March 24, 2026 · Children and Human Services Committee · 13,983 words · 8 speakers · 98 segments
from our recess. Did you all have fun? And we will then begin testimony on 647 and then 649. We will allow five minutes testimony for each witness, okay? Since we're back in a mode, we're not as rushed, but we will have a five-minute limit and we will begin. So first to start off, 647. We need to take roll. No, we don't take roll. This is a new thing. We will first call up Karen Lampe with the Association of Child Care Providers of Ohio as interested party. Thank you, Karen.
Thank you, Chairman White. Chairman, Vice Chair, Salvo, Ranking Member Lett, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide interested party testimony on the recently amended House Bill 647 47 that would limit backdating, otherwise known as backtaps, of child care attendance logs to only seven calendar days. My name is Karen Lampe. I'm owner and operator of CWCC Inc. My mother started our child care programs in 1975, over 50 years ago, and I've been running the business for about the last 30 years. We operate 10 early childhood programs in the Miami Valley area and five private schools pre-K through high school. I'm also here on behalf of the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers, representing more than 600 providers across the state of Ohio. Our members are committed to delivering safe, high-quality care and reliable services to families that depend on child care in order to work. OACCP's mission is to elevate the child care profession, ensure responsible stewardship of public resources and work with policymakers to build a system that is accessible, accountable, and sustainable for Ohio communities. What I'd really like you to consider as you think about policy changes that impact the child care sector is we encourage you to keep one guiding question at the forefront. What problem are we solving for? And what does the proposed change meaningfully address without stressing an already very precarious system? Ohio's system already maintains very sound safeguards. It is one of the strongest and most sophisticated child care fraud detection systems in the nation. The attendance and verification system includes parent identity verification of a PIN, a photo capture of the adult, routine state reviews, surprise visits by DCY, and on-site monitoring. Providers support these safeguards and work diligently to maintain the integrity within the system. We believe that improvements to this system need to be made around detecting and minimizing fraud. it is tweaks to this already robust system, not an atom bomb to our low-income families and fragile provider system that serve our state. Child care providers across our state are facing enormous challenges. We are the workforce behind the workforce, yet our industry continues to face significant and escalating challenges. Funding instability with frequent shifts in public funding levels and changes in eligibility and timing to create difficult planning for providers. We swing the pendulum from one direction to the other on our funding stream. We have rising operational costs, but yet our fixed expenses just continue to go up and up We have severe workforce shortages and we have fragile access in our underserved communities specifically many rural and low areas across the state are one closure away from having no access to child care at all. I say this to reinforce something that is very important, and that's to say a seemingly really small insignificant change can have significant consequences for provider stability across the state and a huge impact for access for child care for low-income families. So first, I want to thank the sponsors of this bill for the changes that they've made along the way. They have been listening and making changes, and that is very much appreciative. However, there are concerns, especially regarding the proposed seven-day back-tap limit, that I want to discuss. The amendment to 647 would reduce the allowable time frame for caregivers to complete missed attendance taps from the current 30 days down to only 7 days. While providers support accountability and timely documentation, this change is not operationally feasible and would unintentionally harm families, providers, and the very system that we look to strengthen. Based on provider experience across Ohio, the reduction from 30 days to 7 is unworkable for these reasons. One, timely taps are already a challenge even with the 30 days. We are constantly tracking down families in order to get those taps. School-age programs specifically have a lot of logistical challenges as parents are not there necessarily at all the times when school-agers are coming and going. You have changes in schedules and field trips during the summer, et cetera. And then approved absences are often longer than seven-day periods, and so we need to have time for the parents to be able to come and back-tap for those time frames. Respectfully, what we're asking of this committee is to remove this provision of the seven days and think about something that is a more moderate adjustment rather than the large adjustment down to seven days. Thank you for your consideration and for supporting Ohio's children and families. I'm available for any questions.
Vice Chair Salvo.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you so much for your testimony. My question to you is if we then went back to that 30-day for back tap, are you comfortable where this bill is now? Are there things that could help the child care providers at this point? Any other recommendations for us?
I think there are some other things that could still use some work. I am still very concerned around making sure that as we investigate issues of attendance taps being accurate or not accurate, that we recognize that there are administrative challenges that are with that, and so therefore we don't automatically throw everything into a fraud or misuse definition, that there's times when it's just an administrative mistake, and we need to recognize those times as well. I will say we do that within the CACFP food program in a way where when they come in and do an audit, which they do quite often, they will look at what underpayments there were against what overpayments there were, and then they only look to rectify the situation if there's a difference of more than $600. So there not an automatic conclusion that if there is any adjustment whatsoever that it a fraud or misuse It is more an issue of sometimes there going to be a little bit of challenges or a mismatch of when the parent taps in versus they stopped in the hallway and talked to somebody for 15 minutes before the child got to the classroom, et cetera.
Can I have a follow-up?
Sure.
Thank you, Chair. I've been speaking with some of my colleagues, And I think there's a difference across Ohio on size of child care providers. In my district, I've received feedback that the facial recognition on the child might be helpful to mitigate the back tapping. Okay, I'm seeing from your face.
I am completely opposed, and I have that in my testimony for 649, around anything with doing facial recognition or photos of the children. There's a privacy issue there. I'm also not an expert in this area, but just in the research that I have done, it looks like that the technology is not solid enough in that area, and especially because children's facial structures grow and change so drastically. But honestly, as a provider, my biggest issue is more of, you know, just the logistical challenge of how are you getting that picture of that child at a time. Transitions are really hard for kids. That's a really difficult moment. And we're going to see huge increases in challenges at drop-off and pickup time because of that. And so that's my concern around that. I think taking the picture of the parent is sufficient.
Okay. Thank you.
Through the chair, thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
With after-school care or school-age kids, can you just walk us through the process? Because kids are often just dropped off on a bus from school. So you clearly already have methodology in place to manage this.
