Pritzker commits to young kids
Governor boosts CCAP in pledge that ‘Illinois will become the best state in the nation for families raising young children’
Gov. Pritzker pledges, “Illinois will become the best state in the nation for families raising young children.” (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
The governor is pledging that “Illinois will become the best state in the nation for families raising young children.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker set the ambitious goal at a news conference Monday at the Carole Robertson Center for Learning, a Chicago center specializing in child education. He immediately committed to bolstering the Child Care Assistance Program — which had been thrown into chaos by his predecessor, Bruce Rauner — and he appointed the Illinois Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding to study the issue over the next year.
Pritzker made clear that achieving the goal calls for more than a commitment to public education, saying, “Illinois will become the best state in the nation for families raising young children, with the nation’s best early childhood education and child care.”
Preschool education has been shown to be one of the most effective programs to attack social inequity, and Pritzker backed that, saying, “Our work won’t be complete until every child in this state enters kindergarten with the cognitive skills to think, learn, read, remember, pay attention, and solve problems, but also the social-emotional skills to communicate, connect with others, resolve conflict, self-regulate, display kindness, and cope with challenges. These are the skills that high-quality early learning programs help young children develop, and I’m proud to say that many of the modern standards and model programs were conceived and developed right here in Illinois.”
A news release put out by the Governor’s Office touted how the Child Care Assistance Program, also known as CCAP, had already seen “increases in eligibility and lower family co-payments … that went into effect earlier this year. Since the governor took office, the number of children participating in the program has grown by nearly 20,000.”
The Rauner administration repeatedly shifted eligibility requirements for CCAP, which resulted in a drop in enrollment of more than 30,000 children and threatened the operations of child-care services across the state.
Pritzker focused on reviving and bolstering those organizations, increasing reimbursement rates for all center and home-based providers statewide by 5 percent, but with an additional 15 percent increase on top of that in farm communities.
“For rural counties that will mean an increase of 20 percent,” Pritzker said. “And as we expand the number of teachers and caregivers we also need to expand our early childhood workforce training, so I’ve increased investment in training programs by $3 million.”
Pritzker made clear he expects the state to benefit from that investment in child development over the long term. “All the best research shows that focusing dollars on our youngest children is one of the most fiscally responsible investments we can make because it reduces future expenditures and offers one of the highest returns on investment,” he sad. “It yields a higher high-school graduation rate, a higher college attendance rate, greater lifetime earnings, lower health-care costs, lower crime rates, and an overall reduction in the need for human-services spending. Nowhere is this more true than with the families who have historically been left out and left behind.”
Pritzker appointed 25 child-care experts and legislators from across the state to the Illinois Commission on Equitable Early Childhood Education and Care Funding, headed by four co-chairs: former House Democratic Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, Sen. Andy Manar of Bunker Hill, Deputy Governor for Education Jesse Ruiz, and longtime Rockford HeadStart leader George Davis. The commission is expected to study ways to bolster “equitable access to high-quality early childhood education and care services for all children birth to age 5,” with a full report including recommendations to be delivered to the governor by January 2021.