Bridget Barden, the Vice-Chair of FCCAM and Chair of FCCAM's Public Policy Committee was able to attend the recent public hearing on LD 1760 "An Act to Support Children’s Healthy Development and School Readiness" and provide in-person testimony expressing FCCAM's support of this bill. This bill creates the First 4 ME Early Care and Education …
First4ME
You might have heard that there is going to be a hearing on Thursday, Feb. 13th in August on LD 1760 / First4ME a public-private partnership model for early care and education and workforce development. The bill is modeled after the national Early Head Start/Child Care Partnerships. Maine currently has a partnership between the Maine …
Legislative Session Update
The Executive Director of MaineAEYC, Tara Williams, has shared information from Maine Children's Alliance's last legislative update on the budget vote and final bill enactments. The Public Policy Committee of FCCAM wanted to share information about the bills we have been active on this legislative session. Maine State Budget Friday, June 14th, the Maine Legislature …
Update on Early Childhood Education and Care Bills
FCCAM Public Policy Committee received an update on the status of 2019 legislation and budget sent out to collaboration partners of Right from the Start. The state budget will not cover all the bills moved forward from committees. There will be some hard decisions needing to be made among the bills passed by the legislature …
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LD 1584 ~ ECE Workforce Bill Gets a Public Hearing 5/9/19
A public hearing has been scheduled for LD 1584 "An Act To Attract, Build and Retain an Early Childhood Education Workforce through Increased Training, Education and Career Pathway" on Thursday, May 9th. This is an Early Childhood Education workforce bill that establishes career pathways, supports career and technical education centers (CTE), an ECE apprenticeship program, funds …
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4 Upcoming Public Preschool Bills (updated 5/14/19)
Update: LD 1043 was the Public Pre-K bill that moved forward. Following public hearing 5/6/19 LD 1043 was voted: OTP -AM. Workshop session has not been scheduled as of this posting. Let’s look briefly at these 4 bills……… LD 1043 changes the start date to 2020/21 school year for all school administrative units to have …
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New On-line Process to Submit Testimony on Bills!
Beginning April 22, 2019 the Maine Legislature will no longer accept testimony through e-mail. With the large numbers of individual testimonies being submitted by emails to committee clerks, the Legislature has created a new process to submit testimony online. With this change, if you plan to provide testimony in-person you should not use the online …
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3 More Bills to Know About
There are 3 bills heading to committee and public hearing that the FCCAM's Public Policy Committee is currently following. We do not have the hearing date for all 3 at this time, but wanted providers to have the time to: digest the bills; be aware of the thoughts raised in Public Policy Committee discussions; and …
LD 222 Discussion Continues…….
(*updated 2/12/19 with FCCAM testimony) While the original intent of LD 222 was to stop all child care programs from charging families when they are closed, the bill as it will be heard on Feb 13th covers programs providing subsidized care. FCCAM has not been able to confirm if there will be any amendments to …
LD 222 (HP185) “An Act To Prohibit Child Care Providers from Requiring Payment during Vacation Closures”
There has been a good amount of discussion among providers upon hearing of this bill that is coming before the Health and Human Services Committee on the afternoon of Feb. 13th. Following is information available from the State of Maine legislative site on this bill. Presented by Representative Michael PERKINS Michael.Perkins@legislature.maine.gov93 Willey Point, Oakland, ME …
