Sarasota County Commission cuts will affect at-risk children

The Sarasota County Commission recently voted against funding parental choice school readiness childcare. 

Commissioners cut $510,000 from the program, the amount voted through last year, and turned their back on a long-term partnership with the Legislature and governor. And to make matters worse, that cut likely will cause the loss of an additional $292,000 in matching state funds for parental choice in school readiness.  

This devastating cut will have negative consequences that will flow down to at-risk children, the county’s criminal justice system, business stability and future government budgets.  

The Legislature created the Early Learning Coalition (ELC) in recognition of the importance of school readiness childcare services. The statutes that create the ELC are listed under Chapter 1002, “Student and Parental Rights and Educational Choices.” It requires the Florida Department of Education to, among many things in school readiness, “preserve parental choice by permitting parents to choose from a variety of childcare categories.”

Statutes allowed for the creation of Early Learning Coalitions throughout the state. Sarasota’s ELC is its own 501(c)(3) with a board of directors.  

The cross section of the community required to hold seats on this board reflects the importance of school readiness in a variety of areas affecting our quality of life and economy. 

The governor appoints the chair and two other members who are private sector business members. Among the other required seats are a local workforce development board member; a children’s services or juvenile welfare board chair or executive director; a county commissioner; the public schools superintendent; a Department and Families regional administrator; a president of a Florida College System institution; and many others.

Among the many ELC responsibilities are: “Each early learning coalition shall: (1) Administer and implement a local comprehensive program of school readiness program services … which enhances the cognitive, social and physical development of children to achieve performance standards.”  

This is clearly about more than just daycare.

State taxpayer funding for parental choice in early learning school readiness is allocated through the state ELCs. The local ELC reports that federal laws prohibit ELC employees from fundraising and that all of the ELCs that receive state match money use either local county government or children services council funding as their matching money.  

So that mean: If no county dollars, then no state dollars.

Which also means: Sarasota County will no longer receive its fair share of state funding for parental choice in early education and fall behind in early education.

Now consider these effects:

There are 202 businesses struggling to keep and hire workers that now have an employee childcare problem because of these cuts.  The most affected are the self-employed, who are typically small business owners who don’t have economies of scale to leverage for childcare. Many self-employed struggle to stay afloat, especially with the economic blows we have been dealt in the last five years with COVID and Hurricane Ian. 

When you glance through the list of employers affected, you see employers with essential workers — Sarasota Memorial Hospital and Publix, for instance.  

Governments were on the list as well — the Sarasota School Board and city of North Port. Retailers such as Hobby Lobby and Detwiler’s had employees on this list, as did charter schools, including the Sarasota Military Academy. Even the U.S. Army is an affected employer.     

There are 251 working poor parents or ALICE (asset limited, income constrained, employed) families living paycheck to paycheck. This money was a hand-up for the working poor for educational choice, not a handout to those refusing to work.  

Now, these families will likely have a choice to make — either leave their young children home alone while they work, or, more likely, stop working to stay at home and care for their children because they can’t afford daycare.  

In the latter case, these families will likely end up on welfare and costing all of us a lot more while a business loses that employee.  These cuts occurred while the county Commission lowered the millage rate during an election year. 

This will be an economic blow to each of these businesses and will cost all of us a lot more money when these kids are older and become a part of the expensive parts of our government systems.

We also have no idea what this will cost us in Tallahassee in terms of damaged relationships with the Legislature and Gov.  DeSantis, who firmly believes in parental choice and found this investment in educational choices for our children and economy worthwhile.  

The county budget is not finalized until September. There is still time for the County Commission to help the working poor continue to work; small businesses with their employee shortages; and more importantly, help at-risk young children in their most important developmental years become productive students and citizens through school readiness educational choice.  

Your commissioners can be contacted at [email protected].

Christine Robinson is the executive director of the Argus Foundation.