There we go. Looks like we're set. Okay. I will kick us off this morning. Wanna begin by welcoming all of you to our last ECLC meeting in 2025. Hope everybody got through the wind and power outages and everything okay yesterday. I was a little concerned about how we'd be on Zoom today. We were without power for quite a few hours, but it seems to be holding. So let's hope that I don't lose it. I'm not going to read over the,
meeting objectives this morning because you've got them at the top of your agenda and right there on the slide. And as you can see, we've got a lot of ground to cover today, so I wanna get us, right to it. And so let's begin, Christina, with, quick, roll call. Absolutely. Alright. Let's welcome our co chairs. Michael, we've got you here. Sue? I know Sue was here. That's not her. Yeah. Alright. We'll come back to her. Happy? Sorry. My mic wasn't on. I'm here. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. No problem. Alright. Now we'll go to our commissioners.
Adeep. Here. Morning. Angie. Good morning. Chelsea? I'm here. Morning, Chelsea. Heather Craiglow is not here. She is, out of the office. Do we have Jake? Present. Jake. Jasmine? Hey, everyone. Good morning. She's going to hang in. Joanna? Good morning, everybody. Hey, Joanna. Liz? Good morning. Merry Christmas. Maria? I think she said she'll be a little bit late this morning. Mary Alice? Good morning. Yes. Morning. Minna also shared she'll be a little bit late this morning. Do we have Nicole? I don't see Nicole. How about Rachel? Good morning.
And raspberry? I'm here. Thank you. Good morning. Morning. Sam will not be able to join us, but I saw Shelley. Yes. Good morning. Morning. And Susanna. So I just had to step away for a minute. I'm not sure if she's back. She's here, but, yeah, she just had to step away for a minute. And then, Vanessa. Don't see Vanessa yet, but I think she's planning to present later. So I imagine she'll join. We do have a quorum, so we are good to go. Wonderful. Thanks, Christina. First item of business is approval of the 10/23/2025 meeting minutes. Are there any corrections or additions to those minutes?
They were, sent out in advance. And if there are no corrections or additions, I would entertain a motion, for approval. Can I make a motion to approve the minutes from October 23 meeting? This is Angie, and I'll second. Wonderful. Thanks. All in favor of, approving the minutes as submitted, say aye or put it in the chat if that's easier. And if you have, opposition or abstention, note that as well in the chat, please. Okay. As I said at the beginning, we have a packed agenda today,
but something that we're really looking forward to, and that is to hear today from, our state and community partners on their budget and legislative priorities for this upcoming session. We've been talking, quite a bit about bringing everyone together to, hear about the priorities. And it's so important for our work, especially as often as, about working toward alignment and and really helping us to understand who is supporting which
effort to which bill, and how we can, look for opportunities to collaborate with all of you on, this important work. We also wanna ensure that we're not positioning ourselves to be at odds with one another, but rather using our, advocacy up and other opportunities to really enhance the entire early childhood system. So we've asked each of our partner agencies, and we'll start with the partner agencies and then move to the community,
groups. But our partner agencies, we've asked them each to provide us with a brief overview. And once, each agency has completed, their presentation, we'll pause for some questions or discussion, amongst the commissioners. So I think we've asked you all to keep this to, ten minutes or under and kinda watching our time here this morning to make sure we can get through all of this. So, just keep that in mind as as we move forward. And let's jump right in with the Colorado Department of Education and Joanna Bruno.
Thank you, Michael. If you go to the next slide, please. I apologize in advance. I'm coughing. I can't control it. So I put everything on one slide because our department's and our board's priorities are neatly packaged on a flyer sheet. So I attached it there, for people, but I'll start with, our board approved, reductions in our budget. So the board did take a proactive approach knowing that we have, challenges in our state budget and proposed these reductions That's good.
From from our, funding. So we did look for administrative efficiencies, to a total of 345,000. We're looking to reduce the local accountability grant by a 100,000. We're suggesting, that we no longer have the grades four through seven social studies assessment. The high school one has already been, removed, and this assessment is a sampling assessment. So that's a proposed reduction. REDACT awareness campaign, there's a specific, line item in the REDACT around public information targeting parents.
So we do have a robust campaign right now. So we found, approximately 200,000 to, revert there if necessary. In addition, we are suggesting to have the REDAC annual evaluation go to a biannual evaluation since we do do, an annual legislative report where we have data collection and analysis, and those things are reported. So we are suggesting that we, revert funds, on an annual basis and do the evaluation on a biannual basis. And then also,
site professional development to, revert half of the money that we were given there for a total of 3.3, a little over 3.3, million dollars in proposed reductions. So that's what we put forward to the legislature, this year. And I don't know if you're able to click on the document. If not, I can try to share my screen too, as far as our priorities as a department. If we can get that up, I'll start talking now. There we go. So you can all look at this a little more in a little more detail. I'll focus on the priority areas.
So we do have four major improvement strategies within our strategic plan that focus on increasing student engagement, accelerating student outcomes, which is a pre k through 12 area, strengthening educator workforce, and advancing operational excellence. So those are our four major improvement strategy areas. Within those, here are the board's twenty twenty six priority areas. So within student success, they're looking at ways to support students past third grade in the read, accelerating school improvement efforts and exploring, improvements to the five zero four process specific to special education.
With regards to, choice and engagement, I apologize. It's time of the year. Providing every student with high quality choices, and learning experiences, aligned with our current engagement plans that we have in the department aligned to our, strategic plan. Grants. Applying our grant framework last year, we consolidated grants specific around postsecondary workforce readiness in senate bill three fifteen. So we're looking to extend that again into phase two and review other grants that we have at the department and identify ways to potentially consolidate those to make it
easier for districts. In the school finance area, they're looking to provide equitable public funding for schools and districts and as as well as addressing, needs within the funding formula. And then the board is also seeking authority to increase and set priorities for educator recruitment and retention. This is a big area that we're really leaning into in a lot of different ways. Ensuring statewide decisions around grad guidelines, and then preserving and enhancing tools for the state board to enhance, school accountability and improvement measures.
So those are the big priority areas there. Further in the document, you'll see how the state board the areas the state board is encouraging the general assembly to prioritize legislation, specifically focusing on funding for students, keeping systems aligned and manageable, using what works, using grounding and data and, evidence based practices, and then, unresponsibly and fairly. So those are the big areas. They're broken up even farther in the document that I attached there that you can
dig into a little more, But I wanna make sure that I stay within my time. So, Michael, I'll turn it back to you. Thanks, Joanna. And do not worry about the cough. We're all experiencing that, or have here in recent weeks. So appreciate that. Questions for Joanna? Yeah. Jasmine. Yeah. Joanna, just in covering your redact, suggestions or recommendations, have you guys had any feedback from what the impact will be to rural school districts? We we haven't
had specific feedback about, those reductions. The the public information campaign is a statewide campaign, and so we don't see any impact to, rural districts specifically on that or any districts. The other one is around going to every other year for reporting. But we don't in in short, we have not received any any feedback from either the Royal Alliance, case or any case for the advocacy around those reductions at all. The questions we got in the joint budget committee were more around,
what type of data is not gonna be collected annually. So the type of data that wouldn't be collected annually annually would be the qualitative qualitative data on-site around specific implementation factors. But all other data is collected annually and will continue to be analyzed, through and then presented through the legislative report. Yeah. And I'm sorry. I should have clarified because I do think that the read act and I don't know if we can go back to that slide, but I do think that there an an investment should be made in making sure that school districts across the state actually understand,
and families also understand what the redact is and how it supports. And I think my concern really comes from moving to a biannual evaluation and being a board member in a rural school district. I think as a parent even, I think I just wonder what this will do to either I think that a lot of us are still trying to catch up from the pandemic to get back to pre pandemic days. Mhmm. And I think that, there's just a lot more here in regards to trying to make sure that this
biannual evaluation doesn't impact school districts, especially rural school districts who are dependent on this type of, data collecting and reporting, to be able to really be responsive. So I just really wanted to flag that. I think I think there's just I think there's still opportunity for feedback on that suggestion, on that proposed reduction, and and I think it's necessary, in order for us to make sure that students aren't being affected in the long term. Well, thank you, Jasmine. I'll certainly take that,
back with me and see if we can add it to a rural council meeting to get feedback from superintendents and BOCES executive directors. Great. Rosemary. Good morning. Thank you so much, Joanna, for this information. I'm wondering if we can click back to the, legislative priorities. I have a question about teacher recruitment and retention, and I'm just curious about the strategies that you all will be using and how you will go about that. You with the teacher shortage being what it is and the lack of teachers of color and just wondering how you will approach them.
Yeah. And certainly, thank you for the question, Rosemary. And, I can put you into contact too with our chief talent officer that can speak more specifically about this, but I know there's, many ways they're trying to tackle this, with either grow your own programs. They're looking at licensure. And so I'll have to I'll have to put you in contact with her to get more specific information about that because I don't wanna misspeak, in a meeting. Okay. That'll be great. Thank you. I'll make myself a note.
Any other questions for Joanna before we move on? Okay. Joanna, thank you so much, and all got the information. So, please dig through it as Joanna suggested, and and feel free to follow-up with her with any questions you may have. So now we'll move to the department of early childhood, and commissioner Mary Alice Cohen is here to present along with Jeanne Stefanik and Shannon Schell. So I will turn it over to you, Mary Alice. I'll note Mary Alice just,
sent me a note that the governor scheduled a meeting, and she had to hop over real quick. So Oh, sure. Do we wanna move this, Christina? Yeah. Jeanne, what do you think? What's your preference? Would you like to go through yours, or do you wanna wait till Mary Alice is able to hop back in? I'm happy to go through the department's budget. That's no problem. Okay. And we can hop back to whatever Mary Alice is gonna go through. I will try to be as quick and not so verbose with my ten minute allotment. Nice to see everybody. Thank you so much for having me. Really grateful for the opportunity to walk through, the Department of Early Childhood budget for 2627.
