is going toward childcare So we wanted to understand the true cost of this for most working families in Arkansas.8,900 dollars is the estimated average annual cost of childcare for one infant in Arkansas that's about 14.6% of the median family income
when we look at multiple kids in childcare the estimated average annual cost is $17,500 for one infant and one toddler in care in Arkansas that's about 27% of the median family income in our state. we heard from a lot of moms that this you know their childcare payment is as equal if not more than their mortgage or rent payments it is hard to pay bills it's hard to save on top of the cost of child ca re
So I we created this working moms dashboard and I really encourage you all to scan that QR code and play around with it. we looked at a county by countyle data here that looks at labor force partic participation rates of moms with kids under6 and moms with kids under 18 compared to all women across Arkansas that's that half blue circles that you can kind of see on the popout box. we also at the bottom of that pop out box looked at the percent of the median fe ma le salary spent on one
infant and childcare and those are averages county by county so you can look at your districts, see what counties are affected and how much women and families are paying for childcare there. so it's an interactive dashboard So one survey item that we asked women is if they could rank order changes that they would like to see to their current childcare arrangement for most preferred to least preferred and
across the board a 10% price reduction was the most frequently identified first choice among urban women among rural women college educated non college educated women all across the board the most common first choice was 10% price reduction and this choice was consistently preferred over other options that we asked including improved quality of childcare extended hours or a more convenient location. So in general it seemed that the women
we talked to were pleased about you know or accepted the quality of care that their children were getting but still cost remained a barrier and a challenge for them. Here's a couple other quotes from women that we talked to again I don't really know why I work my entire paycheck is going to childcarenother working mom said we spend 2200 a month in daycare and that's a mortgage payment that's beyond a mortgage payment for a lot of people
Interestingly we were we were conducting our survey and doing these interviews about the time that the voucher assistant program ended last fall and so that came up quite a bit in our conversations that we had with working moms the cost of childcare was particularly salient since many families with the SRA vouchers were trying to figure out how to pay the new copay that the state system required we heard from one child ca re center who told us that
she lost 20 families pretty much overnight when the copay system was implemented and for her center these weren't little little kids these were more elementary aged children who are now riding the school bus as latchkey kids rather than being in a supervised program with her center. at the time of our conversation again this was last fall probablyoctober november she had already mentioned having to lay off multiple staff members and was fearful that she would have to lay off more.
So we also look at paid leave for women across our state.20% of the women in our study returned to work less than6 weeks after birth, which is before medically recommended. Many reported having no paid leave or only partial wage replacement and we know that these outcomes tie to maternal health outcomes after the birth of a child and so we need to do better for paid leave for moms to have incentives to recover full y after giving birth before they
have to go back to work but many of the moms that we talked to told us they could not afford to take that much leave from work and not pay the bills and stay home so it was a hard decision that they had to make. So we looked here at maternity leave length by different employer supports including the time of leave that they got if it was paid leave protected leave, unpaid leave and not protected and from our survey data analysis we concluded that
in general having some paid leave even if it wasn't the full 1el weeks or a full6 weeks having even just some paid leave increase the likelihood of a mother taking more than6 weeks of maternity leave and still returning to work so they didn't quit their jobs and just stay home. They they were more likely to come back to work we also know that there's an invisible mental load that many working moms hold between juggling work responsibilities and family caregiving
responsibilities one mom said I don't own a single hour in my day so we heard that a lot. I'm going to try and see if I can play this video we interviewed several working moms from all across Arkansas. This is Sarah. she's from Monticello, Arkansas and we heard a little bit about her story. I hope that it will play but if not we have several of these videos on our website and I encourage you to hear from the perspective of working moms across Arkansas but let's give it a try
Speaker 28
16:13
Oh I don't think I don't think you all can't hear
Maddy Sanjuanan
Unverified
16:26
that right? OK. well we'll skip over that but encourage you all in the QR code to listen to Sarah's story umarrah told us she was one of the ones that said all I wish for is more time with my kids. she's a single mom of two boys. she works full time and one of the things she talked about
too was no one prepared her for the amount of sick days she would have to take for her job for her kids them being sick so often and she she mentioned that when she was a kid and she was sick she would go stay at her grandma's house for the day so her mom can continue going to work but for her, her mom still works full time in pine bluff at the hospital and she is unavailable to really help out with childcare and so Sarah said she's all tapped out from her vacation and her sick leave. She
