House bill on improving child care access advances
Rep. Samara Heavrin, R-Leitchfield, explains how House Bill 6 would improve child care access in Kentucky during Thursday’s House Families and Children Committee meeting. A high-res version can be found here.
FRANKFORT — A bill stakeholders say will improve child care access for Kentucky families cleared its first major hurdle on Thursday.
House Bill 6 is sponsored by House Families and Children Committee Chair Rep. Samara Heavrin, R-Leitchfield. She told the committee the legislation has been 18 months in the making with the Kentucky Collaborative on Child Care.
Heavrin described the collaborative as a group of more than 40 stakeholders from across the political spectrum. She said HB 6 has a long-term focus on affordability, quality and access.
“We’re focusing on working families and affordability, and (the bill) ensures the quality of early learning and access and options for parents,” Heavrin said. “These are long term reforms, not quick fixes.”
Heavrin said HB 6 addresses the certified child care community program, the Kentucky Advisory Council, micro child care centers, efforts focused on children with special needs, child care data and information, transparency, faith-based child care providers, child care assistance program improvements and employee child care assistance partnership reform.
HB 6 would also establish a pilot program to allow Kentucky’s military bases to work on an opportunity to have off-base child care.
Committee co-chair Rep. Nick Wilson, R-Williamsburg, kicked off discussion of the legislation by asking for more insight on micro child care centers.
Charles Aull, vice president of policy and research at the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, said micro centers are a new type of child care service that is different from a traditional child care center or home-based child care.
“The intent behind them is to address specific gaps within communities,” Aull said. “So things like third-shift care, drop-in care, rural child care and to support public and private partnerships.”
Aull said HB 6 would initially allow the existence of 10 micro centers – with no more than two in a single county at a time – with the ability to have as few as four children or as many as 24 children.
In the future, the general assembly could consider allowing more micro centers, but HB 6 is a start to give the state time to establish a regulatory framework, Aull said.
“What’s unique about them is they operate under a more flexible regulatory framework than what we see in traditional child care centers and certified family child care homes,” he added.
Another major provision of HB 6 is related to privatization of the state’s employee child care assistance partnership program, Heavrin said.
Rep. Tina Bojanowski, D-Louisville, asked if the bill provides new opportunities for public sector employees, like teachers, to use the program.
Heavrin said the program has been “a mess” since it was established in 2022. She said she wants to work on fixing the issues with the program before expanding it. The program has not taken off as quickly as originally planned.
Despite the problems, Heavrin said she thinks the state Division of Child Care has done a good job with the program despite it being out of their scope of practice.
“Hopefully in the next year or two we can look and see if we can include teachers and add public governments to it,” she said.
As Heavrin was preparing to present the bill, she said she thought about how child care access prevents some Kentuckians from starting families as early as they would like, if at all.
“I really think these programs in this bill are going to help future generations to come,” she said. “And hopefully it encourages more children if people want children. It is ok if they don’t, but we want to be able to help families and meet them where they’re at.”
The House Families and Children Committee voted to send HB 6 to the House floor by a 12-0 vote with one pass vote.
In explaining his “yes” vote, Rep. Robert Duvall, R-Bowling Green, thanked Heavrin and the other stakeholders for their work on the legislation.
“Kentucky is leading here,” he added. “And I love it.”