Marin County Child Care Commission – Your Local Planning ...



PLEASE USE YOUR LETTERHEAD

Please send letter to the Governor’s office by fax to (916) 558-3160 or email to leg.unit@gov.

and a copy to Assemblyman Thurmond´s office by fax to (916) 319-2115 or email to Isabella.Gonzalez-Potter@asm.

DATE

Honorable Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. 

State of California 

State Capitol, P.O. Box 942849

C/O Office of the Governor, First Floor 

Sacramento, California 94249

RE: AB 435 (Thurmond): Child care and development services: individualized county child care subsidy plans: Counties of Alameda Contra Costa, Marin, and Sonoma—SUPPORT

Dear Governor Brown,

The NAME OF YOUR ORGANIZATION is proud to support AB 435, which authorizes Contra Costa, Marin, and Sonoma County to develop and implement individualized county child care subsidy plans. If approved, this bill will allow Contra Costa, Marin, and Sonoma County to maximize funding and efficiently use child care subsidy funds to serve more children and their working families. Specifically, in our county AB 435 will support us to:

• Meet child care needs - The cost of living in Marin, as in Contra Costa and Sonoma Counties, is well beyond the state median. Due to criteria that sets income eligibility, reimbursement, and fund restrictions at a statewide level, many clearly deserving children are not allowed to participate in the state’s subsidized early care and education programs in our county.

• Help child care providers stay in business - Due to high rents and labor wages, agencies that receive state reimbursement rates to provide child care are unable to cover programming and operational costs, forcing organizations to close or stop serving children who qualify for the subsidy.

• Make immediate use of funds - Allowing for local flexibility will enable stakeholders in our county to address the significant unmet child care need for income-eligible and working families.

• Include Department of Social Services (DSS) - Recent amendments allow flexibility for county DSS representatives and/or their CalWORKs contractors to participate in pilot development.

AB 435 does not take funding from other counties and is modeled successful pilots in San Mateo, San Francisco, and Alameda Counties, and last year’s AB 2368 for Santa Clara County. The pilot plan will be developed and approved locally, then sent to the State Department of Education for approval. An annual report relating to the success of the plan is also required.

AB 435 is a pragmatic approach to stretch already allocated child care dollars to serve the most families in need. We strongly support statewide reform to improve aspects of the child care field, but, meanwhile, AB 435 adds needed flexibility in counties like ours that are most impacted by the Bay Area’s high cost of providing care and increases access to quality early care and education for the most vulnerable children in our region.

For these reasons, name of your organization respectfully requests for you to sign AB 435 into law. We sincerely appreciate your leadership on this critical issue.

Sincerely,

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