also picks up you know, side jobs cleaning houses, cleaning the local church, cleaning office buildings to help make up ends meet and have just extra spending money for her and her kids. she is one of the ones that also talked about the copay implementation she had about three days notice to come up with her copay for her kids and she talked about the challenge of that being a week that she wasn't going to get paid and she had to kind of scrounge clean some extra houses to find and come up with the
money and even amongst all of that she is so joyful, loves being a mom, loves her life and wouldn't have it any other way and so many Arkansas moms that we talked to had that perspective. they are making it work and they are holding it all together as we named the report after that but there it it is a bit of a struggle for them so that's just a a recap of her story but encourage you to listen to it in her own words if you have some time
and so finally our conclusions from this report is really that Arkansas moms are engaged in the workforce whether they want to be or need to be to provide for their families but they really requested and needed more flexibility and support to make all of that happen. Employers have a big role to play in this. they have a lot of responsibility and they don't have to start from scratch. it can be intimidating to come up with policies that support working moms but just they have to start and realize that you
know their workforce is dependent upon it and then moms are trying to work and want to work but they're having to make impossible choices based on their financial circumstances. and so here is the the QR code that has the full report, the one pager that we have it also has that interactive dashboard and it has the video testimonials of women across Arkansas and so with that thank you for the opportunity. I don't know if we
have time for questions but I will leave some of my cards and share my email if anyone has questions or wants to learn more about our report happy to present that to you, happy to bring you be a resource for you if you have questions about policy recommendations or anything of that we're here to be supportive of you and a resource thank you so much thank you maddie and I do think we have
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
19:47
several several minutes for questions if anybody has any questions
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
19:53
Representative Painner thank you madam chairir and and appreciate the report. I can tell you my wife said the exact same comment why am I when we found out we were gonna have audra here and she immediately said you know what am I gonna turn my check over to having childcare when I could just stay home and luckily we're blessed we were able to do that in your report on the labor force participation graph. I think it's
slide45. What does that cause the spike from 23 to24? Do you know you know that's a that's a good question.
Maddy Sanjuanan
Unverified
20:30
I don't know specifically what caused that spike because it is pretty steep there is another steep spike between 16 and 17 and I'll have to look at that but I don't know off the top of my head what that's from that's fine and'll get your card and we can talk and email it I'm just curious that's
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
20:45
all yeah happy to happy to find out and I'll follow back up thank you thank you
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
20:55
Representative Brown thank you madam chair. I had a couple of questions on the slide that says 27 estimated average annual cost of care for one infant plus one toddler in
Arkansas's 17 500 and that is 27% of the median family income. so when you're saying family is that a a two parent household
And I've got a couple of little ones no nothing nothingth earth shatter when when they said that they needed more
flexibility is that kind of can you give some examples like maybe flexibility in hours or arrival time or maybe taking a big break in the middle of the day or or what what did they need yes great question a lot of that is
Speaker 28
22:03
around their kids schedules so we talked to a lot of women that actually took jobs in their kids' school districts we see that a lot just because the hours matched up their kids schedules better even if and they said they don't pay as well you know I could get a better job elsewhere but it matched my routine my day to day my kid drop off my kid pick up so those kinds of things are workplace supports that we've seen in corporate settings allowing you know flexible start pickup drop off times exactly as you said a
longer lunch and really just you know if a mom needs to take her kids to the doctor you know being flexible on being able to leave work and come back and arrange care for that so just balancing the needs of taking care of their kids throughout the day and being at work and obviously that does not apply to every single industry. I think healthcare is a little bit more challenging in that role sometimes or certain industries are are a little bit more challenging to figure that out but we are really trying to encourage businesses to be
Maddy Sanjuanan
Unverified
23:06
creative and innovative in that and allow women moms and working
Speaker 28
23:09
dads as well to be able to to have some flexibility in that was just thinking of trying to relate this
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
23:18
to myself when I was a single mom I went back to college and my son was
13 or 14 at the time but he'd already had3 concussions just bouncing around the neighborhood on his bicycle so I knew I had to have insurance so I in
order to keep my insurance I had to work 2/3 schedule which I believe was 26 hours a week and then that was going to college full time so you know I did a split shift I be at be there at 4:30 in the morning and then go over to campus all day and then go back at night. you know you make a lot of sacrifices like that just so you can provide but you know we have to commend our mothers for doing what they do
to to be able to improve their lives and so they can eventually improve their children's lives particularly the single moms there was a point to my question and I kind of lost it but I do have another but that's just a that was just trying to think about all of this you know and relate to it personally but ages I made notes at our last meeting and I have didn't bring them with me and I don't remember them. Do you know the ages that
