Good evening.

Thank you for joining us.

Today is Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026.

This is the special committee on state legislative affairs upon the rise.

The time is 549.

Madam Third, please call the roll.

Chairman Gonsalves.

Present.

Vice Chairman Reyes is absent.

Councilwoman Peterson.

Present.

Councilwoman Vegas.

Councilwoman Graves.

Present.

For president, I absolutely have a forum.

Thank you all for being here.

And I'd like to acknowledge our uh policy analyst Brandon.

Thank you for joining us.

If you have any questions, we'll certainly mock you.

Thank you for all your expertise and thanks for the Kurt Supports for all we can do.

So I'm thinking what would be helpful here is if we I know some of us have had an opportunity to read through some of this legislation and we have our memo on.

So many of these items, item number one, item number two, item number uh uh three, um, item number four, item number five, item number six, and so those items one through six are all related to child care in education.

Um, so I think we could we could probably pass all of those items together.

There's a motion for that.

Um, I think we can go through it very quickly.

But the number one is early education, child care access and affordability legislation.

So I think uh that would some of you know here.

Uh if you have a chance to read through it would expand child care access, child care workforce development, compensation improved kindergarten program access.

Item number two would um support legislation directing the management of existing workforce development, um, and that's supported um through uh DHS and Department of Elementary to Secondary Education.

Item number three would be uh provision of child care funding for early child educators and modify these the eligibility requirements to 85 percent of state median income um and expanding funding to at least 20 hours per week and so on and so forth.

So there's increase in child care worker retention bonuses, um legislation to specify that pre-kindergarten programs can be added um to programs to increase access to voluntary high quality pre-kindergarten programs and then um House Bill 2026, H 8163 would uh establish guidelines, rules, and regulations for the implementation expansion of pre-K education programs for uh kids ages three to four.

So I think a lot of this stuff is pretty self-explanatory.

So if we could certainly have questions from committee members, but I think most of us would be in agreement with these items.

So if there's a motion to approve one through six, we can do that, but I can certainly open it up to questions from committee members first.

Questions from committee members about these items number one through six.

Okay, great.

So moving to approve uh councillor Graves, and then second by councillor Peterson.

We're gonna pass items number one through six.

These are all pieces of legislation related to pre-K and child care.

All those in favor, all those opposed the ayes have it.

So we pass item six.

Uh item number seven is a house bill and set bill related to uh rank choice voting.

This is an interesting.

Oh, madam, apologies.

Do you agree to item number seven record?

Item number seven resolution endorsing and urging passage by the general assembly of House Bill 2026, H 8163, an act relating to education, Rhode Island pre kindergarten education act.

So this resolution would support state legislation enabling the establishment of a system of rank choice voting.

Um, whenever a municipality's charter amendment is approved by its voters, so we could still have to go through the charter uh amendment process.

I believe this is uh introduced with the state house by might be Rev Kislack on the house side, and maybe Senator Zurier on the on the Senate side.

If I have that wrong, um apologies, but it's essentially legislation that would support needle and legislation should have been municipality want to implement or in choice voting.

Uh so there are other municipalities in the country that do this, New York being one of them.

Uh so very simple piece of legislation in terms of choice voting.

Any questions from committee members about this?

Okay, seeing that there's no quickly chair.

On item number one, I should state that item number one the early education and child care access resolution is from the twenty twenty-five legislative session, separate and apart from the other items here.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Okay.

So okay.

Um since we already passed it, we have to kind of move on.