So I kind of, want to talk a little bit first to set the stage as we've kind of heard. The governor's proposed budget is really making some targeted investments to benefit all Coloradans. However, what we do know is that there's significant challenges financially for the state due to tightening revenue pictures as well as the federal actions like HR one, which has really created a deficit or a gap of about $1,200,000,000 in this, fiscal year. So this is also coupled with some of the new policies surrounding Medicaid and SNAP,
and so that's really adding some additional burdens to and pressures to our state budget. And so, really, what the department worked on with the governor is to propose key strategies to really ensure that the state remains financially solvent while also continuing our commitment to support those children and families. And so next slide, please. Our total budget is $812,100,000 with a total of $9,400,000 in general fund increase. We had submitted five requests. There's two additional requests in this,
document here that you'll see today that are really related to, statewide general fund relief relief measures provided by the governor as well. And so even in these uncertain times, the department is making critical investments, in key areas for our infrastructure, for those families and the direct services, especially, for those children and families. There are three main objectives with this budget submission. The first is to really protect the sustainability of the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program or CCAP. We also wanna support the continued enrollment in the Colorado Universal Preschool Program to ensure
that we can continue to support that full day option for our most vulnerable children and those that are experiencing poverty. And lastly, our other main priority is in relation to supporting the growing early intervention, services while improving upon that delivery. The department obviously wants to preserve as much funding as possible for those families, children, and providers to continue to be supported, and we're actively doing what we can to stabilize the child care system overall. So to get a little bit more detailed into the request, if you can go to the next slide,
please. Our first request is in relation to really prioritizing CCDF investments, the child care development funds. 70% of this funding is used for CCAP. And so the department's prioritizing the sustainability of these funds in order to serve as many children that are eligible and families as possible. Unfortunately, we anticipate a shortfall in this funding, of approximately $29,400,000 in 2728, growing to 35,500,000.0 in 2829. So this request is really looking at reducing expenditures in this funding source that are
outside of CCAP Direct Services by $4,500,000 to assist in ensuring that we have ongoing sustainability of that fund in future years. While we're making some reductions, we are also doing some reinvestments for our workforce components for early childhood. We're looking at about a $175,000 to, really use towards the most impactful recruitment and retention, services. And so this would be, the teach scholarship program and the registered apprenticeship program. Also, the department continued to look to advance the stacking of the universal preschool funding with
CCAP to hopefully reduce some of those costs. I'll pause for any questions. This is a large request, very impactful, and a lot of, different avenues that we need as a department to stabilize. But oh, any questions? Okay. We'll go on to the next one. So our second request is in relation to the early intervention caseload. Well, this is a negative number. It we are actually asking for $2,000,000. So it has to do with refinancing funding out of HCPCS, and they basically double counted in their budget. And then so long story short of it,
we are increasing by $2,000,000 even though it shows a negative 1.8 here. So we're confirming our commitment to the early intervention in infant and toddlers with this investment. We wanna support that caseload that's going to increase for those eligible children, with developmental delays or disabilities and their families. We are looking also with this request to ensure that we have accurate and sufficient funding to serve all of those eligible children without any direct services or adverse impacts to families and providers. The department did identify a budget surplus in the current fiscal year twenty five-twenty six
of about $3,000,000 available carry forward from federal funding, And we plan to submit a supplemental in January for an estimated $7,300,000 reduction in general fund this year. We anticipate this is a one time reduction, and we wanna return unspent funds from evaluation services and administration. And this will not impact any direct services to families, children, or our providers. Even after this reduction takes place in 2526, we're estimated to have an increase of 12% more funding to support those children than
we did the prior year. Any questions on the early intervention? Okay. Let's go to the third one, please. Universal preschool. We continue to see increased hours for this enrollment, so the program is wildly successful. And so this request is looking at continuing, funding in 2627, increasing that by about 14,300,000 to ensure we're able to continue to serve that additional uptake in enrollment in that program. The request includes about 10,500,000.0 from our proposition EE revenues and a $3.3800000.0
dollar in general fund increase, for the state investment by inflation. This is required, in, house bill twenty two twelve ninety five. We will also be submitting a supplemental request in 01/04/2526 for our projected increase in enrollment as well. And so a couple of other facts on this one. In 2627, right now, we have a reserve in this fund set at 15%. We are requesting that it go down to 10 to be able to, again, use as much funding as possible to support that increased enrollment. Subsequently,
when the department went before the committee or provided the committee, the RFI number seven, in September. It outlined, some, potential changes, of inefficiencies we found with our local coordinating organizations and our early childhood councils. And so we will be submitting a budget amendment to update plans to support a more robust local lead model in January as well. Questions on this one? Quiet bunch this morning. Okay. Let's go to the next request. Alright. R four is in relation to really building and strengthening strengthening our childcare licensing.
And so what we found is, we can bring some of these contracts that we've been outsourcing in house and save the state funding while also increasing our FTE to really assist in lowering cost but also providing adequate services to all of the providers that we serve in the licensing. Next one. The final request that the department submitted, is really, identifying a net neutral opportunity. And so we have requested swapping out funding sources for the SafeCare Colorado program with
the home visiting program. This net neutral request will reallocate and transfer funds between the two sources in '26, '27, and ongoing. This strategic reallocation frees up SafeCare program dollars to claim an additional 50% federal funding from the Family First Prevention Services Act, which means that the department could draw down an additional approximate $1,100,000 annually. And that this, will not annually for the prevention services, and it will not impact the caseloader,
what we work on for nurse home visiting or safe care. The last two items here are just, the ones that the governor's office or the governor submitted in his letter. And so, really, again, we're looking at that gap that we have in the state budget. And so these are, a couple of measures that the department, is in line with the governor on. The first is to, a reduction of about $480,000 I'm sorry, $500,000, in relation to the, substance use disorder pilot treatment program. This was originally supposed to end services,
07/01/2023, and the department was able to extend it through 2526. This measure here was originally requested by the joint budget committee and not taken up, and so it's basically a recycled version of that request that the JVC presented. The department will continue to work with our philanthropic partners to really understand the impacts and support services that were provided and what the needs might be ongoing. The last item here is in relation to the child maltreatment prevention line. Again, this is a reduction that was proposed last year by the joint budget committee.
The total line, for child maltreatment prevention includes about $14,000,000 and we do see underspending in that line annually. And so the governor's statewide general fund relief measure requested decrease of $480,000 in 2627 ongoing. We'll need to work with our family resource centers to review their contracts in 2627 to adjust those amounts based off of the this request. Alright. I would love to talk about some next steps so you guys are aware of what's coming. And so, December 12,
last Friday, the Joint Budget Committee had their briefing, which was their Joint Budget Committee analyst went before the committee to identify all of the department's requests. Right now, we are working through all of those questions that were provided by the committee. There's only a 113 I've got to work on, so very few. But we go back before the committee where the department goes for their hearing on January 13 to discuss and justify our request. During this time, January 2, we'll be submitting those supplementals or budget amendments that I previously kind of alluded to.
You'll have more details on those when they come out. And then once we meet with the committee in, February through April is when they're going to set the those figures for the budget. Long bill, which is the budget bill is passed in April, and we start our new fiscal year in July. How do I do on time? Pretty good. Pretty good. We're a little over, but we're we're doing okay. So any questions, at this point for Jeanne about the budget? Jeanne, I was, curious around the c cap oh, sorry. I should've raised my hand. Sorry,
Michael. Go for it. I feel like we're just, like, one on one here when I look at you. I was curious about the CCAP shift. I understand fully, you know, putting in services, but it is gonna impact those programs that are the funding you requested to shift over to direct service. Did the JDC have any CIRMs, questions related to that? Yes. I am sifting through all those questions. But broadly speaking, so CCAP is funded through our child care development funds. About 70% of that funding that we get as a department goes for direct services.
As most of you are probably aware, we have counties right now that are on waitlist and freezes. And so what we're projecting, if our request goes through and we're able to still move that $4,500,000 from the quality aspect into our CCDF fund balance, we still have a gap in 2728. And so some of these conversations are essentially, what are we going to do? Does that mean we have to continue waitlist and freezes? Are there things the department can do from a, policy perspective or rulemaking perspective?
And then even to make it more dynamic, Sue, is in relation to the, the Biden administration previously Biden and Harris administration previously passed some rules that would cost more. We have received a preliminary waiver and a secondary waiver for those rules that last through August 2028, but there's also still some other things that are on the state statute that are required. So really trying to navigate in some uncertain times as to what some of those next steps are and looking to continue to collaborate with the counties,
finding ways that we can ensure, the most vulnerable, most needy kids can get those services. But it is a short term dynamic for a longer term perspective, I guess, is the best way to put it. And so, we have a very lengthy, conversation going with the joint budget committee on the thirteenth. I think we're in the committee room for three hours. So make sure you bring your coffee to listen in. But, yes, that is definitely something that we are trying to think through of how do we
make that dollar go further when we we haven't gotten additional resources to support some of this. Thank you. Jeanne, there's also a question from Christine, Bauer in the chat. I wonder if you might answer it there, and then we can keep, moving with our presentations, but I wanted to bring it to your attention. Michael, Michael, could we ask Jeanne to provide a a link to this presentation for everyone? I will, share all the slides at the end of the meeting, and so this will be Great. Well, I'll I'll share that with everyone. Great. Thanks. Jeanne, thanks very much for the presentation and all of the work,
that went into this, budget. Okay. We are going to move on now to behavioral health administration, and this is this is a an exciting one, for us. We have, Mary Kay, Meintzer. Did I pronounce that correctly? I hope Mary Kay Very close, Michael. It's Meintzer. Meintzer. Okay. Mary Kay Mintzer from behavioral health administration is here with us today. And, you know, this administration plays such an important role for early childhood and for families,
here in Colorado. And we've been talking, Mary Kay, about incorporating BHA into our discussions. So we're super happy to have you here today to tell us, what's going on with behavioral health administration. Well, thank you, and thank you so much for having me. I fear that I did not put as extensive of information together for everybody. But I can also add a few things, in addition to this slide just for some background. So, really, BHA's approach for 2526 is to, was to identify efficiencies gained in the transition to our Baso model and leverage those
for administrative savings and also to prioritize the retention of funding that aligns with the Boswell service delivery model, which is the four different regions throughout the state, making sure that there's local and community input into what they need, as it relates to behavioral health for their communities. And that really minimized administrative burden and preserved our existed existing programming. I will put in a link for the reductions that we submitted to JVC. None of it impacted, none of it impacted children and youth,
children, youth or family behavioral health. And so I apologize. I should probably back up. I am the division director for children, youth and family behavioral health here at BHA. And so, yeah, we were really excited to see that no programming would be impacted for children and youth. All of the cuts were to the adult care continuum. And so let me put that link in. And, I'm sorry. I'm working off my laptop, so I'm not as efficient, but I will get there. And, Mary Kay, while you're doing that, PASO is Behavioral Health Administration Service organization?
Organization. Yes. And so we launched those in, July 07/01/2025. I that doesn't look like it's leaking. Let me see here. And what they do is they manage all of the behavioral health services for their different regions. There's four there's four different regions in the state of Colorado. One of our bosses is Signal Behavioral Health, and the other boss is Rocky Mountain Health Partners. Copy the link. Let me see here. Hopefully, that yeah. So this is, what we submitted to, JBC as far as our cuts. And then,
I did think it would be helpful to share with folks here that our commissioner, Commissioner Smith, identified four priorities for 2026. And those priorities are to, increase access to behavioral health services, so enhance access to behavioral health services, to utilize prevention and upstream support for children and youth, to integrate and coordinate Colorado's statewide behavioral health crisis system, system, and then to streamline behavioral health and criminal justice intersection. My division, we were very happy to see that one of the priorities was to utilize prevention
and upstream support for children and youth. And we are actually in the process of putting together priorities as it relates to, universal mental health screening for grade schools for the state. Obviously, that's it's a work in progress and would will take probably years to roll out, but we're looking into how to do that. And then also, infant and early childhood mental health, thinking about ways to increase, providers in the state that can provide those services for children and youth. So those are our two priorities for 2026.
They're not connected to money through the legislator and they're not connected to any, any changes that we would need to make, but I thought it might be helpful to share that here. Any New questions? Questions, yeah, for Mary Kay from anyone? Well, again, we're really glad to have you here today. And as I think you know, we, as a commission, do not, make a determination as to who sits on our commission or what positions are included or backgrounds are included on our commission. But we do see an important connection to BHA and a role,
and so we would love to invite you to join us as an ex officio member, perhaps, at least for the time being, because it's important to have you at the table. And so we'd love to have you continue with us in that capacity. Thank you, Michael. I am excited to be here, and, yes, I would love to continue to meet here as an ex officio member. So thank you for the invitation, and you will see me in the future. Great. Glad to hear it. Thanks, Mary Kay. As, Christina said, Sam is not able to be with us today from,
Department of Higher Education. So I think you're going to take his, his role, right, Christina, and present? Yeah. Just have one quick update. He said, that the Department of Higher Education does not have any budget or legislative priorities that directly relate to early childhood educators or children and family supports. But he did, share a budget one pager, and the only, legislation that higher ed is running is a legislative placeholder for continuing the OER program. So I'll put that in. I'm not sure what that stands for.
