Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) appreciates the opportunity to provide the following comments on New Jersey’s proposed FY 2013 State Budget.

The proposed budget includes two important funding requests for children and families – the restoration of the Earned Income Tax Credit to help low-income working families and a $14.6 million increase to support rising preschool enrollments in New Jersey’s nationally- recognized preschool program.  In addition, funding is preserved for NJ FamilyCare, which provides free- or low-cost health coverage to thousands of children.

These are positive proposals and we hope you will continue to support these key programs in the 2013 budget.

However, it is important to note that New Jersey has yet to make good on its promise to provide high-quality preschool to 30,000 children living outside of the 35 districts currently receiving state funding. Even though New Jersey’s school funding law mandates state preschool aid for these children, this has never been fully funded.

Research shows that investing in quality preschool provides young children with the skills necessary to be “kindergarten ready” and is one of the most effective ways to close the persistent achievement gap. This benefits both children and taxpayers, as more children grow up to contribute to their communities.

It is time to begin making at least a down payment on the promise of preschool to the children in these districts.

Child Care Issues
Over the past five years, New Jersey has steadily cut funding to child care provided before and after preschool and during the summer for children living in special needs districts. This has been done through tightening eligibility requirements so that fewer families qualify for this critical child care.

Under the new rules, families must provide onerous documentation to prove their income. For many low-income, seasonal and part-time workers, this is extremely difficult to produce. Accepted documentation also varies from county to county, further complicating the process.

In addition, parents must document that they work 25 hours per week, but for many parents working at unstable jobs, hours fluctuate from week to week. While a parent’s work hours may dip occasionally slightly below the 25-hour cutoff, their need for child care remains.

These changes have resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of 3- and 4-year-olds being cared for in safe environments before and after preschool and during the summer. It has also meant that thousands of families and children no longer have access to the full day of care and education promised when the “wraparound’’ child care was added to the preschool day in 2001.

To make matters worse, the significant funding saved through these changes – roughly $13 million in FY 2012 alone – has never been re-invested in addressing the child care needs of these families and those living in other parts of the state.

As money has been lost from the “wrap-around” portion of the funding, centers providing these services are struggling to cover the costs of even the mandated six hours of high-quality preschool, as well as to provide quality child care. The wrap-around and preschool programs are jointly funded by the Departments of Education and Human Services, with DOE paying for the 6-hour preschool portion of the day and DHS funding child care before and after preschool.
Early care directors fear they will be unable to maintain quality preschools, as the shrinking dollars fail to fully fund their high-quality classrooms.

In addition, about 9,000 children continue to languish on a waiting list, as their working parents wait for child care assistance. These funds could also be directed to efforts to improve the quality of child care at centers across New Jersey.

In these difficult economic times, safe, reliable, quality child care is essential for working parents to make ends meet. To erode this program through a series of cuts and then fail to reinvest those funds into building strong early learning systems is short-sighted and damaging to New Jersey’s children.

 To address these issues, ACNJ recommends that the state reinvest the funds saved through these changes to build a stronger early care and education system, including:
 
 Providing adequate funding through the Department of Education to fully fund existing high-quality preschools.
 Provide money to expand these successful preschools to other low-income children, as required by the school funding law.
 Provide assistance to reduce the number of children languishing on a child care waiting list and other unserved children.
 Adopt statewide documentation requirements that are more reasonable to allow seasonal, part-time and other non-traditional, low-income workers to prove their income and work hours to ensure all eligible children receive this assistance.
 Increase the investment in strengthening a system to improve the quality of child care in centers around the state.

We appreciate your continued commitment to the well-being of New Jersey’s youngest residents. Thank you for the opportunity to address these important issues today.