Virginia Regulatory Town Hall View Comments

Department of Education

State Board of Education

Guidance Document Change: The overarching goal of the Child Care Subsidy Program is to improve equitable access to high quality affordable child care options for eligible families, ultimately improving children’s school readiness for kindergarten. Virginia will accomplish this implementing policies and processes that: 1. Are flexible and responsive to families’ needs and realities; 2. Prioritize higher levels of support to families with the fewest resources; and 3. Ensure families have equal access to the broad array of child care options. Child care services are child-centered, family-focused services that support the family goals of economic self-sufficiency and child development by providing for the supervision, protection and well-being of the child while the parent is participating in an approved activity. The purpose of the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is to increase the availability, affordability, and quality of child care services. Toward this end, guidance and service strategies are designed to meet the following goals: 1. To provide low-income and otherwise eligible families with the financial resources to find and afford quality child care. 2. To ensure that the child care program contributes to the broader objective of self-sufficiency. 3. To provide child care to children with parents who are trying to achieve independence from public assistance. 4. To promote parental choice in the selection of child care. 5. To empower working parents to make their own decisions regarding the child care that best suits their family’s needs. 6. To provide consumer education to help parents make informed choices about child care. 7. To ensure that subsidy dollars are provided to the neediest families. 8. To enhance the quality as defined by VQB5, Virginia’s new statewide measurement and improvement system, and increase the supply of child care for all families. 9. To improve the coordination among child care programs and early childhood development programs in partnership with Virginia’s Ready Regions. 10. To design a flexible program that provides for the changing needs of recipient families and engage families in their children's development and learning. 11. To provide uninterrupted services to families and providers, to the extent of available funding, to support parental education, training, job search, and employment and continuity of care that minimizes disruptions to children's learning and development.

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9/4/22 7:00 pm

Commenter: Jenn, ONCDC

Progress but still work to be done.

I want to acknowledge that the increase in rates is going to make a significant impact for a lot of programs and a lot of families. I'm grateful that this is happening. At the same time I'm concerned about the number of programs that participate in this subsidy and the bureaucratic challenges that prevent programs from participating. This document downloaded as a PDF is over 200 pages. We must do better to make this content navigable.

I think the move towards increasing eligibility to include job search is wise and I think everyone deserves high quality early childhood education so there's no reason to limit the time period in which an individual has to job search. It is essential that we continue to allow for more out of school days as 15 days barely provides the holiday allotment leaving very few professional development days which are essential to high quality care.

Additionally we need to continue to push towards a more predictable funding stream. I would go further than those on this comment who advocate for weekly rates and advocate instead for a monthly rate. High quality programs need to be able to be able to have predictable income in advance of providing services to pay teachers so that those services can be provided.

The quality of training for early childhood educators needs to be addressed. No required trainings are useless and I don't believe the move to adjust trainings in this document is adding value. I am concerned that the VQB5 is just another failed attempt to improve quality by focusing on the academics at the cost of care which is essential to the well-being of young children.

I think if I were to say my biggest priority of all of this would be as I said first. Focus on brevity I know it is rarely a goal in the regulatory context but it would increase accessibility and be immensely helpful to existing providers as well.

CommentID: 128512