Ohio

Ohio has long been at the forefront of early childhood collaboration; however, fiscal pressures in the early part of the decade caused the dismantling and revision of its flagship Head Start – Child Care collaboration program and thwarted the funded roll-out of a long-awaited quality rating system, Step Up to Quality. In 2006, the state board of education convened the School Readiness Solutions Group charged with a year-long comprehensive review of early childhood programs.

ECEC assembled an advocacy alliance involving the state provider association, a major metropolitan child care resource and referral association, a non-aligned education fund, and major non-profit operators like the YMCA and Easter Seals to work together to develop a common operators voice on key issues in the state’s biennial budget. The alliance focused on the Early Learning Initiative, child care subsidy reimbursement rates, and Step up to Quality, among other early childhood issues, and has worked in collaboration with the Center for Community Solutions’ groundWork Ohio advocacy campaign.

Big Wins in the Buckeye State

In 2007, ECEC played an important role in winning key gains for early care and education providers in Ohio:

• Won an executive order from incoming Governor Ted Strickland increasing child care
  assistance reimbursement rates to the 65^th percentile of the 2006 market rate survey
• Eliminated a legislative proposal that arbitrarily linked the child care subsidy rate increase to participation in the new quality rating system – higher quality standards merit reimbursement above the basic subsidy and with input from providers and others knowledgeable about the cost of providing services.
• Reinstated the phase-in period for the existing Associate and Bachelor degree requirements for teachers in child care and ELI
• Won permanent law change requiring the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services use an independent contractor to conduct the child care market rate survey and to adjust rates within six months and in conjunction with the biennial budget
• Further steps toward building a comprehensive early learning system in Ohio including keeping eligibility for ELI separate from parent employment.

We look forward to working together with other members of the advocacy alliance to monitor the implementation of this budget, inform the work of the fiscal/administrative model working group, and chart the next part of the course toward a comprehensive birth to five early education system in Ohio.

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