School-Age Child Care Policy Priorities

Recommended Actions:

• Expand the Child Care Advisory Council’s (CCAC’s) membership to ensure equitable representation, capacity, and resource sharing across all types of child care in Kentucky, especially school-age care. 
  • A KYOSA staff member now attends and presents updates at all CCAC meetings to ensure school-age needs are being shared and considered. Any formal change to the Council’s required list of members would require a statute revision.
• Ensure that the needs of school-age providers and the families they serve are meaningfully addressed and incorporated in future Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) State Plans.
  • The deadline for states to submit a final draft of their 2025-2027 CCDF State Plan is June 30, 2024. KYOSA is currently working closely with the Lead Agency (the Kentucky Division of Child Care) to ensure school-age needs are meaningfully addressed in the draft.

Recommended Actions:

• Establish an Administrative Regulations Review Committee (ARRC) to ensure state child care licensing standards, youth camp regulations, and exemptions are clear, reasonable, and appropriate for Kentucky’s diverse landscape of school-age programs and the children they serve. 
  • This is a top priority for KYOSA during the current Regular Session of the Kentucky General Assembly.
• Ensure the final administrative regulations associated with HB 499, which establishes the Employee Child Care Assistance Partnership program, support families’ child care needs through school-age. 
  • KYOSA is closely following the current Regular Session of the Kentucky General Assembly to monitor if this program will be funded past the initial pilot year and provide feedback on how to ensure equitable access for families seeking to use ECCAP assistance for school-age care.

Recommended Actions:

• Update Kentucky All STARS to include evidence-based school-age quality metrics under each domain.
  • The Kentucky Division of Child Care (DCC) is currently discussing a possible review and update to Kentucky All STARS within the next 1-2 years. KYOSA and the School-Age Child Care (SACC) Advisory Council stand ready to be a thought partner on this work.
• Train licensors to work in school-age environments and to understand what safe, quality school-age environments look like.
• Invest in partnerships that enable the Lead Agency to offer relevant and ongoing training and technical assistance (TTA) to school-age providers and staff.
  • KYOSA continues to work with DCC to increase the supply of relevant school-age training and professional development opportunities that are approved for credit in ECE-TRIS.

KYOSA stands ready to be a thought partner on school-age quality measurement, training and technical assistance (TTA), and professional development supports.

Recommended Actions:

• Finalize and adopt the proposed School-Age Youth Development credential.
  • The Kentucky SAYD Credential was adopted by the legislature and launched in January 2024. KYOSA and members of the SACC Advisory submitted letters of public comment on the draft administrative regulations during the open-comment period, but many systemic barriers remain that will prevent school-age staff from completing the required training hours. Future regulatory and statute revisions are needed to ensure equitable access to this credential for professionals exclusively working with school-age youth.
• Ensure wage increases and benefits made possible to front-line school-age program staff through federal COVID-relief funding can be sustained past impending funding cliffs by creating a dedicated source of state funding for afterschool and summer programs serving K-12 students.
• Revise the Kentucky Career Lattice to include relevant pathways for school-age professionals at each level.

Recommended Actions:

• Require all child care license exemptions to be verified by and recorded with the Kentucky Division of Regulated Child Care through a formal application process.
  • KYOSA has discussed this issue with DCC and provided examples from other states of how this could be done without placing an undue administrative burden on the state.
• Update Kentucky’s current public child care search tool to align with “best practices,” which include integrating both licensed and license-exempt programs into such tools.
  • The current public child care search tool does not include license-exempt providers, even though this is recommended by the federal Office of Child Care. Also, many of the search filters, such as the ability to search for only school-age programs, do not appear to be working as they should. KYOSA continues to bring this to DCC’s attention, as families rely on this tool to effectively locate child care in their area that will meet their needs.
• Ensure state child care data systems allow key data points, such as the number of children a provider serves, to be summarized by age group.
  • KYOSA continues to make recommendations to DCC on how to address current data gaps. KYOSA and DCC are hopeful that the new opportunity for providers to receive Brightwheel Child Care Management Software 100% free from DCC will allow the state to compile more accurate data on school-age supply and enrollment data.