Action 3 Questions

Thank you for your idea! This is now being considered in Week 12’s deliberation as a Delegate Idea.

Great catch. A Delegate Improvement requires the funds to be used, at least in part, on raising staff salaries. In a licensed homecare environment, the homeowner may be the only provider on staff. So, you’ve identified a candidate for an exception to the rule. This is the kind of question that should be figured out during an implementation phase.

The annual size of the Provider Fund (dollars it has to grant) could be based on a variety of criteria. Given the strong support in the Assembly for the Provider Fund to be used to increase early childcare worker wages (64.29% in favor), that has been used as the basis. In particular, the fund is calculated to get the pay of starting teachers over the poverty line (~$17.50 per hour), and experienced teachers over $20 per hour so they have a better chance of being able to afford to stay in the field.

At $17.50 an hour, earned as an annual salary, this takes a worker over a threshold: 185% of the poverty line for a household of 2. After this threshold, most (but not all) public assistance benefits are no longer available to the worker.

For a household of 3 (e.g. a single parent with two children), to get above that threshold requires $22.12.

For a household of 4, to get above that threshold requires $26.68.

Well, for clarity, the Provider Fund action is targeted at helping private Childcare Centers and Licensed Homecare providers, who are, indeed, able to care for children as young as a few months old.

Preschool typically begins somewhere between age 3 and 4, and ends once a child is kindergarten age. Per Colorado regulations, the age range can, in fact, be as young as 2.5 years, and in some special cases, be as old as 7 years.

Whereas private Childcare Centers and Licensed Homecare can service children younger than this, the School District’s Preschool Program does not.

(answered 10/13)

To date, there are 4 tax-Incentivized state programs for businesses:

• Office of Economic Development & International Trade

• Work Opportunity Tax Credit

• Federal Bonding

• H1-B Technical Skills Training

To receive state funding, the Montrose Childcare Provider Fund would have to be created to receive an appropriation through legislation, or be established as a state trust fund through legislation. In other words, it would require a significant advocacy effort at the state level with legislators.

In Colorado, the BEST grant program, funded in part through taxes collected from dispensaries, has been funding the construction of new schools and renovation of existing school facilities.

(answered 10/13)

Childcare Centers run by churches or other religious organizations play an important role in the overall Montrose Childcare ecosystem. Whether they could receive funds from a Montrose Childcare Provider Fund would depend on the source of its money, and possibly how the Childcare Center is set up and how it runs. In general, because of our constitutional tradition of a separation between church and state, public funds cannot be used to pay for services that include religious teaching.

As stated in Article IX, Section 7 of the Colorado constitution:

Neither the general assembly, nor any county, city, town, township, school district or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation, or pay from any public fund or moneys whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian society, or for any sectarian purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church or sectarian denomination whatsoever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money or other personal property, ever be made by the state, or any such public corporation to any church, or for any sectarian purpose.

If the funding (or part of the funding) came from non-public sources (donors, foundations that allow its dollars to be used for church-based childcare), then religious centers may be able to receive the funds.

A more difficult point to ascertain is whether religious organizations can receive public funds for inherently non-religious reasons, such as childcare. In the case of the Montrose Childcare Provider Fund, each religious organization would have to set up a 501(c)(3) separate from the church body to run all non religious operations and receive funding. This keeps the two entities separated in the eyes of the government. Organizations that engage in this practice must account for their state funding.

(answered 10/13)

That depends on the needs of the provider. If, for example, the grant was to bridge the Affordability Gap for Infants and Toddler care, it’s likely that the grant would need to be recurring since there isn’t a way for a childcare center or licensed homecare to break even serving infants and toddlers (unless they limit themselves to high income families that can pay high prices).

On the other hand, a new provider was looking for a grant to help fund the build-out and furnishing of a new facility, that might be a one-time grant.

(answered 10/13)

Yes, that is a possible source of funding. It would require legislation.

The purpose of this Deliberation is to capture the ideas the Delegates want to see Montrose pursue. There are several possible ways to fund any public initiative. Please see FAQ “If two-thirds of the Assembly agree on a Plan of Action, who would fund the solution and what are the limitations of that funding?” for further explanation.

Delegates will have a Meetup to review estimated budgets after they have considered all actions. The actions are going to change with Delegate feedback. That is a part of your work, getting rid of actions that collectively you don't like. At that point, the costs can be estimated. The estimated budgets really need to reflect only the actions you like with your changes factored in.

Who runs the fund would be determined in an implementation phase. It could be an independent organization - linked to other actions that the Assembly proposes - or it could be a new responsibility of an existing organization. The question for the Delegates is whether the idea is worth pursuing.

The money to pay people who administer the fund would be part of the cost of this action. There will be a separate, later deliberation session about budgeting and costs.

Possibly, yes. This would be an initiative to be undertaken during an implementation phase.

Since this is just for Montrose childcare and licensed homecare centers (as the Action stands now), whomever is administrating the Provider Fund would know (or get to know) personally all of the Providers in town. So the applications and the reporting would not need to be overly complicated.

But these are questions that have not been worked out. What do you think the application should include? What help do you think should be available to Spanish speakers?

Great question. How do you think that should work in implementation?

The heads of the Childcare Centers and Licensed Homecare Providers would need to apply. But you seem to be making the point that they don’t have much time. And that’s correct. Do you have ideas about how to make the application less time-consuming?

Excellent question. What are your thoughts on this? Keep in mind that the Provider Fund, as the Action stands currently, only makes grants to licensed facilities, namely childcare centers and licensed homecare providers.

Generally smaller grant making organizations have a board that approves grants, thus requiring a number of people to sign-off on any grant request. But what are your thoughts about who should determine where the money goes? And how to prevent corruption?

The Solutions Team was concerned about the complexity of administering grants to unlicensed individuals and the ability to prevent fraud. But this could be deliberated as an improvement. To suggest an improvement, email us at montrose@unifyamerica.org. Other actions will include FFN providers.

There are different license types available for childcare operators to obtain. In some ways, it’s similar to the different licenses required for different motorized transportation, i.e., car license, motorcycle license, CDL, etc. So, childcare operators/providers determine what they want to accomplish for their business and then pursue the license that is applicable to those goals.

At a broad level, the two main categories of license types for childcare facilities in Colorado are:

• Family Child Care Home - Someone providing care within their home

• Non-Home Care - Childcare centers, preschools, resident camps, youth organizations

Within each of those main categories, the size of the facility (as long as the space is deemed safe according to regulations) will partially determine capacity. The provider will also need to think about what sort of staffing they are able to have as that will impact the number of children they can provide care for, and which ages they can provide care for.

Babies for instance, require a smaller staff-child ratio than children over the age of say 5. There are license categories, then, for the age range of the children being cared for.

For hours, there’s generally a breakdown between care provided less than 24/7 and residential care provided 24/7.