I should've looked that up ahead of time, but I will share that in a moment in the chat. And then he also wanted to share, something around the funding formula. He said that there shouldn't be anything directly impacting early childhood, but he would be remiss not to share the reports, because it impacts the allocation of funding based on a variety of numbers and metrics, which might be of interest. So I will put two links in the chat for you in just a moment. But I think the the bottom line there is that, that we should not see any significant changes to the early childhood workforce and preparation programs from,
higher ed this year. Great. Any questions? Sue. Thank you, Michael. Christina, if you could add to the follow-up with Sam. I did read in a paper, was it this week or last week, about the governor's recommendation to combine higher ed and workforce, I think, Department of Labor. I'm just super curious about that and if maybe at our next commission meeting, we could get an update on that and how that possibly could impact early childhood. Absolutely. Yep. I think that's a great question. We intend to have them back to talk about the federal questions that Sam and
Angela Ben Zecri have been working on, so I think we can move that in. Absolutely. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Great. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you, Christina. Let's move on to the Department of Public Health and Environment, and we have Rachel Hudson with us. Commissioner Hudson, we'll turn it over to you. Thanks. If you advance to the next slide, we have, just as every other state agency has alluded to, this is a tight federal or state fiscal year, and so the department put forward some decision item requests that,
I included in the slide deck that have varying degrees of of impact on early childhood. Most are not a direct impact, and you can see there's a combination of requests for, funding, as well as cost neutral, and then, of course, being responsive to the ask for reductions in programming. So this first one is a priority of the department, related to the lab and some modernization, that needs to occur. And so that is a request for funding,
which is atypical in this climate right now. And then, the next one, continuing, having the authority to continue to have clean water in schools and child care centers, that does have an environmental impact on our early childhood community. So that's good that that request, is to extend that, that program. And so you can, go to the next slide. Landfill remediation does not have a direct impact on early childhood. Comprehensive sex ed elimination this is eliminating a program that funds 11 grantees in Colorado,
to support comprehensive sex ed. So this is not, funding that would gut our entire state's comprehensive sexual education program, just, as a sidebar. But there are 11 grantees funded through that program. And then mental health first aid training program elimination, that could have an impact on early childhood depending on, early childhood providers and and their participation in mental health first aid. And you can go ahead to the next slide. Community Behavioral Health Disaster Program Elimination, that would not have a direct impact on early childhood.
The care network program elimination that the care network is, supports clinicians in providing training and additional support for identification and prevention of child abuse and neglect. So that could certainly have an impact on early childhood, and that's administered by the Kemp Center, currently. And then health disparities and community grant program reduction, depending on if there are early childhood grantees with that program, that could have an indirect impact on early childhood.
And then the final slide is these are, putting into action or formalizing the agreements that happen during special session to reduce funding state funding to local public health agencies. And so, so this is not an additional reduction to local public health agencies. It's just formalizing what was agreed upon during special session, like I said. And then that last one is also related to special session. So, you know, none of the reductions are ones that, the department are is happy about,
obviously, and it's just a really tough budget climate right now. So thanks. And I did I wanted to include all of our decision items just so that people could appreciate the breadth and depth of what CDPHE does, and I am not the expert on most of those things. But if there are questions, I am certainly happy to take questions back to the subject matter experts. Go ahead, Shelly. On the lead testing, I'm just curious if they're going to align that with Head Start, standards around that. And if if not, I would make that recommendation so there's not too set of rules.
Yeah. I can I can certainly take that back? It it's my understanding that this is extending what already exists. So, hopefully, the answer to that is yes, but I will confirm. Any other questions for Rachel? And, Rachel, any, legislative priorities or bills or anything that we need to be aware of? No. Not that, would impact early childhood to my knowledge. Okay. Alright. Well, thank you very much for joining us and sharing this information. You've got a lot there. So, yeah, appreciate it. Okay. We'll move to health care policy and financing.
Susanna Snyder, I know you're back. I think I saw that pop up in the chat, so we'll pass it over to you. Good morning, folks. I would like to, echo what Rachel just phrased pretty well that there's there's a lot here across a a very large department with a big budget. So, again, I'm not gonna be the expert on all of these. There's actually just honestly way too many to talk about in this time frame, so I've done a lot of linking to fact sheets. So just overview, I wanna quote Eric Kurtz, our legislative analyst,
who said our proposed budget was 20,600,000,000.0 with a b, in total funds and almost 6,000,000,000 general fund. So this represents an increase of 2,300,000,000.0 total fund and 413,000,000 increase to general funds. So just remember Medicaid, and CHIP both get a federal match on our programs, and we do a lot in the state to maximize that federal match. So we try to just always kind of make a point of saying, okay, this is our total fund, but this is actually what the state budget impact is. As a note, 90%, 96% of those total funds do go to people providing care either through direct services
or contracts with vendors. Funding allocated to HCPCF in governor's fiscal year 2627 is actually almost a third of the available general fund to the entire state budget. It does include a reduction of $537,000,000 total fund and $217,000,000 general fund, for the state. Besides this, it's just important to note that immediate and future impacts of HR1 rapid growth in Colorado's Medicaid, trend poses the most significant challenge to the state's long term fiscal health. Starting in fiscal year twenty six-twenty seven,
we're proposing a 5.6% growth for general fund expenditures on Medicaid, which is not in alignment actually with the TABOR cap growth, but trying to cut the difference growth trend is. And this is just that, really challenging difference between trying to balance reductions and other expenditures and also balancing, our own budget. What we're seeing here is actually part of a national trend. This unsustainable medical trend, is associated with medical inflation, increases in our benefits in the state, expansion of coverage programs, outlier trends in certain benefit areas,
and outlier increases to our provider reimbursement rates. Again, there are tons of resources on here. Our ledge team is doing an incredible job of trying to share a lot of this in, really plain language. Next slide. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on, but I just wanted it in here for, so people understand. With that higher demand on funding and TABOR limiting the level of tax revenues, we can retain to pay for certain demanded services. We're an entitlement program. There are certain things we have to pay for. So our our trend is just higher. So we're trying to use this framework to really use a scalpel instead of an
axe because we pride ourselves in Colorado on having a robust, protective safety net for folks, particularly when it comes to our Medicaid program. So this these are the kind of strategies we're using to assess where things are, which I think does lead us directly to the next slide, which you can see we have a lot of discretionary requests. A lot of them read really technical or administrative in nature because it is saying rather than, you know,
we wanna cut this big program or we wanna, you know, add this here. It's it's really about, like, combining a lot of budget lines, trying to realize efficiency between vendors. You'll see a lot of that in the sorry. It's I had to make the font so small on this to fit it all on one slide that it is, I think, out of disability compliance. So the, shared services, I'm trying to remember which one that is. That's around, using a competitive procurement process to actually, look at a way to combine functions between counties.
So not getting rid of our county run system, but maybe combining certain functions between counties so that we're paying one county to function to serve as, like, the call center for six different counties. So there are some cool ideas like that through here. Again, this fact sheet is where you're gonna find most of that information. What I do wanna call out very specifically that you've heard in some other areas is that our RR six, is actually, kind of a placeholder for the executive order spending reductions. So there's a lot of things listed in there,
and there's a separate fact sheet about those executive order reductions. Just next slide. Important to note. Susanna, let me just Susanna, let me just tell you that Christina's Internet is frozen up, so she will impact the advancing slides as quickly as she can. That's frustrating. I know a lot of people are being impacted by these outages. Yeah. The next slide would have been just HR one budget impact discussion, and it's, again, mostly links to websites. It's any new information around HR one is gonna come out on a certain website.
We have an FAQ page. We have a fact sheet on work requirements, which I know is causing a lot of anxiety in the community. We have an online form to submit questions, and we also have an inbox where you can send questions. All of this is going to be relevant because, we will be having our supplementals discussion more robustly in January. And that, supplemental in January is where we'll be talking about the things we need to make the changes from HR one to our Medicaid and SHIP programming. And that'll have significant impacts on our budget. And then the very last slide is just another way to organize all of our
budget resources. Again, I just there's too much to talk about here. I'm not the expert and couldn't get our budget people here because we are in the middle of our own JBC, questions. But, hopefully, this is a good place for people to start and dig in and figure out what questions they do have, and they can follow-up in the appropriate places. Yeah. Rachel. I just wanted to give you all kudos for the, inform these fact sheets and the resources that you have on your website because I've heard from several of our staff that they're really using those and accessing those to stay abreast of all of the moving pieces. So I know it's a lot and,
just wanted to give you a shout out for that. I I will tell that to the team because, honestly, I feel the same. I feel like we have the most for me to even be able to show up in these spaces. I've been using those as well. Any other questions, or questions of Susanna? And Shelley posted the, link in the, chat. And and, I know Christina's trying to log back on at this point in time. But, Shelley, if you're able to you said you had our slides opened up and might be able to share your screen and yay.
See where we're at. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Shelly, for doing that. Christina's still trying to get back with us. So, okay. Well, Susanna, thank you very much. Appreciate it. And, yes, a lot of information as you said at the outset. We're glad to, have heard about it and learned a little bit more about it. And so now we will move to our last, agency partner, presentation, and this is the Colorado Department of Human Services and our commissioner, Minica Steele, will take take us from here.
Minna, are you with us? Uh-oh. Well, we may have lost Minna as well. So let's let's put that on hold. And what we'll do is switch over to our community partner priorities, and then Happy's gonna walk us through those. And then if we get Minna back, Happy, when you're through, maybe we can see if Minna has her presentation for us or squeeze that in somewhere. Thanks. Thanks, Michael. That sounds good. This is the kind of pivoting we all have had to learn to do and
probably more of it in the coming year. And so next, we have an opportunity to hear from some of our community partners about their, legislative priorities and and updates about what's happening in in in our world of advocacy. So we're gonna welcome each of you to spend about five minutes. I know it it's nearly impossible to capture in five minutes, you know, all of the work that all of you are doing, and we we appreciate your efforts.
But we wanna provide at least a little time for people to ask questions. And so do your best to stay within that five minutes. We're gonna start with, Heather Tritton from the Colorado Children's Campaign. Welcome, Heather. Thanks, Happy. I was given a lot of slides, so I'm gonna go really fast and focus on our early childhood stuff. But people can look at the other slides, and if there are questions, I'm happy to answer. We go to the next slide. Do you have my slides? The next slide. So one of the things that we wanted to just point out, and and this has already been alluded to a couple times,
is that we are really concerned about the federal instability that is happening right now and the harm that that is provide that is creating with children and families. So HR one, which is the sweeping federal tax package that was passed over the summer, is going to have some huge implications for kids and families, and we've already seen that with the department, the departments talking about their budgets. So we are worried about Medicaid coverage for for kids. That is at risk. We just heard about that. We are thinking about shifting costs to the states for programs like SNAP,
Medicaid, CCAP, all of those safety net programs that are that are having impacts on the federal level, and that's gonna really impact our state budget. And then we already know that our state budget is in a precarious situation just because of TABOR. So let's go on to the the next slide. These are just some of our priorities. So we really wanna think about modernizing our safety net in Colorado to secure our children's financial stability. This is a piece that we think will help save some funding, move money from administrative costs into families,
and so that's something that we're looking at. Sort of our theme for 2026 is is efficiency. And can we squeeze little bits of money here and there out of what we have, knowing that we can't fully, we can't fully solve these problems because of budgetary issues? Second, we want to guarantee that there's affordable high quality health care for every child and family, and making sure that coverage is stable and accessible. Third, we will work to make our early child childhood care affordable, accessible, and effective, addressing wait list and supporting quality programs for every child.
