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The Children's Equity Project's Public Responses & Comments

Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking; Increase Flexibility for Tribes in Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Eligibility
 
Date Submitted: September 16, 2024
 
Summary: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families proposed to amend the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) regulations through a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to allow all Indian Tribes and Tribal Organizations operating CCDF programs, at their discretion, to establish and use eligibility criteria regardless of family income.
 
CEP Response: The CEP strongly supports ACF’s efforts through this rule to provide the flexibility for Tribal Lead Agencies with medium and large CCDF allocations to disregard family income and assets when determining family eligibility for CCDF. The proposed changes will help Tribal Lead Agencies better meet the needs of children and families in their unique communities and affirms Tribal sovereignty and self determination in decision-making around early care and education (ECE) programs. We commend ACF’s efforts and offer an additional recommendation for consideration.
  1. We strongly support and agree with the proposal to amend the paragraph to read, “the basis for determining family eligibility may be determined by the Tribe notwithstanding family income as described in § 98.20(a)(2).”
  2. We recommend that ACF clarify in the final rule that “Tribal Service Area” may carry the same definition as it does for Head Start Tribal grant recipients. ACF can accomplish this by providing a small amendment to the current regulatory text. We provide a proposed change, with new language, for § 98.81(b)(2) to read: “for the purposes of determining eligibility, the following terms shall also be defined: (i) Indian Child; and (ii) Indian reservation or tribal service area, which for Head Start grant recipients may include the same service area determined under 45 C.F.R. § 1302.11(a)(1)(i).”
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Title: Submission for OMB Review; Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 (ACF-118) and Extension of Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114)
 
Date Submitted: February 21, 2024
 
Summary: The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requested an extension without changes of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114, expiration 02/29/2024), and a separate three-year extension of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027. There were changes requested to the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 to improve formatting, collect additional information about program implementation, and streamline questions.
 
CEP Response: A recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, outlined the historical and contemporary inequities in child care and early care and education more broadly, deeply impacting the workforce, and children and families from marginalized communities. Better data are critical to understanding inequities in opportunity—including well-documented inequities in access to and experiences in child care, and in enabling States/Territories to develop targeted, effective solutions to ensure that all children have equal access to ensure they thrive. 
 
The CCDF plan has the potential to help States/Territories ensure subsidies are reaching eligible children and families in low-income households, and especially those who have been historically and contemporarily marginalized including Black, Latine, Indigenous, and Asian families, immigrant families, families who speak languages other or in addition to English, and families of children with disabilities.
 
Our feedback is organized around the following sections of the draft Plan:
  • 1 CCDF Program Administration
  • 2 Child and Family Eligibility and Enrollment and Continuity of Care
  • 4 Parental Choice, Equal Access, Payment Rates, and Payment Practices
  • 5 Health and Safety of Child Care Settings
  • 6 Support for a Skilled, Qualified, and Compensated Child Care Workforce
  • 7 Quality Improvement Activities
  • 8 Lead Agency Coordination and Partnerships to Support Service Delivery
  • 9 Family Outreach and Consumer Education
     
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Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking; “Improving Child Care Access, Affordability, and Stability in the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)”
 
Date Submitted: August 28, 2023
 
Summary: The Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) proposed to amend the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) regulations. This notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) proposed changes to lower families’ child care costs, which can be a significant financial strain for families and disincentivize work, training, and education. It proposed changes to improve child care provider payment rates and practices to increase parent choice for child care arrangements and help stabilize operations for participating providers. It also proposed ways for CCDF Lead Agencies to streamline eligibility and enrollment processes so families can receive child care assistance faster and so program bureaucracy was less likely to disrupt parent employment, training, and education and impede access to child care. The NPRM also included technical and other changes to improve clarity and program implementation.
 
CEP Response: We steep our comments in the overarching frame for an equitable system that was published in the 2020 CEP report “Start with Equity: 14 Priorities to Dismantle Systemic Racism in ECE Systems”. In the report, we describe an equitable system as one that attends to “equitable access”, that is, who gets in the door? Who has access to services? Who has access to resources? The second dimension is “experiences that are fair and positive”, that is, once in the system, service, or program, what are children’s and families’ experiences like? What is the quality of services? What do relationships and interactions look like, and are there differences across groups of children? The final dimension is “outcomes”, that is, what are the results of access to and experiences within our systems? Are there disparities in outcomes by group? How do disparities trace back to experiences and access? (Meek et. al, 2020).
 