Correct. Chair White, Representative Brownlee, to answer your question, right now the system allows the state automatically takes their time for the school day out of the system. And so the parent only has to tap in in the morning and out in the afternoon. And then the hours for school is automatically taken out of the system. However, the challenge more becomes once they're, especially an older school-ager, a lot of time the parent isn't necessarily hand-holding them in and out of the building. A lot of times they'll get rides with other families or, you know, they have activities after school, et cetera, that create a lot more challenges. Or they pick them up from the playground or they pick them up from the field trip. and so there's challenges with how are you going to be able to get those back taps and that's where it's really important to be able to have that time frame for the parents to be able to get those in. I don't think it's the intent of this bill for providers not to get paid for work they're actually doing when they're caring for the kids and my concern is with this seven days that's what we're going to see is providers that are providing services and not getting paid for it and this industry isn't too precarious of a situation in order for us to do that.
Thank you. I think, thank you, Ms. Lampe, for coming in. I did want to ask, can you just walk us through, I think just so we all understand, with the school age you only tapping in you not tapping out Or are you tapping out as a student as well They tapping in and tapping out Okay Yes All right And then in terms of the back taps and the reality of that right now, what percentage of parents are you chasing down? I mean, are parents
not coming in? Practically speaking, are they not coming in when they drop their child off? No, they are, but here's the reality of a drop-off and pickup. Mom is late for work. She's got three kids. One kid is screaming. Another kid's having a meltdown. There's somebody else that's standing at the tap machine, right? So she takes the kids to the classroom. She comes out. There's somebody else standing at the tap machine. She's got to get to work. She's gone, right? That's the challenge. And if we're creating a system, you know, to go back to your question, Representative Salvo, we're now taking a picture of the child, so I'm picking the child up to get their picture and putting them down and picking up another child, we've just added that much time onto that, you're going to have a backlog of people standing at your tap machine. And, you know, it's impossible for us to have somebody standing at the entrance saying, you can't leave yet until you tap. You can't leave yet until you tap. And so that's where it becomes a challenge. Okay. And then just to add on, thank you for that answer. if in fact you had a shorter time window, but the ability, I guess I'm trying to think practically speaking, how many are actually more than seven days that it takes you. And if you had the ability to have a PIN number where you were logging in on a limited basis, what would that look like? So, Chairman White, we actually have a system now to where we can put in the time either for the tap in or the tap out. and the parent has to approve that. So actually the way the system is set up right now works for what we need it to do. The parent is approving the time, and we can't put in both the in and out. We can only put in one. And even with that, we still have to track down parents at times. You know, there are days when the parent isn't able to drop off or pick up. Somebody else does that. Grandma does that. Lord knows if I tried to ask my mother to tap in on the system, it would be a disaster. she can you know barely turn the tv on so i you know hopefully she's not watching and just heard that but um but you know so it's one of those things that it's important to be able to have that because the realities that we live in are not perfection and so we just need time and especially for moms that are busy they're working they're they're trying to get their kids and do all the right things trying to expect perfection from them on that tap in and tap out it is really not reasonable. Okay, and just to drill down, what percentage of people actually does it take you more than seven days or more than 14 days to get a hold of? I don't know that I could give you an exact percentage, but what I can tell you is that it's not a small number. It is every day. I've hired somebody at my company, now I have multiple sites, but I have somebody at my company that's her only job is every day, all day, tracking down parents to get those taps so that we get get paid. And if this bill was enacted with the seven days, I'm probably going to have to hire at least two more people to do that. And financially, we can't afford to do that.
All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll call the next witness up. And that is going to be Leslie Doria. Did I pronounce that right? With the Ohio Alliance of YMCA's interest department. Chair White, Vice Chair Salvo, Ranking Member Lett, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to talk
testify on House Bill 647. My name is Leslie Doria and I'm the Vice President of Child Care of the YMCA of Greater Toledo and I am here on behalf of the Ohio Alliance of YMCAs. The Ohio Alliance of YMCAs is a non-profit organization that represents Ohio's Y's. Ohio YMCAs are in 164 communities around the state and serve 1.9 Ohioans, 1.9 million Ohioans, both children and adults. Ohio YMCAs are the largest child care provider in Ohio, providing care for over 250,000 children each year. At the YMCA of Greater Toledo, we serve around 2,900 children annually across our 22 locations. The Ohio Ys are grateful to the bill sponsors and the committee for the amendments that have already been made to improve House Bill 649. However, we would like to share new concerns regarding the bill's inclusion of a seven-day limit on back taps. This change, while intended to create accountability and transparency, would cause unintended harm. Ohio Child Care Attendance and Verification System is regarded as one of the most robust in the country, using parent identification via pen, photo capture, and ongoing state review. Any change to statute would be guided by demonstrated need and carefully tailored to protect both children and the providers who serve them. The amendment to House Bill 647 includes language that would limit back taps to seven calendar days. Currently, YMCAs have 30 days and must obtain caregiver approval. While we support transparency, accountability, and timely documentation, this change presents significant operational barriers for both families and providers. Even under the current four-week allowance, providers must work diligently to ensure families complete TAPs. For example, in more instances than convenience, the tablets a center must use for TAPs have technical difficulties. Often the tablets give error messages, such as they're out of storage or they stop functioning altogether and must be rebooted. While the center is trying to troubleshoot, parents are rushing to get to work and must leave before tapping their children in. Additionally, large facilities only get one tablet for every 50 kids authorized. At busy pickup and drop-off times, centers have a line for the tablets. Rushing parents do not wait, and they do not tap. Reducing the back window to seven days would require WISE to create very strict policies around attendance in order to stay afloat financially. Those policies would result in many publicly funded families not being able to receive care for their children. Many school age programs change locations to accommodate planned school days off or weather-related school cancellations. When a family misses tapping, especially on an off day or near the end of the week, that family will not return to that location within the seven-day window, making compliance impossible. Additionally, many school-age child care programs operate in school buildings, and at parent pickup, this sometimes often happens on the playground. Wives do not carry the tap system outside of the playground for various reasons, and thus a parent does not tap out their child. The wise then must track down the parent for almost every day their child was playing outside for the next drop when parents are in a hurry to get home from work For many families, parents share custody of their children. An increasingly common occurrence is that a child is at the center one week because the child is with one parent, but then not at the center the second week because the child is with the second parent. If a parent misses a tap towards the end of week one, and that child is not back at the center until week three, a center cannot correct a missed tap if a back taps were allowed in only a seven-day window. Lastly, at WISE, families routinely take vacations or extended weekends. In those instances, children often are out of care for more than seven calendar days. Thus, when a parent misses a tap in week one, the family is gone during week two, and a Y would not be permitted to secure that back tap from the family returning in week three. Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you very much for coming in, Ms. Doria. Is there any questions for this witness? Vice Chair Salvo.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your testimony. And I'm going to ask you the same question I did the last person. Short of the amount of time, are you happy with 647?