the SRA funds support versus the ABC funds the difference don't know that off the top of my head know there's two different age groups there's there's different characteristics of the two programs and well thank you appreciate the
Speaker 28
24:57
you and I will add to that too you know one of the things that we do at the Women'soundation we work heavily with cel by 8 another organization that
Maddy Sanjuanan
Unverified
25:06
really does a lot in child care policy, maternal health policy they started we worked with the
former governor Asa Hutchinson on the women's commission in 2022 and many of our findings from that report also talked about childcare and the impacts of women especially through the pandemic after that report was released excel byI created a business coalition that really includes chambers different industries from all across the state to talk about childcare challenges and how the business industry can step up and support our working families and that has been excellent it's led by former chief of staff
Aison Williams and she has done a phenomenal job at recruiting members and talking about the challenges I do know from one of our previous meetings that we had we met with the port of Littleock and that was one of the biggest things that they cited for recruiting new companies is that the childcare challenges and the lack of child on site childcare nearby that their families working families and employers would need and so we really look at this challenge
from a personal perspective of how it affects working families and single moms but also how it affects our state on an economic development level and our ability to compete with other
Speaker 28
26:24
states we have such a fantastic state here to bring new business to low cost of living so many wonderful wonderful components to to starting business here but childcare continues to be a challenge that keeps employers from deciding to to plant roots here and so we really think of it from multiple perspectives
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
26:46
I would like to just add something that I'm I'm working on finding out the details of we
had a another meeting earlier this week about workforce and I brought up the question of education because I heard a word that they pay for daycare. so any you know we need to get the word out to parents mothers who are particularly interested in increasing their skill level to be in touch
with the department of commerce because there are daycare they do pay for daycare for people who want to increase their skills so that might be an option for some people and I'm just encouraging people to look into that now I'm getting more data on it as soon as I can thank you thank you so much are there any other questions then you can go and pick up your own children.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
27:43
thank you so much and thank you for everything you're you're doing and
theomen'soundation is doing. they did great work excel by 8 as well and thank you guys so much it's gonna take it's going to take more than the state to to deal with this issue obviously it's going to take some some public private partnerships so so thank you very much for everything you guys are doing we appreciate you coming thank
you so much appreciate the time and the opportunity thank you and with that we'll have the
Maddy Sanjuanan
Unverified
28:07
department come up and give us a quick update on some things that they're doing.
Speaker 62
28:38
Good afternoon Stacy Smith deputy commissioner with the department of
Speaker 64
28:43
edd. good afternoon you all Ashland Abneyducation division director for the office of Early Childhood. thank
Speaker 65
28:49
you very much you just with a quick update in terms of some questions that were sent over to us we had kind of three questions
Speaker 67
28:57
that were sent prior. One was kind of an update on a dashboard that we're working on at the department to increase transparency so we'll talk about that a little bit an update on
the transition to class and where we are with that in the state and then some questions around some awards that came out from the officefice of Educational Policy so we'll kind of hit on those those three topics. So, so first when we first came to you guys last January with changes around SRA and numbers one of the things that really quickly became aware is we were having a very difficult time pulling accurate data from our current data systems. We were having to go in and put in tickets and to
try to get those exact numbers so Miss Abney has been working very closely with our IT team to try to create some internal da sh board s that we could then publicly present and be able to get data much quicker so I'm going to let her tell you about some of the different reports and dashboards that we're currently working on. they're not done yet but they are in the process and are getting very close. yes thank
Speaker 68
30:03
you and so actually these just went live last week so our team in no not public but not playing
Speaker 64
30:10
these are internal ones but for our own team they went to live in in terms of let me let me make sure I'm saying that right when I say in terms live like they can get in there they can play around with it. they can look at different trends that might be happening they can change some numbers around to see what a forecasting would be those kinds of things and so we're just in a brand new process of being able to do that but the three that they are using the most in the last just few days one is an enrollment dashboard where they can look
and see how many children are enrolled in a programs that accept school readiness assistance funding and so that is helpful because we can like Stacy said we can get back to you all how many children do we have in a particular age bracket so that we can then know how much money or funding that we are using for like infin and dollarsers as opposed to preschool and so that is helpful for us to look at the other one is application monitoring dashboard. it helps us to look at how many