And then finally, we talked about k 12, but funding our schools properly properly to ensure students with special needs have the resources and protections they deserve. Alright. If we can go to the next one. One of our concerns is that even with all of the cuts that Jeanne just talked about, those do not free up our wait list and freezes. So we are concerned that there is not we don't have a proposal. We you know, I I say we. I mean, CDAC, the governor's office, the children's campaign. There's no, there's no target to say this is the thing that is gonna fix our CCAP
problem, and that has to be a priority tool for us. So we know that right now that program is reaching, I think, 9% of eligible families. We have over 12,000 kids that are on wait lists or freezes, and most of those kids are under six, seventy percent of them. So one of our policy goals this session is to end CCAP wait list and freezes. We'll see if we can do that. And working with the governor's office and CDEC to figure out some innovative ways to do that. Let's go on to the next one. We also know I think everyone here might know that,
we have health care resource and referral agencies. We have early childhood councils. We have local coordinating organizations. And, each of those are established in a separate statute. And over the summer, there was an RFI that noted the redundancy in statute and recommended combining these entities. So we have been working with ECCLA and CDEC and LCOs, and other stakeholders to do that, And we are hoping that combining those three entities will help us find some savings both at the state and, and local levels in managing those entities,
especially in terms of contracting. So we we think that that's gonna create some efficiency and cost savings. Let's go to the next one. I know Alethia is gonna talk about this as well, so I'll just say we are, supporting a renewal of the child care contribution tax credit, And we wanted to throw this little, chart up here because if you can see how much the state spends on CCAP and how much goes into the CCTC, this is a really, really important funding source for early childhood. Let's talk to the next one. Only to say here, this is our k 12 agenda, and we have created a new school finance formula that provides more funding for schools
that have English language learners, kids living in poverty, kids with, special ed needs, and we are still implementing that and looking forward to the continued implementation of that. And then I wanna hit on this, and then I think my time is up. I want I wanna do two more. I wanna do this one and just say snap. We all know we just, voted on LL and MN. We are concerned because we that was this is the the formula that we thought was gonna happen, that there will be a $150,000,000 in new revenue. That would help with our $56,000,000
shortfall, and there'll be money for SNAP. However, recent estimates from the Urban Institute of the effects on HR one suggest that this is not gonna be enough money. It's not gonna be enough money for healthy school meals, and there certainly won't be money for SNAP. And so we're really concerned about what that is going to mean for our, for families. Can skip the next one, but then we can go to this economic security. We really one of the things that we are really focused on, again, is efficiency. And, I know one of the the people from the department already kind of talked about
this, but we really wanna figure out how to prioritize dollars going to families and making sure that they end up with families. And, we wanna make some some changes to the way we are administering programs in Colorado. And, this is really a Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, CCAP, all of those things really thinking about how does that money go from the federal government to the family, and how can we make it the most efficient possible. So we are working on, creating efficiencies there as well. And I'll stop there. I have some others that you all can look at the look at our,
our slides. I will say we have, three webinars happening. One at the very beginning of legislation, one halfway through, and one at the end where we will go in-depth on all of our policy priorities. So I would invite you all to join us. That's my very fast talking. Thanks, Heather. Very good. Let's look for any, questions for Heather about the children's campaign set of priorities. And, Christina, I'll ask you to help me if you see hands up because I'm not seeing any. Nope. I don't see any. Okay. Well, thank you, Heather, for that whirlwind presentation and all of you in in advance.
And just to remind everyone, to keep in mind as we're hearing these presentations from our community partners to think about where there's alignment, with with, with our state agencies and just among the community partners as well that we can begin over the next few weeks to be talking about how to everybody today is talking about efficiencies and consolidations, and I I I I, urge us to do the same as we think about how we support all of
these various efforts, and think about where the the, the, connections are and and alignment is. So with that, I'll turn it over to Alethea. You already got a little bit of a segue, Alethea, to executives partnering to invest in children's epic, and so take it away. Thank you, Happy. Hi, everyone. Happy to be here. I'm Alethia Gomez, Colorado executive director on the EPIC team. Feel free to pop to the next slide. Most of you are familiar with EPIC in the policy world from Nicole's service on this commission,
but a quick reminder of our priorities, which for the 2026 session will stay fairly the same from 2025 from a high level, but we will be communicating some additional language as well as some sessions specific actions that our partners can get to know a little bit better. And I'll talk about two of the things that we're keeping our eye on and pursuing in the early days of the session today. So our first priority is supporting children's development and child care needs of families. We know that the needs and preferences of families are increasingly diverse,
and more complex all the time. So we wanna ensure that that is rooted in family access, affordability, as well as family choice, in the services that are available in our communities. Our second priority is investment in child care to support economic growth. At Epic, we believe that child care is a critical piece of community infrastructure, and should be funded and invested in in a way that that can be prioritized, as a critical driver behind Colorado's future economic success, and community stability. Lastly, we know that child care businesses need to be understood and uniquely supported in order
to ensure that they can exist and thrive in our communities. So we'll be supporting and keeping an eye on policies that help to uplift providers, incorporate them, and provide them with tools and resources that are streamlined and reliable, to serve their unique needs. Next slide. So one of the primary activities we'll be engaged in, during the upcoming session is working to preserve the programs that were implemented in the 2024 session through house bill twelve thirty seven on programs for the development of childcare
facilities. That put three programs into statute here in the state, including a, a technical assistance program, a local government planning grant, and ultimately a capital grant program that was given $1,000,000 to be appropriated annually over four years and is being currently administered through the Department of Local Affairs. EPIC is serving as an implementation partner for these programs, and we are so grateful to DOLA as well as CDAC and, OEDIT or economic development and international trade for supporting.
A year and a half into these programs being implemented, two of those, the first two technical assistance and local government planning grants, which I'll talk about briefly today, have already been implemented. All of the associated tools and resources are publicly available on the Dola website, including a growing library of prerecorded and clickable resources, as well as one on one direct support sessions that are being provided for eligible audiences through June at least of 2026, which include developers, higher ed institutions, employers,
and local governments in addition to child care providers. So really excited about the progress that we've made, and I'll dive into two more of those programs. Next slide. So the first, program that was implemented is the technical assistance program specifically for those eligible audiences, ideally in the planning stage of a child care facility in their communities. Over half of Colorado's counties applied to this program, and we've been able to directly review over 25 projects and work, to support 14 counties thus far through two cohort based workshops that have helped us
to not only identify what child care projects are emerging and trying to happen in our community, but the specific and most, impactful areas where these projects need knowledge and support in order to drive action and success forward. Through these projects that we've supported, it's anticipated that over a thousand childcare slots will be created in these communities over the next couple of years. So definitely a high impact start to these programs, and we'll continue to advocate for increased funding and preservation of technical assistance as a
critical step for success. Next slide. The second program that was implemented was local government planning grants. You can see the awardees there on the left. And the huge note here is that originally, this program was only seated with 75,000, to be spread across those four awards. However, our local philanthropic foundations and partners, including Buell Foundation, supplemented that funding. We did write into the legislation that this was eligible for gifts, grants, and donations. So contributed an additional 66 plus thousand to this to fully fund all four of
those grant requests with the minimum 25% local match. It's anticipated that a minimum of an additional $35,000 will be leveraged to support, the different initiatives in these communities, which will really help pave the way for child care to exist in easier, faster, less expensive, and more sustainable ways. So really excited about that progress and grateful for the partners that help to elevate it. Next slide. So some upcoming actions and needs relative to this program. As many have stated today,
these programs are certainly at risk in a challenging budget environment that we're entering into. But we do know and we continue to show through data that technical assistance programs specifically that address partnerships and efforts around child care development are very much needed as part of the total, economic picture and success plan for our communities, our municipalities, counties, all the way up to the state level. So we will be working with Dolan and other partners to address any fiscal challenges for this program and other needs,
that really help us to bolster and support the continuation of them. And for those folks in the community, we will need continued support as the JVC looks at this and other critical programs in the community. Next slide. So I'll briefly review the childcare contribution tax credit. EPIC did engage, excuse me, in a process in 2025, with a large coalition of almost a 150, including many of you, as well as a smaller working group to evaluate the child care contribution tax credit
primarily based on the report that the DOR released. We looked at things like administration and oversight, definitions, and future opportunities to improve. That process resulted in partners working together for a straight renewal in the upcoming 2026 session with an ambitious, ten year renewal request. And so big thanks to the children's campaign and others that, are working on that request. Epic will continue to develop resources and materials for partners to review about the impact
of this credit with our partners, including a one pager, as well as engage house and senate leadership, which have committed to sponsoring this bill, including the speaker. And thanks again to Heather, Riley, and the whole, campaign team for helping us to secure those sponsorships. We know that as as Heather mentioned earlier, this is a highly impactful investment into the child care industry, and we want to provide opportunities to not only preserve this credit, but think about opportunities in future to really continue to improve it.
So thanks again to all of the coalition members and partners that have engaged in this work, and we'll have more updates soon. Alright. Questions for Alethia. And thank you. That was, that was very helpful and, right, very timely as well. Liz has a question here. Go ahead, Liz. I was just I was just about to chime in. I don't know if you can see my hand happening. Yeah. Yeah. No. I saw your note from last time. Yeah. My question is about the the tax credit, and I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the child care tax credit is, like, the largest or second largest in in the state. Like,
it it brings the highest it may have additional scrutiny because of how much money it is. Is that do I am I remembering that correctly? And I just wanted to throw that out. I welcome other comments on the the additional scrutiny. Right? It does have a significant fiscal note, which in this budget environment will definitely draw attention. Right? And so the campaign and as and Epic and many other partners are working to tell the impact story of the CCTC because it does garner a lot of donations and understand, not only the the fiscal note that it carries,
but how that really impacts and stabilizes, the industry itself. So I don't know if others have comment on additional scrutiny, but it's certainly significant and and will likely be noticed. I would just say it's not additional scrutiny because of what the tax credit is. Everything is gonna get a lot of scrutiny this year. So which is why we're going for just a straight a straight renewal, and not making some of the improvements that we're suggesting, but we're just trying to keep it as is. Great. Thank you. That was helpful. Any others? Yep. Howdy. Hi. For Heather, I really appreciated the slide you had where you showed the CCAP investment as compared
to the childcare contribution tax credit. I'm curious about how we can frame is the 60,000,000, is that all charitable donations, or is that the state's match or reduction in tax collection? I guess would be a better way to say it. Yeah. That's what the state that's the state's cost. So, really, what's going into the childcare system is double that. Right? Because it's a 50% credit. Okay. So I would suggest that we continue to refine that kind of communication and be
able to tell that story better. Because I think when we talk about the private charitable contributions to childcare being many times more than what we pay as a state for CCAP, I mean, it's it's pretty powerful story. Mhmm. Yeah. And And Nicole just said that it's the 60,000,000 is the contributions. So does that mean, Nicole, that it's 90,000,000 total? Yeah. That's what I think. I'd imagine that's the 50% tax credit. Oh, sorry. Did I just I did. I I thought I saw, Nicole's, follow-up note saying 30, 30,
million for the state and 60 total and 30 of that is covered by the state. Okay. Well, we don't need to belabor it, but I think it's a very, it's a very important story Yeah. And the impact on childcare and how many lives it's touching. And also just honoring the credit contributions that people are making into the space. So, yeah, we can we can we can talk about this with EPIC, with the policy committee too, but I I think it's a really, really important story for legislators. Absolutely. Yes. And Nicole is putting in the chat what the clarity that I was going to
offer. So it's 50% tax credit. Right? 60,000,000 in contributions, 30,000,000 fiscal for the state. Okay. Great. Yeah. I I thought that was interesting too, to see that comparison. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Thank you for that, and thank you for that time. I don't see any others. So we'll we'll move on to, Christina with Healthier Colorado. Thank you, Christina, for sharing with us today. And just reminding everyone, please take note of the, places where there are alignment or, or where there may be some conflicts between what we've heard from other presenters?
