Gov. Mike Braun’s administration last month announced funding cuts to Indiana’s early childhood voucher program. Providers are closing and families are now on waiting lists.
Citing a projected $225 million federal funding gap through next year, the state last month announced it was cutting reimbursement rates for care providers – 10% for infants and toddlers, 15% for pre-K, and 35% for school age children.
Let’s Grow St. Joe, the South Bend area’s early childhood education alliance, on Thursday organized a panel discussion about the impact of the cuts for local care providers at the St. Joseph County Public Library.
The group’s director, Terri Kosik, said the cuts forced 45 centers across the state to close in September. Locally she’s focused on two data points.
The county now has over 1,500 families on the voucher waiting list, a waiting list that didn’t exist before February. And in the state’s On My Way pre-K voucher program for 4-year-olds, the county now has just 86 children enrolled, down from 283 last year.
The panel included Aleyna Mitchell, director of development and outreach at El Campito, a South Bend early childhood care and education provider since 1970. Mitchell says most teachers at El Campito enroll their own children there so the center is feeling the cuts from both ends.
“It’s now at the point where I have teacher moms that don’t make enough to cover their tuition so they’re leaving,” Mitchell says. “We’re losing families and educators because of this, which is really sad.”
Another panelist, United Way of St. Joseph County president and CEO Mark Herriman, says the Trump and Braun administrations have been short-sighted in making the cuts. Herriman says for every public dollar invested in early childhood education, society receives a $7 return on investment.
He said if there was a pill that could provide that kind of return, society would make everyone take it.
“We don’t have that drug. Not something you can swallow. Instead it’s called early childhood education. I don’t find many things that are like, ‘Oh my gosh! This is like part of the answer to make good citizens!’ But this is one of them. I understand there’s a debt and I understand that we’re going to have to do budget cuts, but I would wish they would reassess and say can you do some budget cuts that don’t have a 7-to-1 long-term return on investment? It seems like there’s a better way.”