applications that we are receiving from families what the counties that they're coming from the areas of the state so that is helpful for us and then another one that we're keeping a close eye on is the participant monitoring dashboard that lets us know how many providers are currently accepting SRA at their centers so we're trying to watch that because as you all know we've gotten questions about purrs no longer being interested potentially in taking SRA
funds and so we're just trying to watch that so I think as we start learning more about the dashboards and how to use them internally how to use them then we will be able to make a cleaner decisions we'll be able to get the information out faster and so I think it will be helpful for us so we're excited to have these dashboards come online we have some other ones that are in the process of being tested and glad to tell you about those laters once we know that they're actually going to be able to be
used internally. Sure so the next question that came to us was about class transition and so we are currently still proceeding with the class and we are excited that the number of participants that have completed their class observations has grown but we are currently getting ready probably within the next couple of weeks to release class transition funding
out to providers so I think that that will be some great news. just want to remind you that that funding is coming from the Pdg or the preschool block grant that we got that's a systems building grant so that's been a little bit different than the grants in the past so it the grant does not translate directly to direct services that's why we are using some of that funding to just help providers who have completed at least one
class observation throughout the beginning of the transition into class and so we're excited for that to happen. the other one that you all were interested in were the OEP awards that is totally separate from OEC awards information and data was shared with OEP and so they did put out some awards based on class scores. I just want to remind you all we're still in the pilot process of that and so
we we will be watching the class scores as they come in and as we make progress towards that but it's totally separate the OEP awards different from what we're doing in OEC.
Speaker 64
34:02
all had mostly on your mind. the other thing that I wanted to tell you about while I had the opportunity is we are getting ready to transition over to a a new system as you all know in terms of our Ace is going
tosorhannah and so we did want to let you know that we've noticed up all the providers that there will be a dragon to potentially with their payments so they're somewhat used to this in the summertime we we we have finishing up one fiscal year moving into another fiscal year but we anticipate that there will be a little bit more of a delay potentially in their payments because we're also transitioning to a new system as well So I wanted to make you all aware of that in case you've got any calls about it you would
know what is happening there we will I think it would
Speaker 72
34:53
be helpful too if we could send the timelines that we've sent out that we're sharing with providers about when the it'll be down
Speaker 67
34:58
so that you guys if you get a call about it you at least have those dates and and know that but that's something that we are trying to communicate ahead of time so folks realize that it's coming. if you'll to share that with staff then we'll make sure
Speaker 72
35:08
everybody gets it. thank you if you'll to share that with staff then
Speaker 67
35:13
we'll make sure everybody gets it. thank you'll have that for you Another question umpresentative Maybeyrry asked ahead of time that I think some of you might
have had her too with questions around audits with headadart and requirements around that and that's something that we're going to dig into a little bit more. I don't know if we were able to answer her question at the beginning of this there are some guidelines for federal requirements with audits with people taking SA funds and then we think on top of that we've probably layered some program requirements so we're going to go back and look at that to see what is a state requirement, what is in rules, what is in policy, what is federally required and see if there's some things there that we could alleviate.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
35:54
do we know where the students are that were in headadart that the state was in charge of what what's happened to those heads those state
headadart kids that we closed out yes ma'am I'm thinking you're talking
Speaker 63
36:06
about the early headadart headadar yes yes ma'am. those guys were able to stay at the facilities
Speaker 64
36:11
that they were already currently in to my knowledge we didn't have anyone that had to move but I'll double check on that for you. The last that I knew they were still in their facility. yes
Speaker 67
36:28
just something else too that comes up frequently is where we are on the market rate survey and our cost analysis so we're still working with the office of state procurement in that processor in the middle of I think starting interviews and so hopefully that'll be awarded soon and again getting to that accurate cost of what it costs for each other that is a report that we're waiting on but that is in the current process of still of going through the process
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
36:58
Perfect thank you Representative Paintner. Thank man
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
37:05
cheered on the disruption of the the payments so I'm I'm sure you probably heard probably I know one provider that's probably reached out to you is concerned especially in my district of ro, you know they operate month to month and it's a very very poor area are those payments when they're delayed are they gonna be like a big lump sum when they start back
cause I'm being told it could be they're being one provider calls said it could be June to midully which that's quite a bit to be withheld funds and if that's the case is it going to be a one lump sum or then you got to spread out?
