Okay.

Good afternoon and thank you to everyone for joining the education and workforce development committee meeting.

My name is Councilmember Sheila Adam Stafford, and I serve as the chair.

Today is Monday, October 19th.

And we are going to move forward with this meeting.

However, we're going to begin with one of our three briefings for today.

And then we will return to the budget transfer request.

So I am going to turn it over to our committee director, Dr.

Run Perakin, to give us an introduction for the first briefing, which will be the child care improvement work group and state legislative recommendations.

Do the roll call.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

So we will begin with the roll roll call.

Thank

you.

Chair Adam Stafford.

Present.

Councilmember Harrison.

Present.

Two members present at roll call.

Okay,

thank

you.

So

Dr.

Peregan, if you can um set us up for the first briefing.

Thank

you, Madam Chair.

Uh, the first briefing today will be preliminary state legislative recommendations developed through the child care improvement work group.

The enabling uh res legislation for the work group is CR 15 2026.

And the work group was established to make recommendations in three primary areas.

First, uh improving permitting of child care facilities and streamlining county review processes.

Second, influencing state legislative changes related to child care licensing and funding, and third, developing a plan for implementing a countywide universal child care program.

Uh the work group is chaired by council chair Christal Oreata.

And to date, the workgroup has held three meetings with three meetings remaining uh this year.

And through those discussions, we've identified major barriers and priority areas affecting child care and now moving from identifying issues to developing specific recommendations.

And please keep in mind that these recommendations are still preliminary and in draft uh form, and the work group will formally consider and vote on these recommendations in the coming months, and the final phase will be to develop the work group's final report.

Several issues have been identified by the work group, which have grounded the discussions.

These include affordability and scholarship access, whether child care capacity actually aligns with the family demand, gaps between pre-K and the full-day child care needs of working families, working workforce shortages that can prevent providers from opening up classrooms, and then the challenges that providers and families have uh when they're trying to navigate multiple state and county systems.

So

there are eight preliminary recommendation areas, and I'll just go through those.

Uh, most involve state action, but there are several that have state local implication.

First, it's recommended to strengthen the funding adequacy administration of the child care scholarship program.

The child care scholarship is such an important uh you know tool that families utilize to to access child care.

But uh more the recommendation is to build on existing state reporting so that policymakers clearly understand the demand, uh the projected demand funding need and potential wait lists or short uh shortfalls or just communicating those processing standards and other procedures uh when providers experience payment or other administrative issues.

So a separate point uh with as it was to child care scholarship.

Second is matching better matching child care investments to the actual family demand.

So just because you have licensed capacity in an area doesn't tell you or just tell you whether there's enough usable child care slots that are actually available for families.

So having stronger coordination of availability data through things such as age, uh geography or provider type can help partners better understand where needs exist and how to target investments accordingly.

Third, expanding mixed delivery pre-K while protecting infant and toddler capacity, so ensuring that private centers and family child care homes are able to participate in the publicly funded pre-K and better to understand the pipeline and also have more incentives for ensuring that providers can maintain infant and toddler slots when three and four-year-olds are moving out, and you know, the costs of the infants are offset by the older uh children, so helping to ensure that there's

more uh supports for mixed delivery.

Next is recomm the recommendation is to review state uh mixed age staffing and group size requirements.

You want to ensure that you know your younger children are still safe if they're mixed in with students that may be or children that may be a little older, but there's there is some opportunities there to ensure that there are uh more you know, greater flexibility so that pre-K students can access wraparound care and families can access that as well while maintaining appropriate supervision.

Next is expanding on the work that's being done at the state level with expanding existing paid work-based pathways of the child care workforce.

Uh, it's well known that there is a lack of qualified staff or even interested, um, you know, folks who who will get into the space, they may be interested, but there are other factors and variables that impact their ability to be in these positions.

So expanding earn while you learn pathways and other things such as tuition supports, credentialing, and particularly for infants and toddler.

Next, uh, and there's strengthening state local child care navigation accountability.

There's the new legislation in the county with a child care navigator, so just strengthening the relationship between the state and our county uh with as it relates to the child care navigator position.

Just have two more.