I think there's still, sorry, Representative White and Representative, I think there's still some work we could do together on that. And we would really like to see that window stay open to the four-week window. Okay. Thank you.
Just to follow up quickly before we move to Rep. Brownlee, so what other areas of the bill did you want changed besides the back tapping?
Representative White, at this time we don't see any other areas, so we really were here today to talk about that back tap window and allowing the four weeks to stay. Thanks very much.
Okay, Representative Brownlee.
Through the chair, thank you. Thank you for your testimony. with the number of, I don't mean to get too into the details, but with the number of tap or tablets that you have, does this make the burden much harder on larger child care centers?
Rep. White and Representative Bradley, yes. So especially for a center, maybe they only have 45 children enrolled that are on public funds. So you are literally one tablet that we're given by the state to do these taps at a period of time. So especially at some of our facilities, you know, there's a heavy drop-off in the morning timeline and then a heavy afternoon timeline. You know, a lot of families work kind of similar hours, so you're fighting for that slot at the tablet to kind of get your taps done. So I do think that that plays in where parents are like, oh, there's five people waiting. I'm going to maybe do it tomorrow, and then something else happens, and you kind of create a snowball effect.
Follow-up, please. through the chair. So what does the timeline look like to tap your kid in, in the morning or
in the afternoon at the rush times? Rep White and Rep Brownlee. I think that all depends. You know, how many kids do you have in our program? Are you completing any back taps from a previous day? Just a ballpark. You know, a couple minutes per kid, usually, to do that. And if, you know, you're, as most of us working moms, sometimes in the morning hours you're really, you know, stretching the clock there to get your kid or maybe they just getting their kid to us right before they getting on the bus to go to one of our other locations So it kind of a time crunch there So it all depends too on making sure the tablet working at that period of time nothing else is going on So a couple minutes at least per kid to do that.
But could it take up to 5, 10 minutes?
For sure, depending on how much they're doing, especially if they're entering maybe a week of time that they have to do, things like that. Thank you.
Okay, and just one follow-up to what her line of questioning was. So what's the process actually then if a parent doesn't tap in, what is your staff doing within that same day, and how are they comparing who was there and who needs entered into the TAP system?
Representative White, I don't feel that we're probably doing it day-to-day because we're doing so much other things. You know, most directors are wearing lots of different hats. So, you know, our goal to parents is always to tap daily. And that is what we tell them on a regular basis. That is all communication we send out to them is to tap in the morning and to tap every day. But that's not reality. So it's actually a process where we have to go back then and look at our classroom rosters for the week to make sure that we, you know, and kind of then look into the state system and kind of go through all of those and do an audit to make sure that we've captured everything. So then if we haven't captured those items, exactly what she talked about, we're allowed to do those pending transactions, which I feel like that happens a lot more with school-agers, where a parent would then still have to, we're still going to have to communicate to them to say, hey, you have pending transactions that need approval. and then we on our side spend a large portion of time we have about 350 students currently within my organization that are on public funds so I honestly have a dedicated full-time staff employee who spends almost every Sunday going through the last week of rosters then to put out an audit to our directors at the center level and they're then communicating with families via our mass communication system in person, sending emails, tracking them down, calling people, please come in on your, you know, your lunch break. It's, it takes a lot of work on a center director to then to communicate to every single parent. And sometimes we have to, you know, help them. Like, remember, you need to do an out time at this time on this date. And whenever you go back, it's a little bit more complicated in the system to enter back times. So a parent, sometimes we need to help provide them with that information or show them the roster. This is what time you left that day. Can you please enter that?
Clarification. I appreciate the clarification. I think we are concluded with questions for you. Thanks for coming in. I do want to point out Tammy Lunan, who had planned to be here, had to leave, so she is not here. We do have two written testimonies. Shayla Favor, the Franklin County prosecutor and then Dr. Jasmine Moses are in writing on this bill. Does anyone else want to testify today on 647? All right, so this is going to conclude the sixth hearing on House Bill 647 and with that we will call up House Bill 649 for Interested Party and Opponent Testimony. So right now we will have Commissioner Erica Crawley if she's able to attend. Oh, there you are. Good to see you again. Former State Representative and Franklin County Commissioner Good afternoon Good afternoon Chair White Vice Chair Salvo Ranking Member Lett and members of the House Children and Human Services Committee
Thank you for the opportunity to testify in opposition of House Bill 649. As Chair White said, my name is Erica Crawley. I currently serve as one of the Franklin County Commissioners. House Bill 649 proposes burdensome regulations that create severe, unintended consequences for Ohio's working families, children, and small business child care providers. Franklin County has made significant investments to increase the availability of affordable child care, and I am concerned that this legislation would undermine those efforts by entangling providers and families in unnecessary red tape. Additionally, Franklin County takes any allegations of fraud or the misuse of public funds very seriously. For example, as you all may have heard last week when Prosecutor Favor testified, Franklin County Department of Job and Family Services collaborates with the Ohio Investigative Unit this past year to identify scammers who stole an estimated $600,000 in benefits. And her office has successfully pursued cases of fraud related to American Rescue Plan dollars. Regardless of whether funds originate at the federal, state, or local level, we are committed to protecting taxpayer dollars. While we prioritize integrity, it is vital to set the record straight regarding the county's role in overseeing child care centers. And I know last week one of the representatives asked prosecutor favors specifically about county commissioners interfering with investigations to child care providers. And I want to say that Franklin County and our JFS office have long been productive partners with the Department of Children and Youth. However, our mandates are distinct. Despite assertions made before this committee, the Franklin County Board of Commissioners and its agencies have no role in investigating centers, nor have we interfered with any such investigations. Quite simply, we do not have the statutory authority to do so. County JFS offices assist in determining eligibility for publicly funded child care for families in need and conduct investigations of at-home providers. County JFS offices conduct twice-yearly inspections of these home-based programs, at least one of which is unannounced. The state, however, is responsible for inspections and oversight of child care centers and the authority to revoke licenses or closed centers or home-based programs rests solely with DCY. Our JFS office proactively alerts state partners when irregularities appear in the course of determining eligibility or while conducting an inspection for a home provider. But I must reiterate, the state is responsible for investigating potential fraud in these centers, not county JFS, not the board of commissioners, and certainly not internet personalities who have recently attempted to film inside daycare centers in our community. Furthermore, we must consider the climate of fear these regulations create for our local entrepreneurs. Most child care providers are small businesses owned by women and people of color who are already struggling with historic staffing shortages and rising operational costs. By imposing invasive surveillance and administrative hurdles, House Bill 649 signals to these providers that the state views them with suspicion rather than as an essential partner. If these small businesses are forced to close or opt out of the public system to avoid these meanings, The result will be a child care desert that prevents parents from returning to the workforce, ultimately stifling Ohio's economic growth. The child care system in Ohio is at an inflection point. The need has never been greater, nor has the cost. Franklin County is doing its part to ensure affordability by investing more than $43 million in ARPA funds over the past four years in Franklin County Rise Child Care Initiative, providing scholarships for families, incentives for licensed providers, and rental support for workers. We are also demolishing our vacant downtown jail with plans to construct a new early learning center to support the downtown workforce. I care deeply about making child care safe, affordable, and available while remaining a vigilant steward of taxpayer resources. However, House Bill 649 is a solution in search of a problem that risks the privacy of children and the stability of our providers. I urge the committee to vote no on this legislation. Thank you again for the opportunity to be before you, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you all may have.