Speaker 64
37:46
that's a great question. my understanding is that it so here's some dates just so that we're talking apples to apples june twenty6th would be the last day that they can put in their SA payment to have it
processed June30th is when the payments will stop and then from July1 to13th to your point and we do understand that that is a that's quite a bit of time for a provider they can continue billing but there won't be any processing of the payments. my understanding to answer your question is once it comes back live we're thinking around July14th or so that they would receive any monies that were owed to them in the period that was shut down. so I think it
would be so wise to encourage them to continue to build so that that information is in the system ready to go for payment once it comes back up. just know you guys said you guys
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
38:42
were going to give us a timeline but I know there's certain providers in my district watching and so I just wanted to make sure they heard that on the record and and got those dates for themselves and we've sent
Speaker 64
38:53
that out to them we started messaging out in May and then we've sent it out again this week just to keep in front of them so that they would have the dates so we'll keep doing that
Speaker 34
39:05
as well and I'm sure but you probably have had heard
Speaker 40
39:08
some concerns with that yes sir OK I appreciate that thank you madam chair for the latitude Representative Walker
Speaker 68
40:14
Seems like a tricky day with technology today. happens to the best of us Thank you
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
40:41
madam chairir. sincence this microphone works so my questions about an
early childhood special education funding. and I know you guys weren't prepared to to talk about it so if this is information you have to get me later that'll be fine. the the so from my understanding it has been a long time since that fund's been looked at or increased inflation has really deteriorated what what the the group that worked with early childhood special education's able to do with that fund I think staffing has become
less over time because of inflation taken away from the funding it's and the reason I wanted to bring it up because it's a big deal in our rural areas where we don't have a lot of help for these kids. and so the early childhood special education with learns targeting the third grade level and trying and and and holding kids back that aren't on gradele and we've got this fund out here the early childhoodpecialducation to where it helps it helps identify these
kids before they get to3rd grade or kindergarten and tries to get them on level as they go into kindergarten and it helps parents that don't have the resources that because poverty's a big deal in my district. and these parents they don't have the resources they're able to purchase these resources work with the parents and get them on grade level and so I guess my question is have we looked at at what all this fund's able to do
trying to where it should be at financially to keep it going cause I don't, I don't want it to collapse over the next few years and I'm and I'm some of the things I've been hearing lately show that that could be coming if we're not proactive and I've just curious if you have thoughts on that or if you need to get that information later that's fine too so really think you're talking
Speaker 67
42:41
about thear B elements of it and then the state allocations where the state has put in money for special education for early services so I think if you'll let me go back and get with
Doctor Adams with special education and Matt soul and let me look at those funds there's always a need I mean you know this and and a couple of years ago actually money was put in by the legislature for that specific purpose a lot of times this is where you'll see school districts working closely with their public schools and providing services for special education and supports but when you start looking at yourart B's andar C's in terms of federal funds and the amounts
there there there's a limit and there's some formulas that drive the mounts and and where that gets put out to and who who gets that so let me go back and get with Doctor Adams and and Mattsuwell and circle back with you and maybe even get some specific scenarios so we can really kind of dive in and de de determine which part of money which program that'll
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
43:44
be perfect and like I said I just with us putting such an emphasis on holding kids back at a third grade level. I know we can't
solve all the problems out there but I want to do what we are capable of doing and try to identify kids as early as possible so we might be be able to make the difference on
Speaker 95
44:05
whether they're held back or they're able to
Speaker 62
44:08
move on ahead of time you're speaking of sorry of early intervention right getting to
Speaker 67
44:13
kids sooner than later and so that was the whole premise of Lawrence and all the interventions and supports being put in in kindergarten 1st and second
grade that intervention part of that. So we're happy to go back and look at that and see if there's
Speaker 72
44:29
some adjustments we need to make and and get with you directly right thank you and thank you
Speaker 96
44:35
madam chairir. Representative Brown Thank you madam chairir. we had
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
44:43
a it was called to my attention that in the news
this week one of the child care centers in my district is confronted with owing over $1000 that they have to repay because they were overpaid and it sounded to me like well it looks like it's SRA funds do you have any idea why the overpayment I know that throws I certainly don't like to get done for something that wasn't my mistake, but do you have
a response to that concern I don't know if you heard the news report
Speaker 64
45:32
or not. yes ma'am, I did hear the news report in our office is reviewing that that particular situation is under an appeal right now and so I'm I'm not at liberty to talk about it right now. but yes ma'am we are aware of it and looking into it thank you yes ma'am Thank you. I've I want to go back
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
45:51
just a minute to first of all I want to say thank you for the dashboard because I I've
