Gov. J.B. Pritzker proposes new agency for early childhood services
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday offered a broad outline of his plan to create a new state agency devoted to early childhood services, consolidating work now handled by three separate entities including the beleaguered Department of Children and Family Services.
Pritzker, who has made early childhood education a centerpiece of his second-term agenda, said the new agency would put under one umbrella functions such as early intervention for children with disabilities and developmental delays from the Department of Human Services, preschool programs overseen by the Illinois State Board of Education, and day care licensing responsibilities handled by DCFS.
The creation of a new agency, which would require legislative approval, is intended to cut red tape for both families who need services for their children and the outside agencies who provide them, said Pritzker, who has long touted his desire to make Illinois “the best place to raise a family.”
Despite increases in funding for preschool programs and other early childhood initiatives, “it’s clear that we’re not yet organized at the state level to reach that goal,” Pritzker said during a new conference at the Carole Robertson Center for Learning in the North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side.
Pritzker announced the plan, which his office called a “multiyear process,” on the opening day of the legislature’s scheduled six-day fall session but said he doesn’t expect lawmakers to take it up until they reconvene in the spring. The move would put Illinois in line with other states such as Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oregon and New Mexico, according to the governor’s office.
In the meantime, Pritzker issued an executive order instructing the three state agencies to begin working with his newly named early childhood transition director to prepare for the change. That job is going to Ann Whalen, who is director of policy for education advocacy group Advance Illinois. Whalen previously held positions in the Denver public school system, the U.S. Department of Education and Chicago Public Schools. The salary for the new position was not immediately available.
The plan is intended to build on Pritzker’s “Smart Start Illinois” initiative, a program funded with $250 million in this year’s budget that aims to improve access to child care and early childhood education. Among other elements, the program calls for the addition of 20,000 slots to existing state-funded preschool programs over the course of the governor’s current term.
The proposed reorganization comes amid a broader leadership shake-up in the social services operations under the purview of the governor.
Earlier this month, Sol Flores stepped down as Pritzker’s deputy governor overseeing health and human services, with that role going to Grace Hou, who’d previously led the Department of Human Services. And Pritzker this month also announced that the heads of three other social services agencies — DCFS, the Department of Healthcare and Family Services and the Department on Aging — would leave the administration at the end of the year.
The news of the pending departure of DCFS Director Marc Smith, whom Pritzker stood by during years of criticism over the agency’s ongoing problems, prompted calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to reevaluate the agency’s mission.
Even before Pritzker took office, lawmakers and advocates have long discussed the idea of reassigning day care licensing to another agency to allow DCFS to better focus on its primary child welfare responsibilities, such as abuse and neglect investigations.
“DCFS clearly doesn’t have the bandwidth to do a good job on its core mission of child safety,” Charles Golbert, the Cook County public guardian and a frequent critic of the agency, said Tuesday.
Taking day care licensing off its hands could potentially benefit children like the abuse and neglect victims his office represents in court, Golbert said, but “the devil’s in the details.”
Republicans in the Democratic-controlled legislature said they would approach Pritzker’s proposal for a new agency with open minds, noting that some GOP lawmakers have advocated for DCFS to no longer handle day care licensing.
But like Golbert, House GOP leader Tony McCombie of Savanna said the success of such a plan would depend on whether the new agency is able to better manage the existing programs.
“If you’re just going to do it the same way, I don’t know if it’s necessarily going to overall fix the issues,” McCombie said.
If lawmakers approve Pritzker’s plan, it would create the first new state agency since Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner launched the Department of Innovation and Technology in 2016 in an effort to consolidate the state’s information technology operations.
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed from Springfield.
