1 MARCH 6, 2020 SP EDUCATION COMMITTEE 10:00 A.M. PUBLIC HEARING CHAIRPERSON: Senator Douglas McCrory SENATORS: Berthel, Daughtery-Abrams, Bizzarro, Flexer, Kushner, Lesser, Winfield REPRESENTATIVES: Sanchez, McCarty, Barry, Blumenthal, Bolinsky, Candelaria, Comey, Cook, Currey, Devlin, Farnen, Genga, Gibson, Gilchrest, Haines, Hill, Johnson, Kennedy, Kokoruda, Lavielle, Lemar, Linehan, McGee, Miller, Napoli, Pavalock-D’Amato, Rotella, Simanski SENATOR MC CRORY (2ND): Good Morning and welcome to today’s Education Public Hearing. We are going to convene the meeting but I have to inform you of the Rules of this Committee and they are very specific. So I’m gonna tell ya, I am a teacher and you’re in my classroom. When you come up to testify you have two minutes to speak. Now, after two minutes you’re gonna hear a bell, let ‘em know what it sounds like. Bell? I want to be very clear. You got the bell over there? You’re gonna hear a bell and once you hear the bell, your next words out your mouth should be, “therefore in conclusion” but if you’re prepared ahead of time, you will know you should be done by that bell. Okay? Everybody understand the rules? All right, great job. Bobby. 2 MARCH 6, 2020 SP EDUCATION COMMITTEE 10:00 A.M. PUBLIC HEARING REP. SANCHEZ (25TH): Thank you. Good Morning everyone and Happy International Women’s Day. [Applause]. And I truly believe that one day we will have a woman president. Just waiting for that day [Applause]. But I want to thank the members that are present, hopefully this will be smooth and quick process today [Laughs] and I also want to welcome the Mashantucket Pequots that are present today because of one of our very important Bills that we have for Public Hearing [Applause]. And I am going to turn it over now to Senator Berthel who is going to read out some interesting rules for this hearing room. SENATOR BERTHEL (32ND): Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good Morning everyone and welcome to all of our visitors. We look forward to a productive Public Hearing this morning. In the interest of safety I would ask that you note the location of and access to the exits in this hearing room. The two doors through which you entered the room are the emergency exits and are marked with exit signs. In the event of emergency, the door behind the Legislators can also be used. In the event of an emergency please walk quickly to the nearest exit. After exiting the room go to your left and exit the building by the main entrance or follow the exit signs to one of the other exits. Please quickly exit the building and follow any instructions from the Capital Police. Do not delay and do not return unless and until you are advised that it is safe to do so. In the event of a lockdown announcement please remain in the Hearing Room and stay away from the exit doors until an “All Clear” announcement is heard. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 3 MARCH 6, 2020 SP EDUCATION COMMITTEE 10:00 A.M. PUBLIC HEARING REP. SANCHEZ (25TH): Thank you, Senator. Do you have any word to say, Representative McCarty? REP. MC CARTY (38TH): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I would just like to welcome everyone today to the hearing and I’m looking forward to hearing your testimony. So welcome. SENATOR MC CRORY (2ND): Thank you, so with that said, first up to testify we have Commissioner Beth Bye. You get more than two minutes [Laughs]. COMMISSIONER BYE: I’ve asked my Chief Legal Counsel, Mike Curley and Director of Licensing Deb Johnson to join me in case questions come up. So, Good Morning, Senator McCrory, Representative Sanchez, Senator Berthel, Representative McCarthy and distinguished members of the Education Committee. My name is Beth Bye. I am the Commissioner at the Office of Early Childhood. I am here today to testify concerning our three agency bills – H.B. 5216, 5218, and 5219 - and four other early childhood proposals – H.B. 5213, 5220, 5222, and 3579. I will start with our three agency bills, which are proposed after much thought and discussion within the OEC and with the Governor’s Office and the Office of Policy & Management. Our proposals support the health and safety of children in early childhood settings – family child care homes, group child care homes, child care centers, and youth camps. As the agency that is responsible for the licensure of these childhood programs, we place the basic health and safety of children as our highest priority. 