heard over and over again how transparency and and and accountability is so important so thank you for that and please keep us posted on on what's part of those dashboards or a dashboard was it it's several dashboards ok and and how we can get that information back out. I I do want to go back just to just a minute about the distant update on the class pilot. there were some questions about
where we are there there's several several folks that had not gotten their two observations maybe or it what's happening with that information as well so obviously OEC or OEP got some of that data what what data is available for foia and what is not as part of this pilot. I think they were, I think that the folks that can that were concerned that talked to me were under the impression that it was
a pilot, it was a learning opportunity, it wasn't that data was not going to be used for anything and that except for learning and that they they weren't going to be held accountable for that particularly right so the
Speaker 67
47:12
department's not using that information to determine current quality payments rates, anything. However, it it's pub I mean it it's foidable information data sharing agreements it's information that we will share as someone asks for it and so that was the
case OEP does something similar with K12 with with K12 testing data they do their own awards by regions I think they were trying to mimic something similar in the early childhood space. I think it was something that they were looking at as a positive trying to identify people who were doing good work. again that was something that they did
Speaker 72
47:49
so any any data that you have is foable basically it it doesn't tie back to individual students right? So like when we're
Speaker 67
48:00
talking about even K12 atlas data we're going to have to publicly share data right but it doesn't necessarily go back and say this
Speaker 72
48:06
student scored this we're not going to really sit down that's why we have sizes amounts no but schools but what the schools
Speaker 101
48:13
but the rating yeah but when we're talking about a
Speaker 67
48:17
rating for using this class tool that's information that we would share if asked in a data request for that. OK, I I think that's I think that's the concern I think that some one
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
48:26
of the statements from the very beginning said that that data would not be shared
and if that changed then maybe we need
to get back to those those folks and just let them know that that would be helpful would absolutely do that and then my question is because I'm in OEP's district who who would I talk to
about that? I mean I I would assume they're their director yeah ok perfect yeah
Speaker 60
48:54
and and again we work closely with with them for
Speaker 92
48:57
multiple things and again I think this is something they they were doing
Speaker 67
49:02
to try to recognize people they think were on the front end out going and doing I think other folks are looking at that as being something like people were
Speaker 72
49:10
caught surprised by it and so we understand that I agree I think
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
49:15
they do wonderful work and I I love all of them and I I do want to recognize that I'm sure that's
what what happened but I do want to make sure that they hear the concerns about those folks who felt ineligible
to even be you know to be to be a part of that that's fair I think they would want to know yeah,
Speaker 62
49:41
I would think so too. I would think so too and in terms of the number of class observations and funding
Speaker 64
49:47
ashley you want to talk to that yeah so something we're very excited about we are going to have a a cute what we're calling the QRIs or the quality rating improvementystem. we have a workshop webinar that we're going to do on June 23rd. and so if you all can help us with getting that information out to the providers
it's another thing that we've communicated already from our office but we are very interested in providers and what they think about for the QRIs as we start developing it.las will be a part of it but I think that there's some flexibility in terms of the things that you're bringing up like what exactly do we do with those scores? how does it fall within the overall QRIS system and so we are excited to share with them some ideas that we have nothing is set in stone
so if they want to join that webinar they can find that information on our website and we're excited to have already we think hundreds of participants that have registered for it. so we will have a a continuing conversation with everyone about Qias and very much interested in building this system together with providers with parents we have plans for doing parent focus groups as well to gather their information on what they would like to see as long as as far
as also with stakeholders and then our office as well so a true partnership hopefully let's go around and making sure that we are building something that is reasonable and realistic and something that is obtainable for providers to do but also gives parents the information that they need. so we're very excited about that the funding piece of that we are hoping will come later down the road and we will figure that part out together as well so we're excited about that so that kicks off June June the
23rd. Yes ma'am yes ma'am and one more
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
51:41
question and that is an update on the local leads the the recompete and where we are and what's going on with the local leads if you have that information if not we can do that the next meeting've got that preliminary information
Speaker 64
52:01
for you so we did do the recompete we will now starting July1st
we will have 23 local leads all the counties will be covered we had some shifting going on because we had some of our current local leads decided not to continue on so we did have some shifting but not major shipping so it'll still for a provider we're hoping fu similar to them because they are locally will still be in their surrounding catchment area. so we're excited about the work that the local leads will continue to do in their communities and in their
catchment areas we are partnering also with them as well with the QRIS and we really need to I think I've shared this before we needed to work on our communication both internal and external and so we're doing some work with that around our local leads to make sure that we're staying in lockstep and aligned with our local leads and then our local leads out to their catchment areas so I'm excited about how that's going to look coming up this next year.