In modifying proposed rules, technical and other changes, we urge ACF to consider ways to expand access to services, across demographic groups, quality of experiences with CCDF services, and meaningful, valid outcomes that result from these services. States have a major role to play across these dimensions under CCDF, and establishing accountability for equity through federal regulations is a critical lever that can enhance children and families’ access, experiences, and outcomes across the child care system. 
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Title: Proposed Information Collection Activity; Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 (ACF-118) and Extension of Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114) 
 
Date Submitted: August 27, 2023
 
Summary: The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) requested an extension without changes of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2022-2024 (OMB #0970-0114, expiration 02/29/2024), and an additional 3-year extension of the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027. There were changes requested to the form ACF-118: Child Care and Development Fund Plan Preprint for States/Territories for FFY 2025-2027 to improve formatting, collect additional information about program implementation, and streamline questions.
 
CEP Response: Data on the implementation and reach of Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) subsidies are reported in the aggregate, leaving states, the federal government, and the public uninformed about how services are impacting outcomes for particular groups of children, such as children of color, those with disabilities, and those in rural communities. With more refined data reporting requirements and disaggregated data where possible, States/Territories can make fair, data-informed, and relevant policies that directly affect the access, experiences, and outcomes of children and families. 
 
The remainder of our feedback is organized around the following sections of the draft Plan:
  • Section 2: Promote Family Engagement Through Outreach and Consumer Education
  • Section 3: Provide Stable Child Care Financial Assistance to Families
  • Section 6: Recruit and Retain a Qualified and Effective Child Care Workforce
  • Section 7: Support Continuous Quality Improvement
 
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Title: Rulemaking - Child Care Facilities; Amend Arizona Administrative Code Title 9, Chapter 5 rules (A.R.S. §§ 36-883 through 36-883.04)
 
Date Submitted: July 3, 2023
 
Summary: The Arizona Department of Health Services (DHS), in its 2022 Child Care Facilities five-year-review report, identified that the rules’ effectiveness could be improved by making the rules more clear, concise, and understandable by updating cross-references, correcting grammatical errors, clarifying the language throughout the rules, and removing obsolete definitions and requirements. Additionally, DHS planned to amend and establish rules for school-age children being cared for in a child care facility that only cares for school-age children. This rulemaking could also make changes to improve consistency with the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). DHS received rulemaking approval pursuant to A.R.S. § 41-1039, to amend the rules on May 4, 2023.
 
CEP Response: Overall, the Children’s Equity Project urged DHS to prioritize children and use this rulemaking opportunity to improve the health, safety, and well-being of children in child care facilities. We believe that DHS’s desire to reduce burden must be balanced with the strong priority to ensure that the intent of licensing is, first and foremost, to protect and support children. We provided overarching and specific recommendations in the following 8 areas: 
  1. Clean Water and Mitigating Lead Exposure
  2. Air Quality Monitoring
  3. Water Safety
  4. Ratios and Group Sizes
  5. Discipline and Emotional Safety
  6. Inclusion, Safety, and Accessibility for Children with Disabilities
  7. Children who are Dual Language Learners
  8. Workforce Qualifications and Training 
 
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Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking; “Supporting the Head Start Workforce and Consistent Quality Programming”
 
Date Submitted: January 19, 2024
 
Summary: The Office of Head Start (OHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed to add new requirements to the Head Start Program Performance Standards (HSPPS) to support and stabilize the Head Start workforce, including requirements for wages and benefits, breaks for staff, and enhanced supports for staff health and wellness. They also proposed to enhance several existing requirements and add new requirements to promote consistent quality of services across Head Start programs. This included proposed enhancements to requirements for mental health services to better integrate these services into every aspect of programs as well as elevate the role of mental health consultation to support the well-being of children, families, and staff. Enhancements were also proposed in the areas of family service, worker family assignments, identifying and meeting community needs, ensuring child safety, services for pregnant women and people, and alignment with State early childhood systems. Finally, they proposed minor clarifications to existing standards to promote better transparency and clarity of understanding for grant recipients.
 