Thank you, Commissioner Crawley. Ranking Member Lett, you had a question. Thank you, Chairwoman.
Thank you so much, Commissioner, for coming in and sharing your testimony today. I think one of the great things about Franklin County is the Franklin County RISE program. So I just wanted to know if you could, you know, talk to us a little bit about Franklin County RISE and maybe give us some ideas for ways that we could utilize that program to bolster our efforts at the state level. Thank you.
Absolutely. Through Chair White to Representative Lett, thank you so much for the question. We are very proud of Franklin County RISE Child Care Initiative. It was an initiative that started, I launched with Job and Family Services in 2022. We started on in 2021, but it actually launched in 2022 to stabilize child care. And understanding that during the pandemic, more than 150 child care providers in Franklin County closed. We had a number of people leave the workforce, whether they worked in a child care center or they were a parent trying to go to work because they no longer had child care. So we invested in making sure that people had accessibility. So if you make 145% to 300% of the poverty level, you can get up to $9,000 to offset costs. And those are for families that are on the benefits cliff. So they make a little too much money to qualify for publicly funded child care, but really not enough to avoid making hard decisions between keeping a roof over their head, water running, lights on, and so forth. The second part of Franklin County RISE Child Care Initiative was supporting providers to keep their doors open. We know that about 60 percent of providers say that they don't know if they'll be able to keep their doors open for six months to a year because the margins are so thin. And so if you took publicly funded child care through the pandemic, we said thank you. If you were open, non-traditional hours to help our frontline workers and now families that work non-traditional hours, we said thank you and provided an incentive. If you were working on your quality rating standards, it used to be star rating, now it's gold, silver, and bronze, you were able to receive an incentive. And then the third part of Franklin County RISE was helping our teachers. We know on average teachers only make about an hour and so we provided funding for rent and utility assistance for teachers We know a number of our teachers come through our Job and Family Service Center They eligible for benefits themselves and they find themselves teachers who are taking care of our most precious residents are struggling themselves to keep their roof over their headlights running and food on the table. And so that is Franklin County Rise. we have stabilized child care and now we are to the point where we're still trying to make sure that access is important for families and they have that quality is still at the top of the list but also that our teachers who are not making living wages can make ends meet themselves.
Thank you Chairwoman. Quick follow-up I just wanted to ask you if you if House Bill 649 went into place today. Do you feel, based off of your expertise and dedication to this industry, that there would be child care facilities that would close due to the regulations in this bill?
Thank you for that question. Through the chair to the representative, I think it creates a slippery slope. When we think about the requirements of this legislation, if a provider chooses to opt out, then they could be forfeiting publicly funded child care. And therefore, you know, when it comes to serving families, they won't be able to serve those families that receive publicly funded child care. And so families will have to look elsewhere. I think the other thing that we are that we take into consideration when it comes to this bill, when it comes to surveillance and having to require cameras and then store the data for a number of months, I think the cost of that, child care centers have to bear that burden. There is no allocation or appropriation in this bill that helps child care centers with that, whether it's acquiring the cameras, whether it's with IT software or anything like that. And so those costs then will probably go down to the parents, and they're just shifting the costs to families who are already struggling to probably pay for child care. So I think those are some of the things that we think about when we are looking at this legislation. I think the other thing that we take into consideration is in the bill, it talks about like data points and child care, not child care, but counties keeping record of the data points. And I know the sub bill earlier kind of clarified what data points are, which are photographs. I think there is no clarification on the county what our responsibility is for that and taking pictures of children. I would strongly be against taking pictures of children and holding that information. I think, as someone said earlier, it gets in the way of privacy. And so I think when we have these unfunded mandates, providers have to look at the cost that they are incurring, but also how does that impact the families that they're trying to serve and provide services for.
Thank you. Representative Click.
thank you chairman and thank you commissioner crawley for being here today and i apologize i did not catch all of your testimony i'm bouncing back and forth between two committees today uh you talk in uh your testimony though about a climate of fear and when i back home i have a lot of people complaining about a climate of fraud And I going back to my constituents and my people and they saying what are you doing about this What are you doing about this And as a matter of fact, sometimes they say you're doing nothing about this. And I say, well, we've got House Bill 647 and House Bill 649. So I guess what I would add, and I understand, and I'm supportive of child care. My wife's been in child care for over 30 years. She's been a director of a child care center for 20. and so I feel like we're trying to thread a needle. We want to make sure that our families are taken care of and our children are taken care of, but we also want to make sure that there's no fraud. And I think there's good reason to believe that there has been some fraud. I don't know if it's to the extent or level that some people say it is, but there certainly has been some fraud. So would you concede that there has been some fraud, number one? Number two, is there anything in these bills? Because I agree that there needs to be some changes. We've talked to people that think there needs to be changes. Is there any condition or any changes in these bills that would make these bills acceptable to you and move you to either an interested party or a supporter?