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
53:07
Great so this recompete did their their job description change no ma'am
they're doing the same thing ma'am that
Speaker 67
53:18
we were doing before wonderful. so and again that was a part of our PDg grant to regarding systems building, being able to leverage those funds and being able to help support and again get our local leads programs off the ground really run going strong. but again that Pdg grant was all about how we're building systems, what it's our transparencies. so again our dashboards, the local leads aspect, um, building our systems
around class, is how we've leveraged that funding and when
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
53:47
you talk about the Pdg grants were we able to go back and look at the the folks that we had contracted that we cut drastically when the CBd or the notcBd the grantscbDF grants were were cut so while we so some of those contractors some of some of those programs that were cut drastically or are the local
leads taking on those responsibilities or where are we on on Pd and so what you're talking about
Speaker 64
54:21
so I think what you're referring to is with the CCDF back in the late fall we had some adjustments that needed to be made in terms of the professional development and the grants that we had. So similarly to the recompete with the local leads we also had the reset for the grant the grantees so they were able to rewrite for
different professional developments that they wanted to provide what we did therepresentative Ggarner is we really took a look at what was absolutely needed. So like what training topics were absolutely needed and or required by CCDF and started building out from there the different trainings that we will have this year. So fortunately we were not able to keep all of the training topics that were there but we have everything that was essential and needed covered for this coming up year so we're
we're excited about that we did that also in tandem with providers and question them what is it that you want? what is it that you need and so that information was helpful and then a thing that I thought about that we haven't mentioned but I'm excited about it is we have started a a stakeholder group or we're calling it the Pdg Partnersroup. where we have every type of facility covered we have a spokesperson we had our kickoff
meeting this past week where we brought in providers to talk to us about all of our PdG activities to get feedback from them. I'm looking forward to keeping that team intact as we move forward just asking broader questions about OEC as well just in the effort to continue the transparency, continue being able to talk back and forth with everyone in terms of where we want early childhood education to be in the state of Arkansas. so I'm excited about that great
Speaker 74
56:18
and and how were they chosen? how did you decide
Speaker 64
56:23
it was an internal from mostly my team but then also from local leads that we had heard from that knew about the people in their catchment areas and then we offered out to the individuals we had some thats were just too busy to participate and others that said yes and then that's how we formulated the final group that came and this is for pd specifically. yes ma'am we started it for that but what we learned in the meeting that we
had with them last week that there's so many more ideas just outside of the PdG activities. So I talked to them about would you all be interested and have the the capacity to to make this more than just the PDG activities. So while we're focused on that right now because as you know our PDg is through December of this year we've talked already about going on past December and and being able to have them as our our immediate people that we can get feedback
Speaker 68
57:20
from. Great great sounds wonderful. I'm excited about it too y'all have anything else you need us to know? No ma'am Well, I so
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
57:32
appreciate you guys coming and leaving another meeting and I know you've got another one to go to so thank you very much for your help. thank you for having us we appreciate it thank you and with that
is there any other business seeing no other business this meeting is adjourned
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Approve the March 19, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Presentation of Holding It All Together: Working Moms and Childcare in Arkansas Report [Exhibits C1-C3]
D. Update on Early Childhood Education from the Arkansas Department of Education
E. Other Business
F. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Representative Denise Garner
Unverified
Speaker 9
Maddie San
Unverified
Maddy Sanjuanan
Unverified
Speaker 28
Representative Stetson Painter
Unverified
Representative Matt Brown
Unverified
Speaker 62
Speaker 64
Speaker 65
Speaker 67
Speaker 68
Speaker 70
Speaker 72
Speaker 63
Speaker 34
Speaker 40
Representative Steven Walker
Unverified
Speaker 95
Speaker 96
Speaker 101
Speaker 60
Speaker 92
Speaker 74