Thanks, Happy. Next slide, please. Thanks for having me today. Christina Walker. I'm the senior director of policy at Healthier Colorado. I work with Jake Williams, who's one of the commissioners here. So just if you don't know Healthier, we are a nonpartisan nonprofit working to improve public policy so that everyone in our state has a chance to live a healthy life. So we're focused both on statewide and local health issues. We strive for inclusivity and equity in our policies, and our intent is to do more than just educate and advocate. We wanna drive action,
systemic change, and lasting impact. Next slide. So, we have three focus areas of our work, that include physical health, mental health, and social health. We oftentimes, our early childhood work can sit in all three or in one of the three areas. And so you'll see that a little bit today in my presentation. Next slide. So our 2026 legislative priorities fit into the following three buckets. So first is, healthcare access and afford affordability. Second is supporting youth mental health. And then third is early childhood health.
Next slide. So first, for healthcare access and affordability, as you've heard from other presenters, obviously, we have HR one that passed back in July that, immediately hit our state budget to cause an additional, deficit in even this year's current fiscal budget year, as well as causes, ongoing, challenges into the future for our next budget year. So, we know that, HR one started the cuts to Medicaid, but then further, our, the governor's proposal, has, actually further, outsized cuts to Medicaid.
And we're just wanting to make sure that the additional Medicaid cuts will be as least harmful as possible, which I know I've heard many people from HCPCS also share in many different spaces, including today from Susanna, that their goal is to try to find places where, Medicaid cuts will do the least harm and will keep as many folks covered and, included in Medicaid as possible. And there's some things that we won't be able to keep due to, upcoming federal changes. However,
how can we, right size things, or cut things around the edges? In other spaces, we've talked about it as a, scalpel and not a sledgehammer approach to the Medicaid budget. And so Healthier Colorado, is a part of a coalition, to try to ensure that those who need Medicaid the most and need, coverage the most, stay covered, and have access to care. Second, we're working with, actually, the Children's Campaign, which, and, our partners at Colorado Consumer Health Initiative as well as a broad coalition of other advocates,
and you saw it on one of Heather's slides, to sustain the health insurance affordability enterprise. I affectionately call it the high. You might hear it called the high e. A lot of people don't affectionately call it anything because they don't like it. But, basically, this, pot of money, supports three programs in our state that help people keep their private health insurance coverage. So first is the reinsurance program, which has a goal of trying to reduce premiums by 20%, each year so that those premiums don't go so high that,
folks are unable to, afford to buy health insurance in their private, on the private marketplace. Second bucket is, health insurance, premium subsidies. So, we've all been hearing a lot about the enhanced premium tax credits at the federal level. Particularly since those were not extended, it is vitally important, that we, put more money into the health insurance affordability enterprise to ensure that folks have access to subsidies for their premiums on the marketplace here in Colorado so that they can maintain their health care coverage.
And we passed a bill, in support with, many folks at the table, during special session to put more money into this enterprise, and it is shown that those, subsidies are helping so many people keep coverage this year, which is really fantastic. And then the last bucket is the Omni Salute program, which helps provide premium support, and health care coverage for folks who cannot access the their health insurance on the private marketplace. And that is likely due to, having documentation status that is, either they're undocumented or we are going to see many folks who even have legal
status such as asylees and refugees being pushed into that marketplace in the next year when more of HR one goes into effect. So, it's really important that we fully fund that enterprise and keep people covered. Next slide. So, another, bill that we are working on, with representative Camacho will be in support of youth mental health. And, so children and youth, under the 18, who utilize, artificial intelligence AI, particularly chat bots, and trying to protect children from those negative impacts.
We've unfortunately heard stories of including folks in Colorado who have lost their children to suicide, or who have, really strong mental health challenges due to interactions with AI chatbots. And so how can we ensure that our state has a regulatory framework that keeps children and youth safe, particularly given the fact that, because of their age and brain development, they may not fully understand, that they're talking to, artificial intelligence and not another human.
Right? And so it's just really important, that we create this technology to be, safe and secure, particularly for those who are younger than the age of 18. And then last, next slide. Last, we're working on a bill to provide some infrastructure support for infant and early childhood mental health. We're working in partnership with the Colorado, with Children's Hospital Colorado. And so this bill, would establish a time limited interagency work group that's focused particularly on providing more infant and early childhood mental health services and creating more of a system.
Not not really thinking about the consultation model, which sits in CDEC, which is a piece of that, but really broadly, all of the things that we need and all of the services people need when they need infant and early childhood mental health services. And so the goal would be to align efforts across state agencies to improve coordination and collaboration and break down silos. As we talked about when the BHA, came and presented today, which I was so thrilled to see, infant and early childhood really sits at the intersection of lots of large and complex systems in Colorado.
And so it's really important that our agencies have some deep collaboration to support the system and to, ensure that we're identifying gaps in areas for improvement, which we anecdotally hear all the time. And we also really wanna make sure that we're looking at data, that's broken down by this age group so we can really understand the unique needs of children in this age group. So that's the second thing this bill would do. And so we're really excited, and we hope that we can, come back and maybe talk to the ECLC in 2026 about how this bill is progressing.
So I'll stop there. Thank you so much for the time. Happy to answer any questions. Oh, Happy. You're on mute. Sorry. Sorry. There we go. Joanna. Yes. Thank you for your presentation. I I was curious about your the bill you're seeking to run around AI and mental health and wondering what your thoughts are around the executive order that was put out around, suing states for putting limitations on AI. I just wonder what your group is thinking about that. Yeah. Thank you for that question. So first and foremost,
there would need to be an act of congress truly for there to be the ability to do that. And so what the executive order asks is for congress to do an act. And so, we do hope that that doesn't occur because we obviously, think that there is a lot of regulation that's needed, as this new technology comes up and running. But second, in the EO, it specifically says that it does not pertain to anything that, is around regulation for children. So since we're keeping this bill for people 18, you know, I think that there is we have many places where we say, you know, we need to protect children.
Like, children can't drink until 21. They can't, you know, operate a car until 16. All of those things. So I think that that gives us a little bit of cover for this particular bill. But that's a really good question, and we're definitely watching the federal landscape, very closely there. Great. Thanks for the question and answer. Any others? Appreciate it, Christina, and and and much appreciate the, comments you already made about some of the the partnerships and and collaboration that's occurring. So very much appreciated. Thank you. We'll move on to, county governments with, Vanessa. Is it Fuel?
Yeah. It's Vanessa? Oh, good. There goes my camera. You got it right. Vanessa Fuel. I'm with Larimer County Department of Human Services. Good morning. I didn't prepare slides, but I do have a couple of bullet points. Really wanting to echo a lot of what we've already heard from partners. Counties are very concerned about stabilizing the social safety net in this time of turbulence. Our programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF, and CCAP, we know are essential to family stability and workforce participation. They continue to be underfunded relative to the our needs across the state.
So really wanting to be as creative as we can be as we're navigating these changes together as a collective system. County support the the efforts around efficiency and optimization, but certainly, we are concerned about the experience that families have as they access these programs and services. Recognizing children are part of family units, and, counties really want to prioritize keeping early childhood supports aligned with other health and human services, programs so families don't have to navigate disconnected systems.
How can we, as we are hearing the our state partners talk about districting, certain social safety net programs, but then not others, we really wanna make sure that we're thinking about these programs and services holistically so that families have more seamless experience to access all of the services that will help them get to work, and make sure that their their children are thriving. As changes are considered, counties are focused on minimizing short term costs. So we when we have a major system redesign,
we expect that that's going to be more costly in the short term even if it may lead to more efficiencies in the long term. So we really are trying to be mindful of as we think about redesigning, how does that how does that look and feel relative to the major budgetary constraints that we're experiencing? So that's something that we're really trying to elevate and make sure as part of the conversation, and that we're we're being clear that we do anticipate increase in cost, and inefficiencies to be created in the major change even if long term optimization and
efficiencies are the goal. And finally, counties remain focused on prevention. When programs like Medicaid SNAP, TANF, and CCAP are weakened, counties are often the first to see that pressure show up in the child welfare system. So we we are actively talking about how do we make sure that we are monitoring those trends closely and being reactive and, again, finding creative solutions locally wherever we can and elevating those solutions, where they might be able to be replicated in other communities. So that's all I have for this morning,
but I'm happy to take any questions. Thank thank you, Vanessa. Any questions? Really appreciate that, that perspective, and I know, hopefully, we'll we'll invite you and all of your colleagues to take a close look at what's been presented by both our agencies and our partner organizations to see where there's alignment and and challenges for you all as well. Thank you so much. Are you are you guys surviving up there in Larimer? Well was pretty tough yesterday. Yeah. Our emergency operations has been activated, but we're we're hanging in so far.
Today's better, so there's definitely, what kind of response and cleanup needs to happen today. Yeah. Thanks for listening. That's thanks. I I know that you guys, county and and and local government's at the heart of that that challenge. Alright. We'll move on, to hear from our school school districts. Shelley. Took me a minute to unmute. So, yeah, if you can go to the next slide. I really tried to do this really big picture. Although I work for a school district, I definitely don't know that I'm a representative. So, really trying to take it on the broad,
broad spoke. The biggest thing for, pre k through 12, is the fact of the averaging. And I do wanna say this is not a complaint. This is just, making something that might not be evident in, the, budget. We're very thankful that the averaging did not go away, which was, proposed at some points. But it has reduced from averaging over a four year period to a three year period for, enrollment for districts and funding based on that. That averaging has been in place so you don't have to hire and fire every
year, based on your current enrollment. So it's an average. But it is having a pretty big impact. And if you would go and look and just do a news poll, Jefferson County, Douglas County, everybody is talking about closing and combining schools and reducing staff. And it's very, significant that they're communicating that already. That's usually more as they're getting deeper into the budgeting process for next year. But many school districts are closing and combining, schools and that's gonna continue. This year is gonna be more impactful because the number of years that were averaged
was reduced. So that's kind of big picture school district pre k through, 12. More about impacts for early childhood. Budget proposal is the, historical allotment, has been changed for school districts around three year olds, and it used to be based on, an an allocated sum, that was a historical allocation from the '22, '23, how many children you served in CCAP. It is now based on enrollment. And for some districts, it's having a pretty significant impact. And for others,
they found out after the school started, so they would have kind of, I think, managed enrollment different. We're pretty lucky because of our Head Start, the fact that we're Head Start grantee, we have a really good population. The other thing to know that, it there's no increase built into it. So these are dollars from '22 to '23. And as we all know, those dollars are no cost for inflation. So, the number of children that can be served with the dollars from 22, '23 is not the same number of children that can be served with those dollars,
in '25, '26, and next year. So less children, less three year olds are going to be served, which, I I think there's lots of focus on infant toddler and then lots of focus on the year before kinder. CCAP used to be the safety net kind of for our our at risk three year olds. And and as we've all heard that freezes and wait list are are now our three year olds really many of them don't have access. And I wanna keep it brief. So those were the the big rocks, but I can try to answer additional questions if there are.
Thank you, Shelley. Questions for, Shelley on a perspective, and I I appreciate it. Just just like counties, not everyone not every school district is the same, but, this was helpful for us to see what all school districts face in terms of the, you know, the funding process and and the impacts. So, Shelly, you mentioned that the the, it's the twenty two year allotment. What is it? The this is directly out of the school finance? It's actually the statute of UPK. Okay.
It is that school districts, were given an allotted amount of money, so they're gonna actually need to change, and have, change the language of the, statute, historical allotment to make sure that there wasn't a significant loss of funds for school districts because a lot of them served three year olds. So whatever money you got for the number of three year olds you served in '22, '23, you were automatically getting that money, every year since, CCAP, CPP went away. But now, it has changed. It won't be a lump allocated sum.
