EdAction
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116 
Chaska, MN  55318 
952-361-4931
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May 31, 2001

The Future of Baby Ed

Just when we dodged the bullet on Baby Ed in Minnesota, the Governor vetoed the Early Childhood Bill, and it is back-to-the-drawing-board. The Early Childhood bill, HF1515 now has to be renegotiated. You can count on the fact that every paid lobbyist for every Baby Ed special interest and the major newspapers will be crying for the legislators to put money into putting the Baby Ed system in place in Minnesota!

In the Family and Early Childhood Conference Committee of May 21st, the Committee was on the verge of a compromise that included a very dangerous "Demonstration Pilot Project." This was a "demonstration":

"to implement a coordinated community system...to provide a full continuum of services for young children and to collect the data necessary to measure outcomes and to develop a statewide funding formula for distributing funds to individual service sites."

The new education system is always put in place one piece at a time. First come the studies designed to promote the predetermined outcomes. Then come the pilot projects and the structure is put into place. Then comes the entire restructuring and all of the money to fund it. One step follows the next, as surely as night follows day.

The Profile of Learning started with pilot projects that never demonstrated success, but they were trumpeted nonetheless as proof of a new and superior education system.

The Baby Ed Demonstration Projects would have local boards set up to oversee "the provision of early childhood care and school readiness opportunities for every child, birth to age five" in each of the respective communities. These boards, under strict regulation of the Department of Children, Families and Learning, will develop "a plan to provide and integrate these services: child care; comprehensive health and dental care for children birth to age five; developmental assessment of children younger than age three; job opportunities for parents; decent, safe housing for families; home visiting; and birth kits for all infants born during the project time frame."

Almost nothing in this project is beyond the purview of government. One of the worst aspects of this project is that it is focuses on poorer communities, encouraging families away from independence and toward dependence on the state for just about everything.

We had all been assured that the Demonstration Project of Baby Ed would not make it into a final agreement. Well, it was there, in all of its details.

Then, just as a deal was being finalized, came the news that the leadership's target agreements made no money available for "pet" projects, but only for certain standard projects. In other words, there would be no money for the Senate's Demonstration Project and other family-intrusive Baby Ed programs they and the Department were planning.

This was a tremendous blow to both the Senate conferees and to representatives of the Department of CFL present.

What the committee was forced to support in the end was a bill without Baby Ed pilot programs or restructuring. The bill was brought back from the brink of disaster and transformed into something that we could support.

Now, with the Governor's veto, the conference committee is back in the meeting mode, tomorrow:

Friday, June 1

12 noon

Conference Committee
HF1515
Omnibus Family and Early Childhood Education Finance Bill
318 State Capitol
Chrs. Rep. Barb Sykora, Sen. Becky Lourey

Here we go again. Will the committee be given new money to use to fund the Senate's Demonstration Projects? How about the Early Childhood "consolidation" the Governor Ventura insists upon. Despite what he said, the sole reason for the veto is that the bill did not give the Governor his child care entitlement.

The governor’s proposal is to consolidate the Basic Sliding Fee and the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP or Welfare) childcare assistance programs. The bill they actually passed tightens eligibility requirements. It bases assistance on federal poverty guidelines rather than on the state median income, which is always rising.

The Governor’s plan is equivalent to 300% of federal poverty guidelines, and it allows everyone within a certain income level to be eligible for childcare assistance, which makes it an entitlement. This is a huge expansion of the role of the state toward becoming the childcare provider for all.

The Governor’s plan would make Minnesota the second most generous state in the union for child care assistance. But more than anything else, his consolidation provides the structure for expanding a Baby Ed system. Full funding can be provided next year, or the next. If childcare becomes an entitlement, the cost to taxpayers must necessarily skyrocket.

Information for this update provided by
David Thompson, Executive Director
Julie Quist, MREdCoPAC Vice President
Dr. Karen Effrem

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