July 28, 2006
Game & Fish Commission (
Senator Charles Scott, Co-Chairman
Representative Elaine Harvey, Co-Chairman
Senator Mike Massie
Senator Tony Ross
Representative Rosie Berger
Representative Edward Buchanan
Representative Debbie Hammons
Senator Kathryn Sessions
Joseph A. Rodriguez, Staff Attorney
Please refer to Appendix 1 to review the
Committee Sign-in Sheet
for a list of other individuals who attended the meeting.
The Quality Child
Care Oversight Committee met on the 28th day of July in
The next meeting of
the Committee will be held on November 1st, 2006 in
Co-Chair
Representative
Harvey, Co-chair, welcomed everyone to the meeting. Co-chair
A presentation was made
by Director Emmons and other members of the task force. The task force presented the Committee with
Appendix 3. The task force is looking at
a quality rating system and quality incentive payments. The two main goals are to increase child care
capacity around the state and to increase quality in the child care system. This is an incremental process. The task force met with an advisory group
with representation from all counties in the state who made recommendations. The task force and the advisory committee
looked at child care systems from a lot of states and have tried to come up
with a hybrid.
The quality rating
system the task force is developing has 5 components. Each child care businesses will be ranked
somewhere on the scale. The task force
is still having discussions regarding the scoring mechanism, staff to child
ratios, and maximum group size components.
Participation in the Quality Rating System is purely voluntary.
In regard to quality
incentive pay the task force is leaning toward using income based
guidelines. They have a question as to
how this will be viewed either as a scholarship or an incentive payment. A discussion of at risk factors ensued and
how that affected the quality incentive pay.
The income method is simpler and less intrusive. The quality child care study will be
completed by October 1, 2006 and the Quantity study will be completed by
November 1, 2006. These studies will
show the quality and quantity of child care available in the state. The task force indicated that approximately
130 providers will be assessed. The
Committee had questions about the validity of the study with such a low
sampling but the task force indicated that many facilities/providers are closed
in the summer when the studies are being conducted.
Technical assistance
for child care facilities is critical and would begin the first year of the
program. This assistance would be
provided across the state by regional systems already available statewide. This would necessitate one additional
employee per each of the five (5) existing regions.
The task force also
anticipates that parental education and public awareness programs regarding the
child care system would also be critical and should be in place by July 1,
2007.
The task force is
also looking at a grievance board. They
have asked the Committee for more guidance in this area. They envision a child care provider or a parent
being able to go to the grievance board to address certain types of grievances. This is not intended to be a replacement to
the Administrative Procedures Act but merely a pre-cursor to action under the
APA, to see if the issue can be resolved prior to going through the APA. The grievance board would deal only with
quality rating system issues such as licensure and certification.
The task force
indicated that they have gotten enough information to proceed. The Legislative intent is to increase
capacity and quality of child care in
A motion was made by
Representative Hammons to advise the task force to move forward with a need
based scholarship system. The motion was
seconded by Senator Ross and after discussion the motion carried.
There was a
discussion of what is "at risk."
The task force is recommending that the "at risk" factors be
dropped from the original bill and then base what is "at risk" on
income. "At risk" would be determined
by the Federal Poverty Indicator Scale or the Wyoming Self Sufficiency
Standard.
There are some
things that will need to be changed in the bill. The Department of Family Services is already
doing a market analysis therefore the information should be shared and there
should be no need for the Department of Workforce Services do another one. In regard to tracking individuals within the
child care system the task force may need legislative authority regarding
identifiers for children. It would
certainly be helpful for the Department of Education to have authority to share
information.
The task force has
not addressed the fiscal portion of the bill.
They feel like they will be in a position to do so after the
meeting. The Committee did indicate that
a mechanism to stay within the funding levels needs to be addressed by the task
force.
Jan Lawrence of Basic
Beginnings in
The next meeting of
the Committee will be November 1, 2006 in
There being no
further business, Co-Chair Harvey adjourned the meeting at 3:20 p.m.
Respectfully
submitted,
Representative
Harvey, Co-Chair