Thank you for the question. Through the chair to Representative Click. So as it relates to fraud, I cannot say that there has been or hasn't been any fraud. We know that, for instance, that there have been overpayments to providers in Franklin County, but there has not been any case sent to our Job and Family Services or to the prosecutor's office that has been investigated where we had to, or where the prosecutor's office had to look into. and Prosecutor Faber spoke to that last week. We know, as the dispatch reported, that there have been a number of, I think, six child care centers in Franklin County, and I can only speak for Franklin County, that were reported for overpayments, and DCY has made those child care centers aware of the overpayments, what needed to be paid back, as well as amendments to what they originally said was owed to what finally came out that was actually owed. So for the Board of Commissioners, there has not been anything that has come to our offices that's alleged fraud. There have been overpayments that have been made, and DCY has looked into that. to your point about fraud in general, I think, you know, we are 100% aligned on stopping any kind of fraud that there is, whether it was for SNAP benefits, as I spoke to earlier, whether it's American Rescue Plan dollars that the prosecutor's office, Franklin County Prosecutor's Office has went after to recover. But I think when we look at job and family services, our agency, we have a proven record of working with our state agencies to stop any fraud. You might not have been here when I talked in my testimony about anything that we have deemed to be questionable as far as it relates to in-home centers that is under our purview for job and family services. We have referred all of that to DCY, and then they take the investigation from there. And we continue to work really closely, have a really good relationship with those at DCY.
Follow-up. Have any of your conversations with DCY indicated that they believe there been some fraud in Franklin County Thank you for the question To through the Chair White to Representative Click From my understanding, talking to my W County administrator, that's over Job and Family Services.
Specifically, DCY has not used that phrase that there has been fraud related to any child care centers in Franklin County. There has been comments that ended up showing up in the dispatch that there have been overpayments, but there has not been a list of any child care centers provided to Franklin County that is alleged to have or be suspected a fraud.
Let's follow up if I can. And so I agree with you about the cameras and the videos and things like that. And I think that needs to be certainly revised and looked at. I think there's not a broad amount of support for that staying in the bill. What would it take to make you, because I believe you, we're just trying to work through this as a community, as a state. What would it take for you to support this legislation? If we remove the cameras, does that make you a supporter? Are there other changes that would bring you on board with this legislation so that we can work together to make sure that there is no fraud in our child care services here in Franklin County or in all of Ohio? but that our children are also being cared for and met, and the parents' needs are being met as well.
Absolutely. Thank you for the question. Through Chair White to the representative, I think there is a number of issues, not just in this bill. We would oppose 647 as well that would need to change video surveillance. I think that if there is going to be a requirement for that, I think there should be an appropriation so child care centers don't have to bear the burden. I would also lean on the expertise of child care providers who are dealing with attendance and attendance records every day for the changes that need to be made there. I think there's also a change as it relates to, well, I would say 647, but also 649, as it relates to children whose families need authorization, or maybe what we consider like a dual authorization for families that work non-traditional hours and removing that authorization from county JFS to DCY and making it harder for families who might need multiple child care providers to care for their children because they might have work, school, or I use, for instance, a family that might work or a parent that might work at Honda and has mandatory time or a mandatory shift that they have to take for overtime, and they would need care on the weekends, I think that will be a problem for some families. So I think there are a couple of things that should be changed that we can talk about that would probably move me from a, or move us from a no to interested party. But it's not just, it wouldn't just be the video and surveillance.
One more. Thank you, Chair, for your indulgence. So have you, or would you be willing to, speak with any of the sponsors of this legislation to work collaboratively to say, okay, if we can do this, this, and this, then we can make this move and get this on track. Have you had that opportunity, or if not, would you be willing?
to take that opportunity. Thank you, through the chair, to the representative. I am open, absolutely, with my government affairs director, as well as some of our child care providers, have an opportunity, will welcome an opportunity to talk to the sponsors of the bill for both 647 as well as 649 to talk about the changes that we would like to see, how county JFS would be held responsible, how we make determinations, how we can support our child care providers, protecting families, as well as making sure that obviously there's accountability if there is suspected fraud. But I also would say to that, that when we have a conversation about the changes, it is important to think about at the end of the day, we already have a child care system in place that detects, has a reporting structure for suspected fraud, for investigations. And we know in Franklin County or in the state of Ohio that fraud is not widespread. We have a system that has already, that works, that holds those accountable. And so I caution, you know, having bills that really are in search of problems that don't exist. Or that we're trying to put structures in place when we already have a system that works, that works really well. We're one of the best states in the country as it relates to reporting, investigation, and holding those accountable without trying to create more bureaucracy or making our child care centers take on more expenses and red tape that ultimately doesn't do anything to help our families have more access.
Thank you, Chair. Okay, and Rep. Brewer, you'll have the last question for this witness.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony. And as we talk about the emphasis of this bill, you say we already have things in place. And as we talk about talk to the sponsors and everything else, wouldn't a more general conversation be an overall look at the whole child care system, attendance versus enrollment, tap backs versus what you already have in place, how it can be there? And I know you said this seems like a bill looking for a problem, a solution. So should we maybe roll this conversation to how we can not overhaul the system, but look at ways to improve the system? Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you.
Through the chair to Rep Brewer, what I would say is we should be having a conversation about child care in general and how we are supporting families to make sure that they have access to high-quality, affordable child care. We should be having conversations about how do we make sure that providers can keep their doors open and expand access to families, as well as making sure that we pay teachers a living wage. We can have a conversation. I've been, prior to me being a county commissioner, was here in the legislature working on child care, working on access, working on eligibility, and we really have not moved the needle. SO I THINK WE SHOULD BE ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW DO WE MAKE SURE THAT MORE FAMILIES HAVE ACCESS TO HIGH QUALITY, AFFORDABLE CHILD CARE? HOW DO WE SUPPORT OUR PROVIDERS WHO ARE THE WORKFORCE BEHIND THE WORKFORCE? THIS ISN'T A FRAUD ISSUE. THIS ISN AN EDUCATION ISSUE THIS IS AN ECONOMIC INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUE WE KNOW THAT AT THE END OF THE DAY WE isn an education issue This is an economic infrastructure issue We know that at the end of the day our economy would crumble if we had child care providers continue to close We have child care deserts. We know that on average, Ohio ranks in the bottom of the list as it relates to eligibility as it relates to supporting three and four year olds, as far as them being kindergarten ready, we can have a robust conversation, which we should be having at the legislative level, as well as the local level on how we can partner together and make sure that we are supporting families and providers and teachers. So that is a conversation that I absolutely would welcome, as I said earlier to Representative Click, you know, if there is fraud that happens, we have structures in place to investigate that and report that. But I think the bigger conversation is how do we make sure that more families have access and providers are supported? All right. Thank you very much for your testimony. Thank you for having me.
