Home visiting programs support families and children in the first and most important years of a child’s development. Kids don’t come with instruction manuals, so many local providers bring crucial services directly to families’ living rooms. As paraphrased by DE Thrives:

Home visiting is a free program where a nurse or support specialist visits a family’s home, or place that works for them, to support what the family and child need. The nurse or specialist will give tips, connect families with services, and continue to support the family and child through early development.

Research shows that evidence-based home visiting programs are proven to be beneficial for families and children ages birth to five. Home visiting programs are also one of the highest return on investments states can make, yet Delaware only serves about two percent of families with children under age five in Delaware.

A new resolution introduced in the legislature could help Delaware begin to identify solutions and strategies to address challenges home visiting programs face statewide.

What’s in the resolution?

Senate Concurrent Resolution 50 (SCR 50) calls for the creation of an annual report on home visiting programs in Delaware. SCR 50, introduced by Senator Kyle Evans Gay, provides the protocols for the report and requires it be produced by the Department of Health and Social Services with the Department of Education and the Delaware Home Visiting Community Advisory Board. The annual report must include a summary of current practices and challenges, as well as program recommendations. More specifically, the report must have:

• A summary of all evidence-based home visiting programs, including operating agencies, funding streams, geographic reach, demographic and utilization data, performance measures, etc.
• A section addressing challenges to delivery of services based on needs.
• Recommendations for improvement that include issues around financing, recruitment and retention of staff and families, strategies for equitable access and capacity, research on best practices, assessment of potential resources for families, data collection strategies, and family engagement techniques.

Once complete, the annual report would need to be submitted for review by the governor, the Delaware State Senate, the Delaware State House of Representatives, the Delaware Kids’ Caucus, and the Delaware Early Childhood Council no later than November of each year.

Why does this matter?

Home visiting programs employ trained social service professionals and nurses to address the various needs of young children and their families. Delaware offers a wide range of evidence-based home-vising programs such as: Nurse Family Partnership, Healthy Families America, Parents as Teachers, and Early Head Start. Home-visiting programs benefit parents as well as children and can also serve as a connector to quality child care programs.

Despite the benefits home visiting programs provide, only about two percent of eligible families (with children birth through age five) take advantage of them. Only 80 percent of all statewide home visiting opportunities are utilized. As a result, continuous expansion and improvements have been elusive. Research shows that 65,400 children and 50,400 families could benefit from home visiting services.

Another challenge is transparency. Currently, there is no annual public report on home visiting programs in Delaware. This resolution would provide that transparency along with strategies and recommendations on ways Delaware can address challenges and expand access to more families and children.

Stakeholders across the state have recognized the importance of doing more to strengthen and expand home visiting programs in Delaware.

• The DECC along with First Lady Tracey Quillen Carney, have both expressed their shared vision of a universal tiered system of home visiting in the future.
• The Vision Coalition’s plan for Delaware education, Student Success 2025, also includes a recommendation and vision for home visiting in Delaware. Specifically, the recommendation calls for “increased access to evidence-based home-visiting services for families of children most at-risk for school failure.”

Implementing an annual report that looks at challenges and recommends strategies for improvement would help Delaware bring crucial services to more families.

As advocates and experts have noted, Delaware’s early childhood governance is fragmented, leading to an inefficient and complex system for families and professionals to navigate.

Over the past decade, Delaware made progress on consolidating, streamlining, and simplifying the many governing bodies that manage early childhood services and education.

Now, two recent changes move Delaware one step closer to consolidating its ever-complex system: a new bill that would make early learning services and transitions stronger for families and children, and the involvement of the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) in a key child care grant.

What does the bill do?

This week, Senate Bill 136 (SB 136) was introduced. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Laura Sturgeon, transfers responsibility for early intervention services for children ages birth to three from the Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) to DDOE.

For context, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) requires states to provide an early intervention services system for eligible infants and toddlers and their families. Delaware’s Infant and Toddlers Early Intervention Program, which serves children from birth to age three (or what is known as IDEA Part C), currently lives under the Department of Health and Social Services, while the intervention program for children ages three to five (known as IDEA Part B) currently lives under DDOE.

By linking both age ranges together under the DDOE, this bill creates a more seamless transition of services from birth through age five for young children and their families.

What about the child care grant?

The grant program, called the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) does two things: (1) provides resources to states that enable low-income parents to work or pursue education and training while promoting the learning and development of their children, and (2) provides funding to enhance the quality of child care for all children.

Currently in Delaware, the CCDF is administered by DHSS. It was recently announced in Delaware’s CCDF draft plan that the grant program will now be co-administered by DDOE and DHSS. This is an important change that improves coordination between advisory bodies that are currently responsible for early learning governance. Co-administration of CCDF is also important because CCDF funding is already split between DDOE and DHSS. Funds from CCDF go to child care licensing and quality initiatives currently governed by DDOE. At DHSS, they go toward Purchase of Care, the state subsidy that helps centers cover child care tuition for low-income families.