It is you have to show your enrollment every month. And for some school districts, that is burdensome. You know, we have 50 children. But if you think about Jefferson County, others that have thousands of three year olds reporting monthly attendance, is causing administrative burden. I've heard in meetings, school district meetings. Mhmm. Thank you. It's very helpful. Any other, questions for Shelley? Alright. Thank you very much. I they that include concludes, the the presentations from our,
community partners, and I'm I'm sure there are many others, with perspectives. And we, we encourage people to share information, reach out to other members, and let let's keep this dialogue, or this conversation rolling over the next few weeks so that, I think as Michael pointed out, at the very beginning, we're really looking to, use our efforts in an efficient manner amongst all of us to uplift the entire field. With that, I know we're we're a little ahead of schedule, and we we missed a couple of presentations,
from our state agencies. And I know Mary Alice is back with us, and Minna was. She may be back again. So, Michael, I'll turn it over to you again to to, if if we can. I'd like to do this before our break and, move back to those presentations that we missed a little earlier. Thanks, Happy. Yeah. But Mary Alice got pulled away to the governor's office. We know that happens. So why don't we start with you, Mary Alice? Because I I, like Happy, saw that Minna had to bounce out again,
and I'm not sure if she's back yet. So, Mary Alice, if you've got some wisdom for us, that would be great. Thank you, Michael. Could you please go back to the ledge slide that I think I'm addressing two things, the cleanup bill and twelve twenty three adjustments? Okay. Great. I'd love to start with 12/23 because I think that's where most of you will have questions. And what the ECLC co chairs and I were talking about last week is there's many of you that may have, just general questions about CCAP, and I'd love to use this time to dig into any areas that you would
like further clarification on. Okay. This is a very limited slide, so I guess we just need to go to it, Michael. But, the first, let's do modifications to 12/23. And, Christina Walker, my partner in all of this, please jump in with anything you'd like to share on this one as well. So for 12/23, what we're looking at is changing the dates, for the, CCAP, for CCAP, rules, to 2028. As many of you are aware, we received a waiver from, ACF, granting us until August 2028 to be in compliance with,
the federal rules around CCAP. So just as a quick refresh, those, rules are capping co pays at 7% of family income as well as the, doing, a stronger job with consumer education and having a calculator of how to, for families to calculate that CCAP co payment, paying providers in advance or at the beginning of delivery services, and paying weekly, paying child care based on child's enrollment instead of attendance, and then some grants or contracts. So what this modification to 12/23 will do is basically just take wherever it had
twenty twenty six and change it to 2028. One of the challenges that we're facing right now with this is that, the we were granted the waiver, but we also have to show progress that we're going to be in compliance in August 2028. And so even though we're receiving, verbally and then some writing that, that they will be repealing or resending these rules, we still have to show that we are making progress to, meeting the obligation. So our critical deadline really will be next October because next October is when we'll
need to invest in our IT systems to be in compliance. And so that's our next critical milestone for this work. The other thing I just wanted to talk through with this group is, did when Jeanne went, did she share I'm gonna pop this in the chat. I'm not sure if she shared this executive summary or not. Let me pop it in here. I have this, bookmark. It just has all of our budget requests. And then when when you see the white font that if you click on that, you'll actually get to the actual decision item.
And so if you go the first one, of course, is SO1RO1. And if you click on that, you'll see the full details of the CCDF budget request. And you'll see the, the stark news that even with the waiver in place till 2028, we are facing a $19,000,000 spending gap. And so we have our GPC hearing coming up, mid January, and we'll need to address at that time our strategies for meeting that spending gap. And so we need to have conversations with all of you and with counties of
what are the levers that we need to, use to, to reduce that gap. And that could be changing continuous eligibility or, prioritizing infant, toddlers. It could be, changing the eligibility requirements. We have some really hard decisions that we're going to have to make in order to, resolve that $19,000,000 gap. So, more conversations to come on this where, but what we're doing now is just pulling everything together for our hearing. I'm happy to to dive into any parts of CCAP with you. I just with the co chairs,
we feel really passionately that, everyone is, has a strong foundational knowledge of CCAP because we have hard decisions that we're often have to make and as all aligned and working together on this, to support our children and families and providers is critical. So I'd like to pause if anyone has questions. And, Christina, please jump in if I missed anything. Questions. You did a great job, Mary Alice, as always. K. Thanks. Yes, Sue. Yeah. Thank you, Mary Alice. Not a question,
but just an editorial comment That is just heartbreaking that we have that kind of deficit, and we're only serving a fraction of the eligible children for CCAP. And how many of us know that the CCAP income level, you know, lenders are the most at risk children and families. And so we have a long way to go as a state and a country to meet the need, and, I just think that you can constantly help legislators communicate that to them.
But, you know, this isn't like Nirvana in any way. We have a long way to go. And, if we can just continue to champion increased funding to see that, I think it's really important. Rose Marie has her hand up, Mary Alice. Yes. Please respond. Just wanted to say ditto, Sue. Okay. It's so heartbreaking. And and we sit here and feel powerless. We we know there are things we can do, but we have to do better as a country. Thank you, Rosemarie. And the which I think we're many of us are really feeling this angst around our infants
and our toddlers. Right? And that's our biggest gap right now with CCAP because of the wait list and the freezes. It's just, and providers are having to close their doors and no longer serve, babies because they, because of the CCAP freeze. So we are going to all tackle this this together and figure out what we can do within our current funding, and then advocate as much as we can for additional funding at the federal level. Mary Alice, Nicole put a question in the chat. Her microphone is giving our Oh, Nicole. Okay.
Let me see. Do you know what this Internet's unstable. So Yes. Oh, okay. So, Nicole, you just pointed out what I just did. I'm worried about losing our pipeline of younger children for communities and the potential to destroy our infant toddler supply through these challenges, especially worry about. Yes. Like, think of all of the work that we have done, especially with our stimulus funding to really build that pipeline and the impact now of the base freezes are having. And so, Nicole, one thing that doctor Roy is prioritizing that we explore is,
as you know, not sure if any of our CCAP team is on right now, but, we have the priorities from counties of if you are experiencing homelessness, if you're, been referred by child welfare or if your child has a disability or delay, that that those are the the top priorities for CCAP, and then making the fourth one infant toddler. And so if you have any available funding, then it goes to the infant toddler. Again, we have to dig into this with our counties. We haven't had the chance to really have this opportunity and with providers.
And, Shelley, this will all be part of the rule rewrite committee. Right? These these are just ideas that are bubbling up at the it's the CCAP rule right committee that has parents, counties, providers. Thus, that's the group that will really dig into this, to make these decisions. Yeah. Thank you, Liz. And, Liz, I just think of what you're experiencing as a provider. Yeah. Please share, your experience here too for the group. Sure. I'm happy to. I just dropped in the chat that we we know that, less than half of our our infants are now on CCAP when a year ago was a 100% of them.
And all of those slots are early head start, meaning these are incredibly low income families who are trying to figure it out to cover their childcare so they're able to work. We're turning families away, families who are unable to access CCAP, and then therefore can't afford care. We do as much as we can with our sliding tuition scale, but there's also so much that we can do. And it's really critical that we also maintain our operations. So, very challenging for our our staff also who have huge hearts and wanna serve everyone to have to turn families away. So there's lots of different levels of, challenges for sure.
Incredible. Nicole. Looks like you've got microphone. Oh, yeah. Switch devices. I'm gonna hope my cell phone works. But, yeah, I mean, I think this is I'm I'm really concerned about this, and I feel like if we don't keep an eye on these trends and, frankly, the impacts that we see to young children and their families because of these wait list and freezes. We're going to see this supply decimated, and it's gonna be too late to fix it, once we once we see that. Right? Like, you can't opening childcare facilities, speaking from experience, is very,
very difficult, very time consuming, and very expensive. And so, you know, I do think whatever trends we might be seeing now with the data are probably going to be that much worse and exacerbated six months from now if we continue to have these wait lists and freezes. So, you know, I would just say whatever data we have on this, that the department can share, would love to see that, so that we can have, you know, hopefully, like, ongoing and and very, you know, urgent conversations about how to fix this. Excellent. Thank you, Nicole. In regards to your question around data,
Carson's your man. Carson, I see you here too. I know you're digging into this, but, Nicole, we are working, on a few different things. So we're working we'll be able to share with you, the trend numbers on the ages of children receiving, CCAP. And then we'll also what Sarah Dawson and, Carson and his team are working on is, a cost calculator. So for each of these various levers that we'll need to implement, what would the actual savings be so that we're able to look across all the different strategies to boost infant toddler with CCAP,
and see see the implications. So, really grateful that we have Kirsten on our team, and he will be able to really help us solve this. Okay. Last thing on this note is, we just, there's some there's a lot of legislation happening this session, right, around, CCAP. So I just urge you all to follow it all very closely and reach out with any questions that you have. Knowledge is is power. So, please let us know how we can support you with understanding, all the complexities of this program. Okay. Just to keep us on track,
Happy, the technical 20 six point five cleanup, That is, as being three years old now, they're looking back, there are some small cleanups that we have to do. Nothing that is, we're still in the process of working with, the bill sponsor on this. So I don't have anything concrete to share. But once we have this put together, we can bring it back to ECLC. Great. Great. Thanks. Thanks, Mary Alice. Yeah. Is not back, as far as I can tell. So Okay. And do we is there anyone else from their shop who's
so we'll, we'll ask Minna maybe to, circulate something. We did, we did have her slides in the presentation, I believe. So we invite everyone, to take a look at those and and send, some some comments or questions if you have them, for a minute. We we understand these days are challenging, and people are having to come and go as we wrap up the year. I think if there are no further questions, comments, maybe reflections on all of the presentations that we've received today from both First of
all, let's give a hand to our state and our community partner agencies. A lot of work to to distill all of the incredible work and and and research that they've all done into slides that, you know, are available to us to digest. And so we really wanna say thank you to all of you. So any other any final thoughts or reflections, beyond what Rosemary, shared with us, which I think, pretty much captures it for all of us, any other thoughts or questions?
Other than that, we will, Christina, I think we will go to our break. I I I want to, point out that we're a little ahead of schedule, which is great, And, that'll give us a little extra time because I know our the the final part of our agenda is also a very full one. So my clock says we're at 10:57. Let's take a ten minute break and, be back here at what is that? In 12:07? Eleven.
Eleven o 11:07. Sorry. Great. Okay. I think we're getting back from our break. Christina, I got it here ready to, oh, there we go. Christina's on it. Alright, guys. I'm Sue Renner, one of the co chairs. I apologize. My I was having some computer challenges at the beginning of the meeting. Missed the introduction. Happy to be here today, and I'm gonna take over by happy facilitating this last, portion of our meeting. So we are gonna move to subcommittee and working group updates.
And just to remind folks, if there's anyone new on the call, just to make sure you know, these subcommittees and working groups are really where the magic happens for the commission. This is where we dig a lot deeper into issues and, are really able to spend the time to, you know, really, like I said, take a deeper dive. So if you're not familiar with them, please look at the commission website. Reach out to Christina and or Shannon when she gets back,
for the schedules of the subcommittee meetings. We do try to, allocate time at these meetings for substantive action items from the work groups. The general updates were sent to you ahead of time, to the commissioners to read. Hopefully, you did have a chance to review those. So now what we're gonna do, though, is take, two issues that we do wanna take a deeper dive into. The first one being the CCAP rural rights subcommittee.
And commissioner Shelley Smith has been deeply involved in kind of leading that on behalf of ECLC or representing ECLC, I think, is a better way to say it, on that low right subcommittee. And, Shelley is gonna give us now an update. Hello. And, Mary Alice, chime in whenever. My first slide is really just, I think re stating what Mary Alice stated about the waiver received just as December 1 and kind of the impact of that since Mary Alice already kind of said that verbally.