And I did want to point out, as far as the expense for the child care providers, both bills would be about the department spending money, not the individual child care providers. So in terms of Commissioner Crowley's point about the cost to the local provider, this would just be enabling technology through the iPads they already have. And that was kind of clarified in one of the bills. Rep. Williams' bill, I think, was initially sounded a lot more comprehensive. All right. Thank you very much. Next up we will call, now I do want to point out, Shayla Favorite appears from the Franklin County Prosecutor's Office, who was here last week, was not able to return, but she has written testimony, again reiterating the points about the local control versus state, and you can read that on your iPads. Next is Marquita McClendon with the CEO Project.
Hello, everyone.
I'm Chairperson White, Vice Chair Savo, and Ranking Member-led members of the committee.
My name is Marquita McClendon. I am a child care owner of over 20 years, operating multiple programs in the Cincinnati and Hamilton County area. I am also an early childhood educator and a taxpayer who has dedicated half my life in building and sustaining child care in my community. I want to speak specifically to the recent amendments to House Bill 649. While understand the intent to address accountability, the changes being proposed are still not realistic for how child care actually operates on the ground. First, regarding attendance backdating. The proposal limit of seven days is not aligned with the current system right now. Through KinderConnect, providers can back swipe for four weeks to correct attendance. That is the reality of how the system functions today. And counties are processing applications in a timely manner, then a four-week window to 30-day window for corrections is reasonable and necessary. Anything less will result in payment errors, not fraud, but system-driven mistakes that providers will make and be penalized for. Second, I want to address the shift to biometric data collection every six months. This is not realistic when you're dealing with children, especially infants and toddlers. A child infancy to three months six months to 12 months and 18 months can look entirely different Their facial features change rapidly their hair changes their weight changes As a mother of all girls I can tell you simply changing a hairstyle can make a child look completely different. If I pull my daughter's hair back straight, she could be mistaken for a different child completely. So now we are relying on data points to verify identity, but what happens when a child wants its steal, The system glitches. The image doesn't match due to normal development. That is not fraud. That is a system error waiting to happen. Thirdly, let's talk about absent days. When the state changed the authorization hours from full-time to part-time, 25 hours to 33 hours, the absent day structure was never updated to match. Right now, providers receive 20 absent days biannually, 52 weeks in a year, 40 absent days, yearly equals .8 average a week. That's not even one. One absent day only covers eight hours, while many children are approved for a 10-hour care day schedule. That means providers are forced to use more absent days than allotted just to cover what should be a standard day. And one equals 10 hours, then one absent day should also equal 10 hours. Next is families relying on a second approved provider for stability. Life happens. Parents work multiple jobs, have changing schedules, or faces emergencies. There are also programs that are not open during traditional hours six to six. So if the second provider gives them a backup option so they continue working without interruption, if that second provider is removed, parents will lose flexibility, children will experience more disruptions in care, providers will lose enrollment stability and ultimately families will fall out of the workforce. Finally, child care providers are already operating under strict oversight from DCY. Adding more rigorous systems, more tracking, and more administrative burden is not solving the issue. The real issue is stability. We have providers right now who still have not got paid. I personally have a program that has not got paid for last week. This is not fraud. This is a system that is not functioning properly. So the concern is not just policy, it's capacity. Do we even have the manpower to infrastructure and the accuracy in place to support the bill that we're asking for? Because right now it seems not realistic. It seems like pressure is being placed on a system that is already struggling. If enrollment over attendance base were implemented and followed as intended, we would have stability, less discrepancy, and fewer of the issues that this bill is trying to solve. In closing, I ask this committee consider the approach to oppose this bill. The solution is not restrictions and more systems, it's alignment, accuracy, and investment in a stable care economy. Thank you so much for your time, and I'll be more than happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much, Ms. McClendon. Are there questions for the witness? Okay, we've got Representative Brewer and then Representative Brian Bailey.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for your service as well. It kind of goes back to the last question I just asked once before to the Commissioner. As she talked about expanding child care, how we should be talking about it. Do you think with the passage of these bills and the way they written now even with the amendments that we talk about do you think this would encourage parents to now seek out child care Or will this hurt not just parents but also child care center owners as well as some of these implementations? And so will we be losing child care or will we be gaining child care?
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you so much for that question, Representative Brewer. The current, well, I'm in Hamilton County, so I'm speaking for Hamilton County, okay? The current policies that are structured right now, if the bill was to go into place, let's just look at the back swipes just for example, seven days. To answer your question, Chair Wright, the times of when we will back swipe is when the county takes too long to submit for approval. Okay? So let's do an example. A parent goes to the county on the first submitted application. presumptive eligibility allows that parent to come into my program to start care. And so maybe the county is three weeks behind. So if that seven-day window was there, that parent now has to get approval from DCY, the way that it's set up, to get approved for those three weeks that she's been in my care. The way, I didn't get paid this week. So for me to rely on a system that's already behind on the regular pay source, that's not a way. You know what I'm saying? So it's like that system that's already in place needs to be tweaked better. This new system putting in place, it'll mess up everything. And yes, to answer your question, it will bring a lot of child care deserts.
Rep. Brewer, did you have another question? Okay, let me just clarify a few things, if I may, Ms. Clinton. So the amendment allows for the presumptive eligibility back tapping.
So that didn't take that away. It allows for in those circumstances.
Correct. Just so you're aware. Both bills. So we're not taking that away if it takes 30 days or if it's beyond 30 days with the JFS, just to clarify that. But the other thing I wondered is why did you not get paid?
