GOP senator wants to invest $300 million into Kentucky early childhood education

Help may be on the way for Kentucky’s early childhood education centers.

Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, announced Tuesday he’s filing the “Horizons Act,” a bill that would invest $300 million over the next two years into early childhood education.

Industry leaders say an influx of cash is badly needed to keep these child care centers afloat as pandemic-era federal dollars run out.

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“This transformational piece of legislation and the accompanying $150 million per year appropriation request will go a long way toward averting the pending crisis we are about to face if we don’t act with purpose and certainty,” Carroll said during a news conference announcing the bill.

“We’re already seeing these crises beginning in other states that have ignored this issue.”

A January report from Kentucky Voices for Health and the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy warned of possible widespread childcare center closures, tuition hikes and employee wage cuts or layoffs without a “substantial” investment from the state to make up for $330 million in annual federal funding that’s running out.

The two groups surveyed 770 child care directors and owners, representing 117 of Kentucky’s 120 counties. Of those respondents, 59% said their center would have closed already without federal dollars.

Carroll said the commonwealth’s investment in child care is “insignificant because many see early childhood education as nothing more than babysitting.”

“We do our youngest students a huge disservice by not considering them as student and investing in them beginning the day they are born,” Carroll said. “This must change.”

Carroll’s 50-page bill includes provisions that would:

• Require the Kentucky Community and Technical College System to offer an associate’s degree in interdisciplinary early childhood education entrepreneurship and add it to the list of eligible programs for the Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship.

• Establish the Division of Regulated Early Childhood Education within the Inspector General’s office and the Division of Early Childhood Education within the Department for Community Based Services, both housed within the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. This removes references to the existing Division of Child Care and the Division of Regulated Child Care.

• Establishes four grant-making funds “for the purpose of increasingly the availability of early childhood education services.”

• Covers the cost of background checks for employees of early childhood education centers to the extent money is available to do so.

• Codifies eligibility for the Child Care Assistance Program at 85% of the state median income and maintains the presumptive eligibility for child care workers.

“As a provider, I cannot tell you the benefit that that has brought. We have been fully staffed at our center,” said Carroll, who is also CEO of Easterseals West Kentucky, a nonprofit that includes child care among its services. “We have about 100, 110 kids, two or three times in the last several months. First time that has happened that I can remember.”

Charles Aull, Executive Director of the Kentucky Chamber Center for Policy and Research, said while this bill is about early childhood education, it’s also very much about workforce participation and economic development.

As of December 2023, Kentucky’s workforce participation rate was 57%, compared to 59% in December 2019, he said. About 40,000 workers have left the labor market entirely, he said.

Aull cited census data and several surveys that show childcare responsibilities are a major reason Kentuckians leave the workforce. Among those figures is the finding that nearly 63,000 non-working Kentucky adults have cited caring for children not in school or childcare as their main reason for not working.

“These trends are simply not sustainable trends, and they are going to hold back our economy and hold us back from reaching the common goals that all of us in this room all share,” he said.

“What we need is a strong workforce development strategy, and ensuring that parents have access to high-quality child care and educational opportunities for their children should be a foundational part of that strategy.”

Sarah Vanover, Policy and Research Director for Kentucky Youth Advocates, said Kentucky should not wait until a child is old enough for kindergarten to provide them with a health learning environment.

“When we have educated teachers that are supported in quality learning environments, we have children that are much more likely to be prepared for kindergarten, to have higher reading scores and math scores in third and fourth grade, and to be productive members of the workforce later on,” she said.

“We start 20 years in advance to make sure that they are part of that workforce, and that means starting at birth with quality early education environments.”

Carroll said his colleagues in the legislature have a decision to make.

“We can either fall into the pit that other states are falling in right now because they have ignored the impending crisis,” he said, “or we can step up and we can take the lead in this nation in this area.

“We can tell business and industry within the commonwealth, those that are looking to come to the commonwealth, that providers in our commonwealth and families, our kids, you mean something to us and we’re going to invest in you.”