CEP Response: We strongly support the Administration’s efforts through this rule to boost the compensation and support provided to the Head Start workforce. Without the workforce, there is no Head Start. We provide comments in that section and other key sections, with an emphasis on supporting Head Start programs to more concretely advance equity in their communities and with the families they serve.

 

The Children’s Equity Project’s comments reflect our goal to expand access, enhance quality, and advance equity in early learning systems, including in Head Start. We firmly believe that equity is quality and quality is equity, and that with the appropriate changes, Head Start can play an even greater leadership role in these inextricably linked areas, supporting children and families across the United States, especially those who have been historically marginalized, including Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian, and other children of color, children with disabilities, and emerging bilingual children from under-resourced communities.

 

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Title: Non-Rulemaking Docket: Agency Information Collection Activities; Comment Request; Mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection
 
Date Submitted: December 16, 2024
 
Summary: The collection, use, and reporting of education data is an integral component of the mission of the U.S. Department of Education (ED) Office of Civil Rights (OCR). ED has collected civil rights data about the nation's public schools via the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) since 1968. As with previous CRDC collections, the purpose of the 2025-2026 and 2027-2028 CRDC is to obtain vital data related to the civil rights laws' requirement that public local educational agencies (LEA) and elementary and secondary schools provide equal educational opportunity. OCR proposed some changes for the 2025‒2026 and 2027‒2028 CRDC, including the addition of new optional and required data elements as well as revisions to data elements to improve the accuracy of data submitted by schools and LEAs. The proposed additions were reflective of new data elements that OCR considers to be of pressing concern, such as the extent to which students served in non-LEA facilities are subjected to restraint and seclusion. OCR believes these are areas where additional data are needed to better inform both civil rights enforcement and the provision of technical assistance. OCR also proposed to remove certain COVID-19 related questions about schools that provided remote instruction during the pandemic. OCR requested that LEAs and other stakeholders review and comment on these proposed changes.
 
CEP Response: The CEP’s comments reflect our goal to advance equity in education systems with a particular focus on improving the CRDC to accurately reflect access for children with disabilities and emergent bilingual students. More than four decades ago, Congress established the OCR to ensure students’ equal access to educational opportunities. Over the years, OCR has met its obligations by safeguarding the rights of students and ensuring historically marginalized populations of students are not denied educational opportunities. The CRDC is a key resource to capture data on students' equal access to educational opportunities and to inform OCR, the federal government, researchers, and communities about schools' compliance with the civil rights laws. 
 
Recommendations
  1. OCR should add new data elements into the Non-COVID-19-related Instruction school-level data elements that capture (a) whether or not a school temporarily shifted the instruction offered during the school year, and (b) the reasoning for any temporary changes (e.g., pandemic closures; school closures due to climate or weather events, educator retention issues, or other factors) to provide key insights to OCR, researchers, and communities to understand the root causes of disruptions in instruction and potential disproportionate impact on certain populations.
  2. We strongly support including informal exclusions in CRDC. OCR should include a three-part question on informal removals that specifies 1) duration of time away; 2) behavior that led to exclusion; and 3) whether the removal was on or off campus- in addition to child and teacher demographics (e.g. race, gender, disability, language). 
  3. We strongly support including data on students being served in non-LEA settings disaggregated by race, sex, and disability, and English Learner status.
  4. We strongly support more explicitly inserting language access in CRDC. Teacher certification is an important proxy to understanding language access for children who speak languages other than or in addition to English at home.
    1. To account for variability across states, OCR should define bilingual certification, licensure, or endorsement as those explicitly focusing on bilingual and biliterate instruction in dual language or bilingual education settings.
    2. We agree that it is important to ensure that teachers’ credentials related to bilingual education and English as a second language are counted accurately. OCR should add the following sub-questions: (a) number of teachers that have an English as Second Language certification only; (b) number of teachers that have a bilingual certification/license/endorsement only; and (c) number of teachers that have both a certification in English as a second language and bilingual education.
    3. OCR should collect whether teachers who have such an endorsement or license are actually using it in their classroom and providing bilingual or dual language instruction.

 

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