When you find out, you let me know. No, seriously. We have not. We don't know. Okay, so I have several programs. I know that we do get paid in different lots of money. We got the block grant. We got Tenant Friends. We have, you know, different type of funding sources that spread out throughout the state of Ohio. So normally when we put in our billing, we go in billing at midnight. So as long as your billing is on midnight on Saturday, you got to check for the following week. Depending on what bank you bank with, I bank with Bank of America. I've been with them for over nine years. I will always get my money on Friday. KinderConnect, when we put in and we call submission, we submit our billing into KinderConnect, like I said, Saturday by midnight. By Saturday morning, we have an amount that we'll see that is going to get paid. When DCY, I call, pull the trigger, they will say, okay, you are now issued payment. so in the KinderConnect that waiting goes to issued the very next day we get paid. So a reason of why we won't have a late delay of payment will be from a holiday. So any federal holiday we know we're going to get paid a day behind. This time I'm not for sure. Normally DCY will put a message inside of KinderConnect and we don't see any messages in there stating why. What they tell us is, oh, you have 10 days. You give us a call back on Wednesday. and we'll do some troubleshooting. Well, today is Tuesday. Mine is still waiting, so Wednesday, hopefully it'll be issued on Wednesday, but if it's waiting on Wednesday, then I still haven't even paid my staff. You feel me? Okay.
All right, thank you very much.
Bright and Bailey. Thank you. I'm reformulating because both questions are going to act mine, but thank you through the chair. Thank you for your testimony today. So one thing that I think I want to kind of go back through is, you know, I know that pictures and things have been removed from the bill, and we've talked about some of the amendments that have been made. So I kind of like just hearing this from most folks, right? Although we know that fraud has not necessarily been as widespread as some of the disinformation that we've heard, But in your professional opinion, if this bill was to do something that was actually effective, that would not have these negative implications to you all as child care providers and owners and also to parents, is there something where it could be of value to your work to prevent this level of fraud?
putting back enrollment over attendance. I mean, that's just what it is. I know we're running from it like it's Frederick Kruger on Elm Street, but that is the solution. If we had enrollment over attendance, we would be a little bit stable. That's just first and foremost, because that child, my private pay parents, they pay for that slot. They go on break, they go on vacation, the baby is sick, I still want $250 for that slot. We don't treat the PFCC parents that way, and it's not fair because my private pay parents have to pay. You see what I'm saying? So unfortunately, when it was time for us to stabilize the economy, we didn't. And so this is the backlash of not doing that because now the funding is drawing up. Thank you.
I'll just conclude with this question then. So my understanding, which might be incorrect, but if we're paying on enrollment, that means no matter whether you're there or not, you will be paid. Whether the child's there or not, you will be paid. So how does switching to a system that has no attendance help reduce fraud rather than creating more opportunity for fraud if it's pay on enrollment and there's not the attendance requirements? Could you help me figure that out?
I can. So you've got to think. If you're paying on enrollment, it's a set amount that's being paid, regardless if they're there or not. Like you said, the only way that we'll know, well, I'm a Kentucky provider as well, okay? Kentucky's been doing this since December of 2020. And you know how we do it? We don't have a sign-in sheet. We don't have any of that. If they need the proof, you know, they just trust their providers, you know. They trust us. and maybe we need to gain that, but I'm not for sure, but I'm going to show you. So I have 10 children. Like I said, my child comes. I have an 8-year-old myself, you know, so if I pay for my 8-year-old in any summer camp, I pay the Y, their full amount. You understand that because I don't get PFCC. So it's like it's fairness for others and it's stability. It builds the workforce. It guaranteed that when I provide this care because guess what Let me tell you how we getting cut out So when the hours change from 25 to 33 now we have what is called part checks A part-time check, that means my part-time check was $2,500 less. I'm an LLC. That money comes to me after I pay my staff. I didn't talk to my staff and say, okay, you're 15, you're 25, you're 20. they not paying us, we have these hours, I have to reduce your pay now. No, I still have to grind as a business. So I'm standing up here not only as a business owner, as a parent, but also someone who income is affected tremendously from these changes.
Thank you very much for your testimony today. Thank you, Al. All right, we next have Therese Thompson, did I pronounce that correctly,
with the CEO project as well. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my testimony. Chair White, Vice Chair Salvo, Ranking Member Lett, and members of the Ohio House Children and Human Services Committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide opponent testimony on behalf of the CEO Project, which represents over 300 small business child care providers in Ohio. My name is Therese Thompson, and I am a child care provider with more than 30 years. of experience in the childhood education in Franklin County. I'm also one of your smallest programs because I am a type B. I would like to start by thanking representatives Williams for his willingness to meet with providers and to hear our concerns. We were pleased to see the changes in language regarding the live camera feeds and eliminating the immediate suspension of funding during an investigation. These were thoughtful amendments, and they did not go unnoticed. Our biggest remaining concern is with the facial recognition of children. I have provided you today with a signed letter from 772 parents and family members. That letter also incorporates a map of where those signatures are at, which covers 91 of the 99 districts in Ohio, every parent I have spoken to about this is frankly outraged at the idea. My hope is that by streamlining the investigatory and prosecution process for referring when these possible fraud situations do get flagged, that they will naturally clean this up. because of this, this was because if this was the law, but the department was not referring things out, then that is not a broken law so much as it's a broken process. If existing law being enforced would take care of fraudsters, then I ask that we give it a chance before we add in language and spend money to create a system of facial recognition for children. House Bill 649, the sub-bill, has a reporting aspect, so you could always come back as a legislator and make additional changes if you feel it's not working to better deter and address situations of fraud. You could also increase penalties for those who commit the fraud. I would like to detail some issues that remain in the event that this committee would entertain additional changes. First, while we have no issue with the portion of the bill allowing for the Inspector General to conduct thorough investigation, we do point out that giving jurisdiction to the Attorney General carries with it a disconnect to local control We believe that the process in place is effective and prefer to keep local control in the hands of the local prosecutor Second, we are concerned with the due process. An accusation of fraud could come with a disgruntled employee, a parent, or random person in the community. Sorry about that. In order to safeguard against this, we would like to see peer review language be included in this bill so that our businesses can have appropriate levels of due process in any case that will result in our businesses losing their step up to quality rating or that would result in their closure. As part of the last state operating budget process, the Ohio House agreed on peer review language, and we would like to see that language inserted into this bill. If we are going to take the time to address something in the child care industry, we believe it would benefit everyone if we added in comprehensive elements that help business owners in the industry invest with confidence at a time when families in Ohio need more options. Again, this bill has been improved upon, and we are hopeful that these changes will be part of any additional amendment considerations. I thank the committee members for your time and would be happy to answer any questions.