I won't go into much detail unless there are questions, but I think I just have in text what what Mary Alice said. So, the next one, which is more about the work that we're doing in the, work group, we met we did send out an email. And when I'm saying this, I'm just letting you know we can still get, feedback. I know the week of Thanksgiving was probably the worst possible time to be sending out something to get feedback on, but we did have a meeting, on December 4, so I wanted to get feedback. But,
if this document has a link when she sends it out, I did send it out in the email, but it goes into much, a really nice explanation of the of wait lists and, freezes and the rules. And because so many counties are now experiencing and having to use it, realize that there's a lot of, clarity that needs to be, developed. When is that the best way to say that, Mary Alice? And there was, the rules don't provide enough guidance, and there's some, confusion. So that is the focus of that group.
So, please, we are gonna meet on January 9. And at that time, they are going to ask us to weigh in on some recommended changes. So, please, if you just didn't get a chance to provide feedback, please, anything you could give, I would say, by the Monday of that, week would be great. The other, kind of next steps is they're going to be bringing to the meeting on the ninth what other states are doing because, again, these freezes are happening. Some other states have had freezes and wait lists for years,
and some, it's different. And then, they're gonna draft the rules, for us to weigh in on, and that's gonna happen on the ninth. And, definitely, I my goal is always to represent the voice of this group, not my personal opinion. So any feedback you can send to me, would be great. And then I will just answer questions or let Mary Alice answer questions. And just to be clear, Shelley, this, the CCAP, rules and rewrite committee you're on, it deals more than just with the wait list increases.
Correct? Yep. This is just the current topic. It is like, Mary Alice said, there's still a lot of things that have to move forward because of, the findings that we were not in compliance with the general rules. So there's things that are having to be fixed, and that was part of the presentation last time, try to give a difference between what was the things that we're gonna post possibly be paused and the things we still have to address. And so I can send out kind of the ongoing, timeline. I think I included it, if not last time, the time before,
but I can reshare that is the timeline of all the different things that are happening, but I'm just trying to get feedback on this one for the, January 9 meeting. Great. Thank you so much. Mhmm. And then thank you, Mary Alice, putting a cup a document into the chat. You wanna check that out around the wait list of reasons by county. That's great. And, Mary Alice, I'm anticipating we'll be, modifying that original timeline, based on getting the waiver.
So maybe I should wait until we update the timeline with the waiver taken into account or go ahead and send the one we have now. I think it would be great to check-in with Sarah and, see if we could do the modification now Oh. So that you can send it. The other thing I wanted to mention, Shelly, that I didn't mention earlier is about the alternative rate methodology. So that is our providing, our CCAP providers based on the true cost of care. And, right now, we had three phases of implementation. We've done the first two phases.
We're asking permission to hold phase three until, we're able to stabilize the sector because the, it's it's, made it's another $20,000,000, which will take a really big hit to our early childhood sector. So we're awaiting, approval from the federal team on that piece, and we expect to hear pretty soon. Okay. That'd be great. I was wondering if the budget projections included that or not, was a question I was gonna ask. Yeah. That's such a good question,
Shelley, and it does not. So it's status quo without doing that third phase. So if we had to do that third phase, it would be an additional, significant amount of money. Great. Great. And thank you, Liz, for posting in the chat about El Paso County. Looks like unfreezing. So That is exciting. Congratulations. Okay, Shelley. Thank you so much, and thank you for continuing to serve on that, work group. Alright. Now we're gonna, shift to, something that maybe some of you, you know, I had to Christina kinda had to remind me about it. And this is the early learning and development guidelines.
And so this is Christina will explain it. It's basically a statewide document that helps both public and private providers, with their early learning and development standards, if you will. And so we have an opportunity to update and, rewrite those, and Christina's gonna tell us about it. And then after her presentation, we'd like to entertain a motion for the creation of a work group under our PQAA work group or subcommittee, I guess it is.
Program quality, subcommittee. So, Christina, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Perfect. Thank you, Sue. So we are are fortunate to have a very robust set of early learning and development guidelines in Colorado. These are, it's a large document, that really outlines what a typical developmental progression looks like for children from birth through age eight. And so there's strategies and indicators and markers and all kinds of things that, we would we would hope to see as our children are growing and developing across a wide, variety of domains.
It's really important that these early learning guidelines are connected and aligned with our Colorado academic standards as well as the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework. So every so often, when an opportunity arises where we can look back at those ELDGs, those early learning and development guidelines, and make sure that they are, robust and that they reflect alignment with those other frameworks and that they're really building on the most up to date research and guidance, that we know across the the country.
So, these guidelines are typically endorsed by a state's advisory council, which is, in Colorado, the ECLC. So, about oh, goodness. Six years ago, we did a full refresh of, of the guidelines, and a lot's changed over the past six years. We were made aware of an opportunity where, we can dive into a few specific domains where, we, understand that there's been some changes and updates to our Colorado academic standards. So, what we would like to propose today,
and I'm sort of doing this on behalf of Heather Craig Lowe, who has been involved with these guidelines, for a very long time and is is a huge champion of these along with that head start connection. What we would like to propose is to create a short term working group under our program quality alignment and access subcommittee, that would meet probably, through the calendar year next year. So starting in January or February, we have an ability to bring on a vendor to help support this and would do, not a full revision of them, but really focusing on the math,
early literacy, and social emotional, development domains. So this group would be charged to review, all the the different standards, as well as national work that's happening, provide feedback, contribute specific expertise and perspective from from whatever role in the early childhood world that they play, bring partnerships, together around our early childhood and maternal health expertise, and potentially give, feedback outside of meetings as well. So, like I said, this is something that we've done before. It was sort of an opportunity that just arose,
and so we're still working on who we can bring on in a consultant kind of vendor role, but wanted to bring it to this group, to to see if there was an interest in in standing up this group again. Ultimately, they would bring, suggested, revisions for this refresh to the commission, I believe, probably in June or August at our meeting. So it would be a pretty quick clip, to get there. But, just, because this ultimately is endorsed by the ECLC, It's felt like a good home in the past to have this group operating under one of our subcommittees. So happy to take any,
oh, Rosemary, I see you assisted with the original ELDGs. Love that. Thank you. Yeah. Happy to take any any questions. And like Sue said, would love, to consider, someone making a motion to create this short term working group. Any questions? Looks like Shelly has Oh, Shelly. Yeah. Okay. One's a question and one's a statement. So, the statement is really good timing, because I think many private providers as they are needing to, adopt or, be in compliance with upcoming, quality standards, for UPK.
Many I think this will be utilized more even more than it has been in the past, so I think this is perfect timing. Yep. The question is one of the new, state standards that I feel is, really helpful is the health, standard. It has and it was not even in existence when these were written. And so I would love for the group I wonder if I know we can't really change this document, but is there an opportunity if this working group were to see other areas that
maybe they need to align with because that that standard wasn't even there, and it does have some really, a especially since we're comprehensive with early childhood. I think it could be included. Yeah. It's a great point, Shelley. Thank you. I will absolutely take that back, with Heather and see. I would say, at a minimum, we should be looking for other areas that if we can't address them as this part that we're saying, alright. This next refresh, these would be the areas we need to dive into. And perhaps we can add it to the list as well. I'm I'm just not sure of the the scope of the vendor's work around that,
but, thank you for raising that. Absolutely. We'll take that back. Rosemary, I see your physical hand off. Is that oh, you're on mute. Oh, I thought I had the setting when I raised my hand. It's supposed to do it for me. But, who's selecting the vendor? What does that process look like? So that will be through CDEC and through the regular procurement process, just because the funds are coming through CDEC. So, I'm not sure where they are in that process, how they're, is taking the lead on that, but that will be a a vendor that's managed then by CDEC. Okay. Great. So, Christina, if you're ready, we can entertain a motion to form.
So this, again, will be under PQAA and A, and it will be a time limited work group. So if we could have a motion to establish this, please. This is Nicole. I'll move. I'll second. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Any questions or concerns before we take the vote? No. Okay. All in favor? Hi. Thank you. Any opposed? Great. There it worked. So, Rosemary, thank you for already, submitting your name. But if others are interested, please let Christina know, and she'll pass those on, and we'll get that work group going.
Thank you so much. Can I move on in the agenda? We have a really, fun and interesting update from our early childhood comprehensive systems working group. And this is the prenatal to three policy recommendation report that they have finalized. ECCS is in their final year of this four year grant. They've done some really amazing work. I don't know. Hopefully, you guys have had a chance to see this report, but if not, of course, we'll, put it in the link in the materials you receive.
One thing I really appreciated about this was the road map that they have looking at prenatal to pre policy going forward. And I think, they're gonna touch on this in their presentation, but I definitely wanna point this out as something that is such a value add, again, for both public and private work in our state to have this kind of road maps with these detailed data analysis and, facts. So now we're gonna hear from Mary Houlihan, from Illuminate Colorado and Christine Walker from Papier,
Colorado, and I will turn, the meeting over to you too. Thank you so much, Sue. We can go to the next slide, and I'll introduce myself again. So, back one slide. Perfect. Thank you. Hi, all. My name is Mary Houlihan. I'm an early childhood initiatives manager with Illuminate Colorado, and I provide the backbone support to our early childhood comprehensive systems working group, which is a working group under PQAA. So very excited to be here. As you mentioned, we are in our final year of this great project, and so you'll probably see my face a couple more times in the coming months
as we, pull together a couple of our other final deliverables as well. But grateful to be here. Christina, I know that you've already presented today. So if you wanna say anything else, feel free. Otherwise, I will just keep this moving. I'll just say that, I am here today in as a the cochair for the ECCS partnerships work group who created this document. Beautiful. Thanks, Christina. We can go to the next slide. So, some of you may be familiar with ECCS, but just to give kind of a general background on how we got to this final recommendation report for policies,
I wanted to share and highlight the vision of the Colorado ECCS project first, which was intentionally to advance the infrastructure, capacity, equity, and sustainability of Colorado's maternal and early childhood systems of care to achieve the long term goal of all children being healthy, valued, and thriving with equal access to resources and, excuse me, supports and services. Next slide. For the sake of our time today, we're gonna provide a little bit more background on kind of how we got to the development of this prenatal to three policy recommendation report.
And then we have a couple curiosities and questions for you all, looking at information needed, to potentially make the policy recommendations in this report most actionable, any additional advocacy opportunities or organizations or organizations or connections that we should be leveraging, to move these policy recommendations forward in the future. And then finally, we're really hoping to gather endorsement for ECLC excuse me, ECLC approval for this recommendation report so that we can start sharing it out with folks and really moving that needle on advocating for these policies.
Next slide. So additional background. The Colorado ECCS project was charged with the creation of this policy agenda, connected to, the strategic plan strategy six point one point four. So just wanted to make that reference because you'll see throughout the plan or throughout the report as well that not only are we trying to build off of this connection with the early childhood strategic plan, but also with the early childhood framework, which I'm looking to my wall right next to you where I have that up. And so that was connecting to the early childhood framework was one of the key
processes that we had as we were reviewing all sorts of policies to initially kind of build out this plan. We reviewed national policy recommendations, state, local policy recommendations related to the prenatal to three period, and started with well over a 100 policy recommendations as an implementation team of the ECCS working group to review, Through some really thoughtful and intentional, kind of fine tuning processes over the course of two years, we got down to a total of 10 policies that you will see in this
final report. And on the next slide, I'll I'll talk a little bit more about the steps that we took along the way. So really looking at maybe fall twenty twenty three as one of our starting points. That was when we did the initial review of all these different policy recommendations across local, state, and national policies. We connected with the early childhood framework. We reviewed ECCS's common problem statement, which is specific to that working group of just really trying to hone in on what is the problem that the ECCS working group is hoping hoping to address.
