COLUMBUS, Ohio—The Ohio Senate is looking to remove hundreds of millions of dollars worth of childcare funding from the state’s new two-year budget, compared to what Gov. Mike DeWine and the Ohio House are seeking.
The Senate’s initial budget revisions, unveiled last week, come as childcare affordability and access is becoming an ever-greater problem both in Ohio and around the country and at the same time that the chamber is proposing millions in cuts to the social safety net.
Here’s more on what the Senate’s budget plan would do regarding state funding for childcare in Ohio:
Publicly funded childcare
When DeWine used his State of the State speech in February to outline his biggest priorities for the upcoming budget, he started with children. After pitching a sales tax cut on infant supplies and a $2,500-per-child state tax deduction, DeWine outlined his plans to expand childcare to more working families.
The expansion was a key piece of a proposal DeWine touted as contributing to Ohio becoming “the best state in the nation to raise a family.” At the time, DeWine said the state needed to expand access to high-quality childcare to aid Ohio parents who “must choose between taking on full-time, full-year work or staying unemployed or underemployed, because they cannot afford the high cost of childcare.”
But the Senate’s budget proposal, as written, would roll back most of a proposed expansion of publicly funded childcare for lower-income Ohioans that was included in both the governor’s and the House’s budget plans.
The latter two budget plans proposed raising initial income eligibility standards for publicly funded childcare from 142% of the federal poverty level ($42,600 per year for a family of four) to 160% of the poverty line ($48,000 per year for a four-person family). That bump, which would cost an estimated $202 million over two years, would pay for 15,000 more Ohio children to attend daycare, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission.
The Senate’s budget, by comparison, would only raise eligibility to 145% of the poverty line, or $43,500 in annual income for a four-person family. That would be an estimated increase in state spending of about $33.7 million.
In addition, the Senate removed language in the governor’s and the House’s budget proposals that would adjust reimbursement rates for publicly funded childcare providers every year, rather than every two years under current law.
Childcare scholarships for critical-care workers
The Senate is also, so far, joining the House in rejecting a DeWine budget proposal to use $150 million in federal coronavirus aid to provide childcare scholarships for roughly 12,000 children of critical-care workers around Ohio.
Childcare advocates argue the money is needed to help workers such as nurses, first-responders, and childcare workers themselves who are struggling to pay childcare costs that, in recent years, has averaged about $10,000 annually in Ohio, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
Ohio, like other states, has faced significant problems with recruiting childcare workers, who are often paid comparatively low wages and face shifting poverty thresholds, changing state reimbursement markers and rewritten licensing qualifications. As of 2021, the state had 12,849 childcare workers – the lowest number since 1999.
Step Up To Quality
The Senate proposal would give $14 million less to the state’s Step Up To Quality system, the state’s childcare rating program, than the $40 million in total sought in DeWine’s and the House’s budget proposals.
That reduction, if it holds, would “dramatically reduce the number of children accessing critical early education services throughout Ohio,” PRE4CLE, Cleveland’s preschool expansion campaign, stated in a release.
The Senate’s budget would further make it easier for childcare programs to exempt themselves from being rated by the state. Under current law, childcare providers can forego a rating if less than 25% of their license capacity receives publicly funded childcare; the Senate is proposing to raise that threshold to 50%.
Katie Kelly, executive director of PRE4CLE, said in an interview that while this change may seem reasonable on the surface, the facilities that would be allowed to exempt themselves currently care for about 80% of Ohio children who are in programs with a Step Up To Quality rating. The result, Kelly said, is that many of those programs could then scale back on their efforts to ensure their teachers have degrees in early childhood education or child development, or to design curricula that’s designed for early learning.
“We don’t know if they (the childcare programs) would necessarily decide to do that,” Kelly said. “But the opportunity to do that would be there, and we just lose the effectiveness of those public investments for children, for families, and our community.”
Childcare teacher education
A separate part of the Senate’s budget plan would prohibit the state from requiring licensed childcare administrators or employees to hold a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree. It would also block the Step Up To Quality program from looking at whether administrators and teachers at a given facility have college diplomas when determining a rating for that program.
The move appears to be aimed at addressing the state’s shortage of childcare workers by loosening teacher qualification standards. State lawmakers are taking a similar approach to improve workforce shortages in other professions, including by lowering the minimum age to become a police officer.
“I don’t know why we would want to apply that kind of approach to early learning, where we have professionals who are caring for children in the state of Ohio,” Kelly said.
Childcare infrastructure grants
The Senate proposal slashes the $30 million in grants sought by the House to help offer childcare in parts of the state that are underserved down to $15 million in grants. DeWine’s budget doesn’t propose giving any money for such grants.
Mental health education
DeWine’s budget proposes an additional $22 million for the Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation Program, under which mental-health professionals help give childcare teachers and administrators advice and resources about helping children with behavioral health concerns or special needs. The House’s version of the budget cut DeWine’s proposed increase to about $12 million, and the Senate’s plan would further reduce the increase to about $7 million, Kelly said.
“The House and Senate’s decision to remove funding for this priority comes at a time where there is widespread recognition that our young children and youth are facing mental health challenges at levels never before seen,” said Shawna Rohrman, director of Cuyahoga County’s Office of Early Childhood/Invest in Children initiative, in a statement. “Recent data show that one in five children in Ohio are experiencing a mental health condition – yet less than half of those children receive treatment.”
Not surprisingly, childcare advocates are pushing the Senate to reverse its moves to reduce state funding for childcare.
“This is a huge missed opportunity to move the state’s economy forward,” said Nancy Mendez, president and CEO of Starting Point, a Cleveland-based childcare resource and referral nonprofit, in a statement.
“The Senate’s misguided budget would worsen the dual childcare and workforce crises facing our state,” said Jim Spurlino, a former Republican congressional candidate who now heads Ohio Kids First, a political nonprofit. “It would unquestionably cause irreparable harm to Ohio families, children and businesses, and undermines Governor DeWine’s leadership to make child care more affordable and accessible.”
A spokesman for Ohio Senate Republicans, who hold a commanding supermajority of Senate seats, referred comment to Senate Finance Committee Chair Matt Dolan, a Chagrin Falls Republican running for U.S. Senate next year. Dolan, in a text message Wednesday morning, declined to comment until Senate Finance unveils a second round of changes to the budget on Wednesday afternoon.
The Senate is likely to hold a full floor vote Thursday on its budget proposal. If the House, as expected, doesn’t accept the Senate’s version of the budget, the two chambers will then convene a conference committee of members from both sides to hammer out a final version of the budget. They must finish a compromise budget to send to DeWine’s desk by June 30, the end of the state’s fiscal year.
When asked about the Senate’s proposal to cut back on childcare funding, DeWine told reporters that his goal is to keep his original proposals in the final version of the budget.
“I hope that, by the time we’re done with this process, that the vast majority of things that we’ve asked for children in the state of Ohio remain in the budget,” he said.
Jeremy Pelzer covers state politics and policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.