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Legislative Priorities |
2019 MNAFEE Legislative Priorities of Minnesota’s 91st Legislative Session
Sustainable funding
- MNAFEE supports stable and consistent funding for Early Child Family Education (ECFE) Home Visiting by linking the home visiting formula to the ECFE formula.
- MNAFEE supports reimbursing school districts for the unfunded costs of Early Childhood Screening (ECS).
- MNAFEE supports making permanent the School Readiness-Plus funding and streamlining funding for voluntary pre-k (VPK).
- MNAFEE supports eliminating the freeze on Pathway II Early Learning Scholarship funding so that parents who qualify for a scholarship continue to have access to options to meet their child’s educational needs.
Thoughtful Policy
- Clarify statutes that address administrative leadership of early education programs and teacher development and evaluation.
- Require licensure for VPK and School Readiness teachers.
- To strengthen Minnesota Department of Education’s (MDE) support for school-based early education programs, MNAFEE recommends three additional FTE dedicated to school-based early education support.
- Support efforts to address teacher shortage and diversify licensed teachers of parent and family education across the state (e.g., creating Grow Your Own (GYO) parent educator teacher preparation opportunities).
- MNAFEE recognizes Parent Aware as an important means of ensuring quality in our early education programs. School-based programs must meet additional standards of quality through the implementation of other statutory requirements and local school district initiatives such as Professional Learning Communities (PLC), Teacher Development and Evaluation (TDE) processes, and PreK-3rd grade alignment. We encourage policy makers to consider these quality measures and allow for additional streamlining of Parent Aware for school districts who meet these local expectations.
Talking Points/Guiding Principles
- MNAFEE supports, and is deeply committed to, ensuring parent education is taught by licensed parent educators as an essential component of early childhood programs.
- MNAFEE supports a highly qualified, appropriately licensed teaching staff, with pathways to licensure and development of individuals who want to enter the teaching profession.
- MNAFEE believes a necessary component of community education funding is the need to maintain prudent fund balances. This is necessary to help programs address local needs.
- ECFE is a universal access, multi-generational program which provides early education and parent education to families with children birth to kindergarten and, where funds are sufficient, to grade 3.