4 MARCH 6, 2020 SP EDUCATION COMMITTEE 10:00 A.M. PUBLIC HEARING The first Bill I want to discuss is 5216 AN ACT ELIMINATING THE LICENSURE EXEMPTION FOR CERTAIN ORGANIZATIONS PROVIDING CHILD CARE SERVICES. H.B. 5216 would improve the health and safety of children by requiring child care programs that are operated by various organizations to be licensed. The Bill seeks to eliminate the licensure exemptions for the following programs: nationally chartered boy’ and girls’ clubs that are exclusively for school-age children; Solar Youth Inc.; Cardinal Sheehan Center; Organized Parents Make a Difference (OPMAD); and Leadership, Education and Athletics Partnership (LEAP). The regulations that govern licensing establish the minimum health and safety requirements for programs that must meet and are designed to protect the health, safety and well-being of participating children. Licensing ensures accountability, oversight, and transparency of these baseline standards in critical areas such as abuse and neglect, staff-child ratios, staff qualifications, health care, educational requirements and physical plant safety. Over 4,000 child care programs throughout the state, including youth camps, are licensed and uphold the standards outlined in legislation. The fact that some child care programs are not required to be licensed creates a lack of equity and fairness when regulations that serve children of the same age and needs are not applied universally. Children served by unlicensed exempt programs do not benefit from the same level of health and safety protection offered by licensed programs through the conduct of staff criminal record checks, ongoing 5 MARCH 6, 2020 SP EDUCATION COMMITTEE 10:00 A.M. PUBLIC HEARING unannounced inspections and complaint investigations by an outside source. All children, regardless of the financial status of the child care program they attend, should be afforded the same health and safety protections. At the OEC we receive complaints from parents, child care staff, local officials and others about programs that are some are licensed and license- exempt. Such allegations involve such things as child abuse and neglect, health and safety hazards, and lack of supervision. While these allegations may be particularly alarming, the OEC has no authority to investigate such concerns when allegations are made against license-exempt programs that fall outside the OEC’s oversight. We are concerned that these programs have no outside health and safety oversight to protect children in their care. In multiple cases, the organization sought and secured the licensure exemption through legislation after the OEC responded to a complaint, investigated, and determined the program needed to be licensed. So we have had discussions with programs and we are open to conversations around some of the challenges the programs face because we want children to be in high quality programs. We are available to provide technical assistance to these programs to support them through the licensure process and we can help them identify what they see as hurdles to licensure and work to find solutions. I wanted to just mention two things that are not exactly in my testimony about this one is that child care regulations are in the review process right now. I approved them like three weeks after starting. They have been through the Attorney 6 MARCH 6, 2020 SP EDUCATION COMMITTEE 10:00 A.M. PUBLIC HEARING General, through the Office of Policy Management, they take time and we made changes upon those recommendations. Now they have been back through that process again and they are on their way to Public Hearing. In those regulations are some of the concerns that after school programs have raised and there will be a public comment period during which they can say we agree with this change in the regulation for after school programs or we disagree with this change. They are allowed to testify about changes. I also wanted to mention that because I’ve read some of the testimony overnight and I wanted to remind you all because some of you weren’t hear but in 2011 the legislature passed a Bill and directed child care licensing to look at areas when programs are in schools they are some things in licensing that seem duplicative, that’s too much, they’re already schools for the kids during the day and so we undertook that process and there were 17 items and I’m happy to get a copy of this to the Committee Members that we changed and said that if you’re in a public school or a private school then these 17 items no longer apply to you because you already have to pass a lot of these tests for that reason. But that was a legislative process that said, you are to look at this and make these standards match up better for after school programs. So we’ve done that. We also, I think in good faith, looked at the licensing regulations and we are going through the reg review process for this. But I will say that this Bill really comes after the series of articles that came out this summer by Hurst Media and Ken Dickson around the boys and girls clubs particularly 7 MARCH 6, 2020 SP EDUCATION COMMITTEE 10:00 A.M.