DES MOINES -- Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is taking steps to expand child care access across the state just after lawmakers took a pass on approving her legislation designed to do the same.
Reynolds on Tuesday announced three steps she is taking to boost child care access and incentive partnerships between child care programs and preschools.
The announcement comes less than a week after the Iowa Legislature adjourned for the year without approving her bill that was designed to tackle the same goals. While the Iowa Senate passed it, the Iowa House did not consider it, largely over concerns about how some of the bill's provisions were funded.
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Reynolds announced Tuesday her administration's three-step plan:
The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services has released a request for proposals for the Early Childhood Continuum of Care grant. Grants of up to $300,000 over three years will support partnerships between Iowa's Statewide Voluntary Preschool Program sites and licensed child care centers to offer seamless, full-day care for 4-year-olds, according to the governor's office.The state will extend a Child Care Assistance pilot program that has deemed to have been successful in supporting child care workers by allowing them to qualify for state child care assistance even if their income exceeds prescribed limits. The pilot program currently serves more than 900 families and 1,500 children, according to the governor's office.The state will create a new Statewide Solutions Fund, which will be funded by donations from Iowa businesses and individuals with the goal of boosting child care workers' wages. The statewide fund builds off a successful pilot program that included nine regional funds, according to the governor's office.
"When individuals, businesses, and government all work together to solve a problem, Iowans benefit. Nowhere is this more evident than in child care," Reynolds said in a statement. "Programs like the Child Care Assistance pilot and the Statewide Solutions Fund will continue to increase our child care workforce and capacity. And, the Early Childhood Continuum of Care grant will help give working parents what they need -- a full day continuum of care for their children."
Under the Continuum of Care grants, preschool program sites and child care centers will submit joint applications for the funds. The grant funds can be used to cover transportation between preschool sites and child care centers or fund child care staff, according to the grant application.
"This first-of-its-kind grant opportunity supports partnerships between high-quality preschool and child care programs, providing a full day of care that meets the needs of children and working families," Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow said in a statement. "We know that about 90 percent of a child's brain develops by age 5, and Iowa's new Continuum of Care grant will expand family access to high-quality early childhood options that lay the foundation for learner success in school and beyond."
The Statewide Child Care Solutions Fund was created under the Iowa Economic Development Authority Foundation, which was created by the state to receive and distribute funds from public or private sources "to be used to further the overall development and well-being of the state," according to the state. Contributions to the fund are deductible charitable contributions under federal law.
Some donations could be matched 2-to-1 by the state, the governor's office said.
The statewide fund is modeled after a regional pilot program established by the nonprofit Iowa Women's Foundation that, according to a recent report from a conservative-leaning Iowa think tank, created an average of 22 new child care slots per 1,000 children.
The Early Childhood Continuum of Care grant is similar to a grant program proposed by Reynolds in her legislation, Senate File 445. That bill would have created a $16 million program to provide three-year grants of up to $100,000 to preschool providers -- typically school districts -- and child care providers to provide wraparound services for working families.
The funds could have been used to defray the cost of transportation to bring children from school to child care, or vice versa, or to pay for a preschool teacher at a child care center, or for child care staff at a preschool.
Those grants, as proposed in Reynolds' bill, would have used a combination of existing Early Childhood Iowa funding and federal wraparound child care funds. The bill also would have shifted roughly $3.6 million in existing state grant funds used to assist child development programs and school districts serving at-risk children ages 3 to 5.
That funding plan is what created concern among some lawmakers and led to its failure to pass the Iowa House.
Tom Barton of The Gazette Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.
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