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Diminishing Support for Child Care and Early Education
Access to child care and early childhood education is vital to women's economic well-being and the ability of their children to succeed in school. The Administration's FY 2009 budget continues its long-standing pattern of freezes or cuts to child care and early education programs that will continue to reduce access to these services.
With no increase in funding proposed for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), the Administration estimates that 200,000 low-income children and their families will lose child care assistance between FY 2007 and FY 2009. Already, thousands of children have lost child care assistance since FY 2002 due to virtually flat funding (representing a 12 percent real cut).
The small increase for Head Start proposed by the Administration-$149 million-is not even sufficient to cover inflation. This is on top of a cut of $11 million in the FY 2008 budget. As a result, 13,000 fewer low-income infants, toddlers, and preschoolers will be able to enroll in this comprehensive child development program in FY 2009 compared to FY 2007. Moreover, the proposed funding level does not provide the additional resources needed to carry out the program expansions and quality improvements that were approved with broad bipartisan support in last year's reauthorization of Head Start.
The Even Start program would be eliminated. This is the fourth straight year that the Administration has proposed to eliminate Even Start, which already absorbed a funding cut of over 50 percent in 2006.
Several other programs would be frozen or targeted for reductions:
Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) funding would be frozen, hurting mothers' ability to stay in school.
The Administration's budget would cut the 21st Century Community Learning Centers after-school program by $281 million-over 25 percent. This would result in hundreds of thousands of children losing vital after-school support. In addition, the Administration proposes to convert the program from a community-based grant program to a voucher program, which would jeopardize the high-quality, stable after-school opportunities that the program currently makes available to low-income school-age children.
The Grants for Infants and Families and Preschool Grants programs, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), would be flat-funded. Real funding for these programs, which provide crucial early intervention and education services to young children with disabilities, has already fallen by 20 percent and 13 percent, respectively, since 2002.
