'Horizons Bill' unveiled to stem crisis in Kentucky's child care industry

Rebecca Grapevine, Louisville Courier Journal
·3 min read

FRANKFORT — Kentucky’s child care industry is facing an “impending crisis” — but it could get a boost if state Sen. Danny Carroll, R-Benton, has his way.

Carroll said he will introduce the "Horizons Bill" in the state Senate on Tuesday aimed at helping Kentucky’s faltering early childhood industry.

The state faces a child care crisis due to high demand among working families, a lack of child care centers and low wages for workers, and the expiration of federal COVID relief funds that have helped prop up the industry for the past few years, said Jennifer Washburn, the executive director of an early childhood education center in Benton.

Carroll estimates his proposal would cost $150 million annually. He is the CEO of Easter Seals West Kentucky, which provides child care and other social services.

His plan stands in sharp contrast to a key part of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s budget proposal: universal public pre-K for 4-year-olds, with an estimated price tag of $172 million per year.

Carroll called Beshear’s proposal a “political statement not based on reality.” He said universal pre-K would damage the child care industry because it would take 4-year-olds out of child care facilities, undercutting a crucial source of income for the centers and risking their financial stability.

Carroll said his bill would help the industry as a whole, which will help keep parents in the workforce and prepare young children to succeed in school.

“Many see early childhood education as nothing more than babysitting,” Carroll said. “We do our youngest students a huge disservice by not considering them as students and investing in them beginning the day they are born.”

Putting more children in early childhood education facilities could protect children at risk of abuse and neglect and help them get early intervention, Carroll said.

The bill includes a number of provisions. It would:

  • Create a “foundation” fund that would provide a per-child payment to eligible child-care centers or family child-care homes. That would amount to around $567 per child.

  • Create an “innovations” fund to encourage child care innovations among businesses, nonprofits, public school districts and other organizations to foster new approaches to child care options, such as a public school district establishing a child care center for employees.

  • Create a new early childhood education entrepreneurship program within the Kentucky Community and Technical College System

  • Make education programs for early childhood professionals eligible for Work Ready Kentucky Scholarships to help pay tuition.

  • Allow families earning up to 85% of the state median income to participate in the child care assistance program, which helps families pay child care tuition, and continue the assistance program for child care workers so they can get care for their own children while working.

  • Pay the costs for mandatory background checks for child care centers “to the extent funds are available.”

Carroll said the current version of the House budget bill does not include funding for the bill, but money for the plan could still be added as the budget moves through the legislative process.

Reach Rebecca Grapevine at rgrapevine@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: 'Horizons Bill' unveiled to avoid Kentucky child care crisis