It’s a snow day in Seattle. As the region digs out from the big storm, it’s a good time to check out what is happening in early learning here and around the country.
In Washington, legislators are pushing to phase in universal preschool and pre-kindergarten, the League of Education Voters reports on its blog.
We briefly wrote about this effort earlier this month, but LEV’s story has a lot more detail, including:
- States the legislature’s intent to concurrently phase-in high-quality preschool readiness programs (targeted birth to three and high-quality child care programs).
- Until implementation is complete, the DEL must implement guidelines for prioritizing eligible children.
- Phases in the requirement for lead teachers to have a bachelor’s degree, or equivalent competencies.
- Limits class-size to 18 children per class.
- Limits the teacher: child ratio to 1:9.
-- “Bill introduced to prioritize early learning.” 1/18/12.
Help for Parents on the Night Shift: In other good news, there are signs that parents working night shifts and other non-traditional work hours have an easier time finding child care, the National Women’s Law Center reports today. It is still hard to find child care outside of 9-to-5 schedules, however, and the story has proposals to make the system better.
Policies should be flexible enough to allow parents to hold onto a slot in a child care program even if their hours vary from week to week, and to maintain their eligibility for child care assistance without having to constantly report on weekly changes in their work hours.
-- “Child Care for Parents Working 9 (at Night) to 5 (in the Morning).” Blog, 1/18/12.
Check out the other ideas and the rest of the story.
Child Care Cuts: Unfortunately, there are signs states continue to cut back support for high quality child care:
(Thanks to the National Institute for Early Education Research for finding the story.)
Good luck with whatever winter weather you have.