Fight Budget Cuts in Early Childhood Programs

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has approved a budget that will reduce funding to Early Childhood Education to 86% of the FY09 level, essentially ousting 30,000 young children from pre-K programs throughout the state and curtailing years of efforts that had brought Illinois to the forefront of early childhood education.

Your advocacy efforts were instrumental in alerting lawmakers, the media and your local communities as to the catastrophic consequences of the Doomsday Budget. However, we can't afford to stop those efforts if we want Illinois to continue providing vital care for children and families.

YOU CAN HELP!

• Reach out to 5-10 colleagues, friends, neighbors and parents to voice your concern
• CALL the GOVERNOR’S OFFICE and ask him to allocate some of the $1.2 billion in additional bond money to prevent further cuts to the Early Childhood Block Grant
• WRITE LETTERS to the Editors of your local newspaper
• ALERT your community by POSTING SIGNS that say "Cuts that hurt children and families hurt our community"
• Post your story at the bottom of this article. Be sure to log in or register first.

Core Messages for Fighting Budget Cuts in Early Childhood Programs

State policymakers have not committed significant revenues to filling Illinois’ multibillion-dollar budget hole. The FY10 budget approved by the General Assembly in July relies on heavy borrowing to partially-fund essential programs, meaning Illinois residents will be paying the price in the not-too-distant future if we don't identify alternate sources of revenue.

• ISBE has cut $400 million out of its budget, with the hardest hits affecting early childhood, disabled, bilingual and arts education programs. (For a list of cuts, click here.)
• Programs being funded by the Department of Human Services (DHS), which include child care assistance (CCAP) and services to disabled and homeless children, are still waiting to hear whether they will receive enough money to continue providing services in FY10 and beyond.

Young children and their families can’t afford to lose early learning programs.

Illinois has assembled a strong network of early childhood initiatives to fit children’s needs and parents’ choices. But in various ways, all still fall short of meeting current demands for services and we certainly should not exacerbate such problems by cutting back on these programs, particularly at a time families need them most:

• Preschool for 3-to-5 year-olds
• Early childhood development programs for at-risk infants and toddlers
• Child care
• Home visiting (“parent-coaching”) programs such as Healthy Families Illinois and Parents Too Soon
• Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership
• Early Intervention services for infants and toddlers with developmental delays or disabilities

Some of these programs have lengthy waiting lists for services. Many communities lack the physical space to establish new programs or expand existing ones. And in child care, co-payment fees are too high for some families to afford. We need to avoid adding to those troubles for kids and families. We need to maintain Illinois’ hard-fought status as a national leader in the important work of improving and expanding upon early learning programs for young children.

Over time, early learning programs save Illinois more money than they cost.

Studies show that, for every dollar invested in them, high-quality early childhood programs command savings of up to $7 or more over the lifetime of an at-risk child who participates in them, as well as an annual return rate of 16%.

Children who participate in high-quality, early learning programs are:

• more likely to enter kindergarten ready for success in school and throughout their lives,
• less likely to need special education and other costly remedial services,
• less likely to get into trouble requiring costly juvenile detentions, and
• more likely to graduate from high school, attend college, land good jobs and earn more

than their counterparts who did not attend early learning programs. Early learning programs are a bargain for our state, especially at a time of fiscal crisis.

Early childhood programs represent jobs.

In fact, Illinois’ early care and education efforts employ about 56,000 people and represent more than $2 billion of business in the state’s economy. Cutting back on programs means cutting early childhood jobs and taking important, affordable work supports from parents who need early care and education for their children while they’re on the job. Many parents could not afford to pay “full freight,” and would have to quit their work. In fact, cutting programs to balance the state budget instead of raising new revenues could cost the state upwards of 128,000 jobs, according to one estimate. Lost earnings mean fewer dollars circulating in local economies and fewer taxes collected by local and state governments. The bottom line: Cutting early childhood programs would add to Illinois’ already high, 9% unemployment rate and subtract from our state’s tax base and local economic activity.

We should shore up early childhood programs and stabilize our state’s budget by reforming our revenue system and capturing new dollars.

Our multibillion-dollar budget shortfall is primarily the product of the miserable national economy and our state’s “structural deficit,” leaving our revenue system too inadequate and outdated to keep up with basic demands for service. Our mammoth deficit cannot be solved solely through cuts, which would devastate early learning programs as well as countless other supports for children and families. A balanced solution demands new revenues that can be raised through reforms that also can repair the regressive nature of our tax structure, treating families more fairly. A balanced solution would avoid budget cuts so drastic that they not only harm children and families, but our state’s economy. After all, leading economists say that, in a recession, raising revenues is preferable to cutting services that directly help people in need – cuts that can hinder economic recovery.

You can find numerous talking points, sample letters to the editor and more that can be personalized further on the Voices for Illinois Children's “Call for Kids” web page at http://www.voices4kids.org/getinvolved/callforkids.html, or feel free to call or email our office, directly, for assistance.