That will be referenced in the final report as well if you haven't already reviewed it. We have some really robust, and diverse implementation team members who have been a part of this process throughout the development of the the policy recommendation report. Some of you have seen on this call today, so that's always really wonderful to see. And one of the pieces that supported us in fine tuning and, narrowing the scope for this recommendation report was developing a guiding principles document. I think this is really important because we understood that in order to make something that would be, digestible, we wouldn't we wouldn't be able to include all of the language and all of
the policy recommendations that we see as necessary to move that policy forward. So this guiding principles document was a key piece in understanding that the policies, recommendations we were moving forward needed to be, highlighting language justice. They needed to be highlighting all of these really important concepts that if they weren't explicitly stated in the recommendation, we all understood. And and through the report, it's understood that that is still a key concept and piece of the recommendation, and that supported the our team in, fine tuning as well and making sure that we're,
moving forward with what makes the most sense for early child excuse me, early childhood and maternal health folks. Over the course of these two years, we had many meetings, to fine tune the policy recommendations. We brought 56 policies back to both the family voice council, the CDC family voice council, as well as PQAA at different points in time, to ensure that we were correctly aligning and that we were really thinking through, any potential considerations that might that might impact how we were prioritizing the policy recommendations.
And so all that to say, lots of information on this slide, but where we've landed is the final 10 policies, that are included in this report and a road map of kind of understanding what are the recommendations, where is Colorado currently at with this type of policy recommendation, and what is the opportunities for growth in the future. Next slide. And I'm gonna pass it over to Christina. K. Everyone, get your glasses out because we wanted it all to be on one slide. So good thing is is you have the slides. You can zoom in on your own. But, basically, these are the top 10
policy recommendations that came from the group. And as you saw, like, we had a very intensive, thoughtful, intentional process, and we also we wanted to make sure, like, people's lived experience were included and that, we didn't reinvent the wheel because there's so many folks doing amazing work thinking about, policy opportunities. So I'll go through them quickly, and then we have some questions for y'all, and then also wanna make sure that we can get your endorsement. So the first is explore secure data usage and other strategies across programs to better
identify and enroll all eligible expecting families, children, and providers in Medicaid WIC, SNAP, and Colorado Food Program, aka the CACFP Program, and encourage enrollment in multiple programs when needed. This will support the framework of economic mobility and whole person health and well-being. And given everything going on right now with the with the challenging state budget, obviously, this is an opportunity where we could really identify some efficiencies, and decrease maybe, like, the person to person workload if we were able to to do this into the
future, which could save our state some some funding in the future. Second is extend Medicaid coverage for children continuously from birth to age six, supporting whole person health and well-being. We had made some we had made some some forward progress here where we were going to have a HCFAF implement continuous eligibility from birth to age three through an 11/15 Medicaid waiver, but, unfortunately, the current federal administration is no longer going to, approve future eleven fifteen waivers with continuous eligibility. And, therefore, our state is not going to move forward with implementation,
especially given the budget challenges. But I think it was already approved at one point during the Biden Administration. It could be an opportunity again in the future. Improve the infrastructure for statewide developmental screening and referral programs for prenatal to three period with follow-up for all patients to support learning and development and whole person health and well-being improve oral health practices through education, access to screenings, dental services, and affordability for underserved populations in support of whole person health and well-being Simplify and streamline enrollment processes for public benefit programs,
including by compensating people with lived experience to assist families with care navigation and peer support, which can support economic mobility and family support and education. And, you know, I think we see this in, like, even the creation of the CDEC and in our statute around how do we have one common application. How do we stop asking questions of families to make them prove that they are deserving of this public benefit? Like, that whole, like, welfare, kind of of piece. Right? How can we really simplify it and make it easy for families to to navigate?
So that's something that I know our state is currently working towards, but, we definitely wanted to highlight it as a really important thing as well as outside of just CDEC programs as well. Expand Early Head Start childcare partnerships through local, state, and federal funding, which would support learning and development. Improve family tax credits by offering a monthly payment option and expanding access via better family outreach, which would support economic mobility. And we've made some progress here in Colorado around that. That has actually, lifted so many families out of poverty through the family affordability tax credit.
But, is there more that we can do? Expand early childhood mental health consultation and other evidence based supportive services in child serving settings to support early social emotional development and inclusion. That supports learning and development, whole person health and well-being. Improve behavioral health screenings and referrals and train healthcare workers on suicide prevention and harm reduction to address maternal and paternal mood, anxiety, psychosis, and substance use disorders as a part of well child visits in support of whole
person health and well-being. And then last but certainly not least, train early educators and administrators to identify unfair assumptions and use evidence based behavior management practices, policies, procedures, and approaches to end exclusionary discipline, which supports learning and development and whole person health and well-being. And I would just like to flag that there were different words used in some of these policy priorities previously, but we did have to go through because this is a federal grant, we did have to go through and make some changes.
So you'll see that some of the words, like, we would have traditionally maybe used equity or bias, may be changed here to reflect the current landscape that we are existing under. So I just wanted to flag that for folks, and this has to be federally compliant. But I hope you all understand what we are getting at with some of the language here. So, I just wanna share that there is the the full list of the 56 policies that rose to the top are in the appendix of the report, but 56 felt a little unreasonable.
So here's your top 10. But you can go and see what were, like, our honorable mentions, in the appendix. And then if you can go to the next slide. Just wanted to spend some time here picking your brain a little bit. First of all, like, what thoughts do you have? What feedback do you have? And utilizing some of these questions here, to help us, think through the next steps for the ACCS grant. We'll have we have about six months left into twenty twenty six, and we're also thinking through sustainability for the future of what pieces should be sustained and what pieces should we continue to work on through ECLC work groups or other
spaces. And so just wanna open it up for folks' thoughts. Question. Is it quiet? I, again, thank you guys so much for this. This is amazing. I think maybe oh, great, Happy. Let's get to you. But I just was gonna make the point that I think after folks read the report and see the road map, I think they're gonna maybe have more specific feedback. And let's not forget we wanna do a formal motion to accept this report, but, let's get to happy. Yes. Thank you. Sue, the the last point was one I wanted to to make sure I asked her
to elaborate on what what specifically, what specific action do we need to take today. This this has been an extraordinarily hardworking working group, and I just I just wanna thank you all for, the methodical and, just really detailed process that you've gone through to get to this distillation, and I know it was painful to to get actually to this top 10. There's so much so much to be done. I'm curious about we think of those top 10 priorities and how to make them actionable as as
the question on the screen indicates, whether you you all have considered some scenarios around outcomes that we we might expect by following, you know, through on some of these policy recommendations, the the the kinds of changes that we we would hope to see, because I think they would be very it would be very helpful as we think about what what, action steps we should take to see the the endpoint, you know, where where where the goal where you've set the goal posts.
So if you could, maybe, reflect on that for a minute. Yeah. I can start. So in each in in the report, we kind of explore each policy a little bit deeper and talk through, like, why, we think this is an important thing, and what outcomes we potentially think, we could, seek, as well as, like, what the Colorado context currently is, at least at the time at the time of the writing of the report, and, like, what are some policy opportunities or examples from other states. So you can see that, kind of flow for each, for each of the top 10.
And so we talk a little bit about, like, for instance. Right? HICCUPF and CHIP plus cover forty four percent of births in the state and more than forty percent of Colorado's children. So continuous, eligibility for children zero to three, ensuring that they don't fall off of Medicaid inappropriately and have that continuous access during that first three years of life, which we know is so important, you know, what what that could mean for families. Because right now, we we have seen that there's a lot of procedural disenrollments for for children, because of, you know, families just not moving a lot or not completing their paperwork.
But then we also list some of the outcomes, in terms of, like, a study that showed that children enrolled in Medicaid longer cost the state less money overall. And in the long run, they do better in school, they make more money, they pay more taxes as adults, and they have fewer health complications as adults. Right? So kind of playing that out to your point, as much as we were able to with, like, long term outcomes, we were able to put that in the report. Great. Thank you. Perfect, Christina. So we would like to entertain a motion now to endorse the ECLC to endorse
this report. And then as Mary, stated, they can begin to distribute it widely. Tell her. Tell her, did you have a question, or are you gonna make I do. I have a question, but then I'll make the motion. So it's just, I didn't see, support for teen parent, program in a specific area. Is it there and I missed it? Because that is, in our community, been a really beneficial support. So if it's in there, let me know where. But, we did not have that elevate to be specifically called out in the top 10. I think Might fit under,
that, multi I thought maybe it would be a subactivity under the multigenerational, because that would support both the child and the parent, not in this, but in the actual in the longer report. So I just just wanted to put out that that that has had really positive, outcomes for our community and would love for it to be part of that. But I will definitely, I think these priorities look great, So I would move to accept the policy priority priorities shared with us. Right? I second. Great. Thank you.
All those in favor, I, Kimberly or Ruth and Helm? I. Thank you. Let me see the next one. Any acquisition? Anybody non favor at ECLC and those in this report? Alright. It's like it's passed. Thank you so much again, Mary and Christina for your leadership, your work on this. Really, really appreciate it. It's gonna be some really important, products that can out of this that can really help move policy forward. Alright. We've done it. Almost, guys. We now would love to have commissioner updates if any commissioners have updates they'd like
to offer and also public comments. This is the time. If you would like to make a public comment, it would be helpful for us if you put your name and organization that you represent in the comments. If you're unable to do that, you can just verbally do it, but we would like the next few minutes for that. I can jump in. I just wanted to give the, commission an update. We had a ballot measure seven a, on our most recent November ballot. And I had, shared some information with the team, but we were able to pass the creation of the early childhood development service district,
which is now gonna administer new funding for early care and education for local families. And it's a very exciting moment for our valley here in the Roaring Fork, and beyond because it is a parachute to Aspen service area. But it's just very exciting for us to be able to, have something like this to actually be helping our community and our families, especially in a moment like this where, as we've shared along this entire meeting, feels really, financially difficult. And so this renewed commitment for our,
families and our kids and our students and our youngest learners is really important. So just wanted to share that celebration. Thank you so much, Jasmine. That goes along with a couple of other important ballot initiatives that were passed, Laramie County and some other communities. So we had a very positive local legislative some important legislative within this discussion. I do wanna just point out though what you said about the special district. The ECLC was very supportive of the legislature a couple of years ago,
allowing early childhood special districts to be formed. These are very similar to Do the way that we find fire services in the state library, services that cross municipalities, and that make more sense to do, at scale, certain economies of scale, sometimes that a community can't do on their own. So now in our state, we do legally have the ability to form these commissions or these, special districts. And the, Parachute Valley, special district that Jasmine just mentioned goes out first.
And hopefully, not the last two. So, we'll keep working on those. Alright. Anything else? I have a totally self serving announcement. Well, yeah. Of course. Let's hear it. I, my my book is coming out. It's on presale right now on Amazon. It is called called it's a textbook, kind of a textbook. Becoming a Culturally Responsive Teacher Sustaining the Cultures of Young Children. Really, really, really excited about that. If you're interested, I just put it in the chat. Congratulations. That's super exciting. Just do these things in your spare time.
I need to write a book. I think writing is my love language. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. That's great. Alright. Well, like I said, you've done it, and we maybe we'll give you ten minutes back in your day. Let's let me make sure there isn't anything else I'm supposed to update you guys on. Oh, we are going to yes. This is important. So for our February meeting, which would be 02/26/1926. Should be the next time we get together. We are going to be reviewing the CDAC independent evaluation report,
and it would be really helpful if you were able to review. Christina will send that out to everyone. Maybe maybe Shannon will be back again, our new mommy. That whoever you receive that, please take the time to review that before the meeting so that we can really take a more substantive dive into those recommendations. And our goal is to, have the ECLC take a leadership role with following up on some of those recommendations. And what we'd like to do at the February meeting is, like I said, have a conversation where we could maybe prioritize
on the work of the ECLC as it relates to that really, really important and valuable evaluation. Alright. I think that's it, guys. Thank you so much. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, everyone. Same twenty two. Days. Yeah. See you next year. Sure. Bye bye. And then come on.