Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee Public hearing on FY 2023 State Budget

Testimony Provided by: Jaclyn Falzarano on behalf of the Early Childhood Education Advocates (ECEA)

Thank you, Chairman Sarlo and Members of the Senate Budget Committee for allowing me to speak today.

My name is Jaclyn Falzarano, VP of Government Relations for the Early Childhood Education Association (ECEA) representing thousands of private childcare providers throughout the state of New Jersey. I am also the VP of Quality Assurance for Lightbridge Academy, the only childcare franchise headquartered in New Jersey, with corporate offices located in Iselin. We currently operate 43 centers throughout the State.

Over the past year, as the State started to emerge from COVID and we attempted to get “back to normal”, you have no doubt repeatedly heard that the childcare crisis disproportionately impacts working women – more women have failed to return to the workforce due to the lack of childcare in general and the lack of infant/toddler care more specifically. Additionally, teacher shortages and the inability to hire staff has impacted the ability of a licensed childcare center to offer enough supply to meet demand.

I am here to talk further about the childcare crisis in NJ and the need for a mixed-delivery system for UPK.

What we in the childcare industry find troubling is that there is a belief that increasing the number of Universal Pre-K classrooms for three- and four-year-old children within public schools will help solve the childcare crisis.  Nothing can be further from the truth. 

The truth is that providing more and more three- and four-year-old UPK classrooms within a public school drives the childcare industry into a deeper crisis, since quality licensed centers depend on the increased staff/student ratios in their three- and four-year-old classrooms to offset the high cost of providing infant and toddler care caused by staff ratios those classrooms which are as small as one staff for four infants.

Simply put: if you take three- and four-year-old children out of licensed centers and place them into public schools, childcare centers will close because they cannot sustain financially with ONLY infant and toddler programs.

This is why groups such as NJBIA, the NJ Chamber, the YMCA’s and ACNJ advocate for a mixed delivery system where licensed, high-quality, community-based, for-profit and not-for-profit childcare centers are partners in the delivery of UPK rather than being displaced by taxpayer funded classrooms.

UPK is not childcare. UPK is displacing childcare, and unless a mixed delivery system is put into place, childcare will be gone.

There is no reason a school district cannot develop public/private partnerships with licensed community-based childcare providers. In fact, NJDOE allows for the partnership. NJDOE Code (6A:13A-9.4) states that:

The preschool program may be offered by the district board of education within a mixed delivery system that includes in-district, private provider and local Head Start agency settings provided that the private provider and/or local Head Start agency program(s) with which the district board of education contracts comply with the school district’s program requirements, including the employment of appropriately licensed and qualified teaching staff.

The problem is that instead of MAY, the Code should read “WILL” or “SHALL.”  Because the language is permissive, school districts do not opt for public private partnerships. Rather, they create publicly funded classrooms which compete directly with the childcare industry. Mixed delivery is not going to occur until it is mandated that school districts partner with private providers.

If the State doesn’t start looking for another way, infant/toddler care will be non-existent in the future because childcare programs cannot survive without three- and four-year-old classrooms.

Our ask today is for a mixed-delivery system of Universal Pre-K and regulatory language that will make it mandatory for School District Boards of Education to partner with the quality, licensed, community-based childcare centers – encouraging private providers to continue to grow, offering schedules that are more conducive to parent needs and providing a safe environment with the highest standards of environmental protection required by the NJDEP.

Thank you.