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Child Care and Development Programs <br />
California has long been a leader in the nation in recognizing the value of quality child<br />
care and development programs for infants, toddlers, prekindergarten children, and<br />
school-age children. For more than 62 years, the California Department of Education<br />
(CDE) has developed and funded agencies throughout the state so that families can<br />
find safe, healthy, and educationally enriched environments for their children that are<br />
staffed by competent, caring adults. Funding is provided for services to low-income<br />
families, including welfare recipients, in licensed center-based programs; licensed family<br />
child care homes; and license-exempt settings, such as a family’s own home or the<br />
home of a relative or neighbor.<br />
The three major trends that have recently focused public attention on the value of<br />
children’s preschool education are (1) the unprecedented labor force participation of<br />
women with young children, which is creating a pressing demand for child care; (2) an<br />
emerging consensus among professionals and, to an even greater extent, among<br />
parents that young children should be provided with educational experiences; and<br />
(3) the accumulation of convincing evidence from research that young children are more<br />
capable learners than current practices reflect and that good educational experiences in<br />
the preschool years can have a positive impact on later school learning.<br />
In California, preschools, particularly publicly funded ones, have had a long, successful<br />
history. Today, well over half (62 percent) of all California’s young children attend<br />
preschool or Head Start programs prior to kindergarten.<br />
In August 2006, Governor Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 172 creating a new<br />
prekindergarten and family literacy program. The new program will be offered to eligible<br />
children the year before kindergarten enrollment. Programs must be located within the<br />
attendance area of elementary schools in deciles 1 to 3, inclusive, based on the 2005<br />
Academic Performance Index. The new prekindergarten and family literacy programs<br />
will provide age- and developmentally appropriate activities for children that are<br />
designed to facilitate their transition to kindergarten and opportunities for parents and<br />
legal guardians to work with their children on interactive literacy activities. The 2006<br />
Budget Act includes funding for the new program as follows: $45 million for<br />
prekindergarten services, $5 million for literacy activities, and $5 million to provide<br />
full-day services. The new program is expected to serve over 12,000 children annually.<br />
The child care and development system administered by the CDE continues to be the<br />
largest, most culturally diverse, and most comprehensive in the nation, with funding at<br />
over $2.3 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2006-2007. The CDE maintains approximately<br />
1,540 service contracts with approximately 788 public and private agencies supporting<br />
and providing services to 510,192 children (state FY 2004-05). Contractors include<br />
school districts, county offices of education, cities, local park and recreation districts,<br />
county welfare departments, other public entities, community-based organizations, and<br />
private agencies.<br />
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