Witnesses urge H.248 changes to help child-care openings and meet federal rules

At a House Human Services Committee hearing on H.248, two witnesses representing early-childhood organizations said the bill makes helpful technical changes, urged a provision to allow emergency financial relief for programs that are about to become licensed, and asked the committee to require the state to model the cost of meeting new federal affordability rules.

"It's working," Sarah Kenny, chief policy officer at Let's Grow Kids, told members, citing increased enrollment in Vermont's Child Care Financial Assistance Program and program openings since Act 76 took effect. Kenny said family enrollment in the program has risen about 40 percent since those changes went into effect and that public investment has helped open more than 100 new child-care programs and create roughly 600 net additional child-care spaces and about 230 new early‑childhood jobs.

Kenny and Erin Roche, Vermont director of First Children's Finance, described two related priorities: (1) giving the commissioner authority to use limited "extraordinary financial relief" for sites that are in the process of becoming licensed or registered and face immediate problems, and…