Why is the consolidation of early childhood governance important?

If the preceding paragraphs sound complex and a little confusing, well, therein lies the problem. The administration and oversight of early childhood education in Delaware is complicated. For starters, early childhood education does not solely live in the state’s department of education. Early childhood programs have to work across three state departments for licensing, quality ratings, and funding between DDOE, DHSS, and the Department of Services for Children, Youth and their Families. Clearly not the most efficient use of their time.

Families often describe feeling discouraged, isolated, or lost when dealing with early learning bureaucracy—as we heard via the public feedback received during the strategic planning process for a preschool development grant (known as the PDG), led by the Office of Early Learning and Early Childhood Council. Professionals also find the system difficult to navigate, especially with political, regulatory, and administrative obstacles in place.

The Vision Coalition’s plan for Delaware education, Student Success 2025, noted the unaligned early learning system and recommended greater consolidation in early learning governance. It calls for “an aligned state governance structure to enable unified and efficient decision making.”

Delaware is slowly untangling the knot that took decades to create. Today there are eight divisions (instead of 11) related to early childhood education spread across three government agencies. We hired our first-ever Associate Secretary for Early Childhood Support, and moved regulatory offices over to the Department of Education for consistency.

SB 136 and the involvement of DDOE in governing the CCDF are both the next logical step in consolidating governance. Both changes would put us closer to achieving the goal of a streamlined and simplified early childhood system that is efficient for both families and early learning professionals.

Over the past year, the early childhood industry and workforce has plunged into crisis from the COVID-19 pandemic. As we wrote in March, the child care industry faced crisis conditions even before COVID-19 due to the poor compensation of early learning professionals and the negative impact it has on both educator wellbeing and the quality of early learning.

A target wage scale for early childhood educators, we wrote, could improve compensation and set a base salary for all workers. Establishing a compensation scale is also a critical first step to professionalizing the field and investing in a workforce that has long been overlooked and overworked. This month, a new resolution introduced in the State Senate aims to do just that.

The resolution, introduced by Sen. Kyle Evans Gay, directs the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) and the Delaware Early Childhood Council (DECC) to create a state compensation scale for early child care educators by this October. The scale should address all child care educators (such as lead teachers, teaching aides, and directors) and include employment experience and common certifications that early childhood professionals receive.

The resolution also calls for the DDOE and DECC to establish a professional pathway consisting of college course and certification for early childhood educators that is linked to the wage scale. The idea is to help early childhood educators advance in their careers.

The resolution, nor the creation of a targeted wage scale, would not mandate providers to pay their employees a certain wage. It simply would set an aspirational target for the growing community of early child care advocates.

A statewide, targeted wage scale for early childhood professionals will bring the fair compensation the workforce so desperately deserves. It can also be used to help guide additional state investments in child care to ensure pay bumps for the early learning workforce reaches a living wage, on par with K-12 educators.

The resolution mentions that the wage scale can also be used to inform the cost of care estimator, an alternative method to the market rate study, to estimate the cost of providing child care in Delaware. The cost of care estimator can then be used to establish Purchase of Care rates for the state budget in future years.

Early Learning Educators are Woefully Underpaid

A targeted wage scale is crucial to not only provide fair compensation to a high-skill profession that deserves higher wages, but to begin to address wage disparities between early learning and K-12 educators. As of 2019, the average annual salary in Delaware for a pre-K teacher is $27,820. A kindergarten teacher and an elementary school teacher each make more than double that amount, earning an average annual salary of $61,040 and $63,970, respectively. Additionally, many early learning professionals in Delaware have no benefits and have to maintain a second job to make ends meet. More specifically:

• Only 40 percent of early learning professionals in Delaware have healthcare benefits. Many miss out on other benefits, such as planning time and paid time off, unlike their K-12 counterparts.
• As of 2020, the average wage in Delaware for a pre-K teacher is $12.62. For a child care worker, the average wage is $10.60. A 2016 report showed that 75 percent of early childhood professionals receive an hourly wage instead of a salary with benefits.
• Without a livable wage and benefits, many child care workers have to maintain a second job to supplement their income, which includes about 13 percent of child care workers in Delaware

Disparities in pay between early learning professionals and their K-12 counterparts is also structural. Salaries for K-12 public school teachers in Delaware are already rooted in a wage scale, or pay schedule, that sets a base salary for all educators. This scale serves as an incentive for educators to increase their level of educational attainment as they increase their years of experience.

Currently, no such scale or incentive exists for pre-K or early learning professionals statewide.

