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Early Care and Education

When all children start with a fair chance to learn, Ohio’s schools will finally have a fair chance to succeed. Fair chances start with giving every family the tools they need to help their young children develop social, emotional, and academic readiness for school. That readiness will lay the groundwork for a healthy, safe, and stable learning environment for all children.

Voluntary Full-Day Kindergarten for All Children

Extensive research shows that full-day kindergarten allows more developmentally appropriate instruction and provides many benefits to children.

Secure general revenue funding so that all children in Ohio have the opportunity to attend voluntary, high-quality full-day kindergarten in any appropriate setting.

Physical and Behavioral Health

Secure general revenue funding to provide for voluntary assessment, screening and treatment to support the healthy social and emotional development of children ages 0-6.

High-Quality Early Care and Education System for Ohio

• Secure general revenue funding to expand voluntary, high-quality pre-kindergarten programs for 3 and 4 year olds in any appropriate setting.
• Create a new funding system for quality early care and education programs.
• Improve quality by expanding and enhancing Ohio’s quality rating system.
• Improve teacher training and professional development opportunities.

Early Care

Ohio can support families of young children by partnering early with parents to identify developmental delays and problems and provide treatment when needed.

Our recommendation: Strengthen the Help Me Grow program by:

• increasing provider rates
• investing state dollars in the segment of the program that provides services to children with diagnosed developmental delays (known as IDEA Part C services) in order to fulfill federal mandates, and
• maintaining funding to continue prevention services to children at risk of developmental delays.