To the editor:
Joy Ludwig's coverage in Saturday's Journal-World of the decline of child-care providers in the county serves as a timely reminder of the situation that faces our community, i.e., families with young children especially infants and toddlers. If one listens to the Kansas Legislature's budget battles raging over education one hears rhetoric calling for priorities that ensure that all children "enter school ready to learn."
Yet the most recent proposal (HB 2546) actually dips into the children's initiatives funds to help finance K-3 education. While ensuring that K-3 public education is accountable to quality standards is a worthy objective, the children's initiative (tobacco settlement) funds were originally reserved for Smart Start Kansas to promoting locally designed programs targeting families with children 0-6 years of age.
The Kansas Children's Cabinet proposed using over $14 million of these funds for Smart Start 2002. Gov. Graves recommended a figure of $11 million. HB 2546 reduces this to $3 million a paltry quarter of a million increase over FY 2001's $2.75 million. Aggravating this fox in the henhouse situation is the Legislature's gnawing away at funding for Parents As Teachers, another valuable program that cultivates our most precious yet most vulnerable assets, our youngest children.
In Saturday's article, Tina Ferguson, the county health department's child care licensing coordinator, says, "Day care itself is not a lucrative biz." This economic reality, combined with a neglectful policy environment, leads one to wonder whom the Legislature thinks will assure that children will "enter school ready to learn." Let's see, if women would just stay home we would not need all this day care and early childhood funding.
Rich Minder,
Lawrence
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