In Delaware, there is no base, or starting salary for early learning professionals and no career pathway with financial incentives to increase their level of education along stackable credits, credentials, and experience—a model several other states have created.

Action in Other States

Some states, either through legislative action or through taskforces, have proposed targeted wage scales for the early learning workforce. Some states have worked on proposals to establish a targeted wage scale, while others have worked to create a more comprehensive look at the issue through additional policy initiatives. Examples include:

In Delaware, it’s an issue that’s long overdue. Stay tuned to this blog for continued updates.

Back in March, we wrote about how the federal stimulus dollars, specifically those provided through the American Rescue Plan Act, would impact Delaware’s schools. Since then, there have been updates at both the state and federal level regarding required plans and timing of allocations.

The federal government has provided three different stimulus packages in the last calendar year, each including more money for K-12 education than the next to combat the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the money provided for K-12 education, each stimulus package included dollars in areas of education such as early learning and higher education. States have also received stimulus funds at the state and local level, some of which is accessible to leverage for education.

Last Wednesday, Governor John Carney and Secretary of Education Susan Bunting publicly announced the state’s Accelerated Learning Plan, which will utilize federal stimulus dollars from December. The plan outlines how the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) will support Local Education Agencies (LEAs) —i.e., school districts and charter schools—to address the unfinished learning brought on by the pandemic. The plan includes four focus areas:

• Support the Use of High-Quality Instructional Materials: Access to high quality instructional materials such as Zearn Math and Summer Booster Literacy.
• Support Training and Professional Learning: Professional learning to support learning acceleration for educators and those working in nonprofit, summer and after-school programs.
• Support Leveraging Data to Diagnose Unfinished Learning: Support schools to assess and leverage data that supports educators in diagnosing unfinished learning.
• Support Structures to Accelerate Learning: Starting this summer, high-dosage tutoring will be available, with a focus on students who need the most support.

Implementation of the plan is set to start this summer. While LEAs are not required to take part in the plan, Sec. Bunting shared at a recent State Board of Education meeting that all 19 school districts and 21 out of the 23 charters have signed on for at least a part of the supports and resources offered in the plan. LEAs are in the process of cementing their own local plans using the funds they received from the second stimulus package passed in December.

The DDOE will host a Facebook Live event on May 13 at 6 p.m. to provide families with an overview of the plan. Links to the livestream can be accessed here. For any feedback or questions, email stakeholder.feedback@doe.k12.de.us.

What about the American Rescue Plan Act dollars?

Delaware’s Accelerated Learning Plan outlines how the state plans to use the stimulus dollars from December. But with the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in March, more money is headed to Delaware—a lot more money. In fact, two-thirds (approximately $274 million) of Delaware’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act’s dollars were released to the state on March 24, 2021. The Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) has 60 days to release the funds to school districts and charters. Find the department’s estimates on district and charter allocations here.

In April, the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) announced that all state education agencies are required to submit plans on how they intend to spend the American Rescue Plan Act dollars. This means that in order for the remaining funds to be released to Delaware, a plan must be submitted by DDOE and approved by the USDOE. The USDOE has released a template that departments of education can use. All states must submit their plan to USDOE by early June.

Additionally, LEAs are required to create a series of plans. One must detail the LEA’s plans for reopening and the second must outline how each LEA plans to spend their dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act. Return to school plans, as required by the American Rescue Plan Act, must be published within 30 days of the LEA receiving their federal stimulus dollars. LEA plans on how they plan to spend their ARPA allocation must be submitted to the Delaware Department of Education within 90 days of LEAs receiving their ARPA funds.

The U.S. Department of Education is also requiring states and LEAs to seek input from a wide variety of stakeholders on plans for spending ARPA funds. DDOE announced it will be engaging stakeholders to gather input, but details have yet to be released on how or when.

As we move forward, we’ll work to share answers to the questions we’re hearing from the field:

• What will the processes be for parents and the community to weigh in on state and local plans?
• Similar to what the USDOE is requiring of state plans, will the plans developed by LEAs need to be reviewed and approved by the state in order to get their remaining 33 percent of funds?
• How will the general public be able to track where this $1.4 billion dollars goes over time and how will the impact of these investments be measured and shared?

Resources for More Information

• Delaware’s Accelerated Learning Plan
• DOE Strategy to Accelerate Learning Presentation to State Board of Education
• American Rescue Plan Overview from the Delaware Department of Education
• ED Covid-19 Handbook Volume 2
• ExcelinEd American Rescue Plan Guiding Principles
• American Rescue Plan Act of 2021: Analysis of Funding for Education, Children, and Families
• The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 What’s in it for Equity – The Education Trust
• Maximizing the Impact of Federal K-12 Education Funding – 50Can