All right. Are there any questions for this witness? Seeing none, we thank you for coming in and for your patience today waiting for this.
Thank you.
All right, next we will have Karen Lampe again with the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers as an interested party. The first testimonies were opponent.
Thank you, Chairman White, Vice Chair Salvo, Ranking Member Lett, and members of the committee. Again, I'm Karen Lampe, owner and operator of CWCC, Inc. out of the Miami Valleys of Ohio, and representing today the Ohio Association of Child Care Providers. We appreciate the sponsor, Representative Williams, for improvements that he's made to the amended version of the bill, particularly the flexibility added around the use of absent days to include calamity days. However, there are several remaining provisions that raise significant concerns. Privacy concerns regarding mandatory image collection. The amendment requires that providers collect data points of children. In practice, these are images, they're pictures of children, of each child upon entry and exit each day. While the language differentiates data points from photos, families will not perceive a meaningful difference. An image of a child is still an image collected and stored by the state. This is particularly concerning for children in foster care, kinship arrangements, domestic violence situations, or custody disputes. children for whom protecting the identity and location is essential for safety. There are practical and operational challenges. This bill has language that is incredibly complex, overly complicated, and administratively difficult. Young children do not reliably sit still to face a camera, which will result in blurry or unusable images. The tap tablets as I mentioned before are often bolted or mounted at entrances requiring parents to lift children into position for photos Capturing that is going to add time and create bottlenecks during busy transitions that are stressful periods already for families, for young children, and for providers. This could increase safety risk during those crowded drop-off and pick-up times. And the current system of parent photo identification at that time of care is already sufficient in doing the job that we need done in Ohio. There is also restrictive and burdensome changes to the backtap system, again, being overly complicated and complex. This amendment would eliminate the process except for under limited DCY approval circumstances, such as outages or national disasters, but as written, providers would not be reimbursed if apparently simply misses a back tap. This means that a provider payment could be denied for provider care that was actually given to the child. This is an unintentional financial risk in an already very fragile system. The sub-bill as written gives broad departmental authority without a lot of clear guidance. and we respectfully urge the committee to reconsider or revise the amendments to remove the language requiring any image, photo identification, data point collection of a child. Preserve the workable, clearly defined back tap process that recognizes real world provider and family needs. 30 days is necessary in order to do that. That's the reality of being a working parent of young children. There's just logistical challenges that have to be met, and we want to make sure that providers are paid for services that they've provided. Please limit the administrative burdens that do not improve child safety and protect the privacy and security of Ohio's children and families. Ohio's early childhood system must be both accountable and practical. We look forward to working with policymakers to ensure that House Bill 649 supports safety, stability, sustainability for the children and families that we serve. Thank you. I'm available for any questions you may have.
Thank you, Ms. Lampe.
Vice Chair Salvo. Thank you, Chair, and thank you again for your testimony. Thank you. When you earlier described the process, you said that ratio is like one tablet to 50?
Correct.
is that not something that we could explore because it sounds like the tapping is the problem but when you're describing that scenario it makes you go of course there's a line every morning when this is happening is that something that was proposed in rulemaking is that a potential to change
Chairman White, Representative Salvo I think the challenge also becomes our physical space I don't have room in my entrance for more tap stations There's not room for people to be able to walk in and out of an entrance of our building, especially if you're creating that kind of stacking of a problem. So while, yes, you could put up more tablets, I don't know where you're going to put them in some of my buildings. There's just not the space.
Follow-up? Yeah.
Are there any other questions for this witness? Seeing none, we appreciate you coming in. Thank you. Thanks for your patience. alright and next we will have Leslie Doria with the Y again. Thank you.
Chair White, Vice Chair Salvo, Ranking Member Lett, and members of the committee, thank you again for the opportunity to testify on House Bill 649. Again, I'm Leslie Doria, and I'm the Vice President of Child Care for the YMCA of Greater Toledo, and I am here on behalf of the Ohio Alliance of YMCAs. The Ohio Ys are grateful to the bill's sponsors and this committee for amendments that already have been made to improve House Bill 649, including allowing more flexibility for absence days. However, we would like to share new concerns regarding the bill's requirement to use data point identification and back taps. These changes, while intended to create accountability and transparency, would cause serious unintended harm. First, amended House Bill 649 requires children to be identified in the TAPS system instead of the parents. For purposes of recording and verifying child care center attendance, the amended bill requires child care centers to use DCY-provided tablets to record data point identification of each child in publicly funded care at the time of care. The bill also requires these data points to be updated every six months. First, while the bill no longer captures pictures or videos, it does require data points of children's faces to be captured and be available to DCY. Facial data point capture is very similar to photo collection, and thus the collection
and sharing of these data point images still raises serious privacy concerns. Parents often do not want their children captured in pictures and will struggle to understand the difference between a photo and a facial data point. Capturing any images of their children, whether using data points or photos, will cause families great unease and may deter them from seeking care for their children. Second, there are practical concerns, as some of my other fellow colleagues have said, in implementing these requirements. Often young children do not hold still to have their picture taken, and the same would apply for facial data point collection. If the child is moving or not facing the camera, the data points could not be used to verify attendance as intended. Third, requiring families to update data points of their children every six months is burdensome to those families, and the Ys already struggle to get families to complete paperwork and taps in and out each day. Asking those same families to ensure their children's facial data points are updated with DCY every six months is just not feasible. Children would end up with outdated facial data point information, thus preventing their attendance to be verified. The current system of parent photo identification at the time of care is sufficient to prove a child's attendance. Second, the bill's new provisions severely restrict the ability for YMCAs to use back taps and would prevent many families from receiving care. In the previous substitute bill for House Bill 649, the bill proposed allowing back taps when DCY approved them. We raised a question in our last testimony about whether that language meant the department would have to approve using back taps in each instance or could adopt a general rule. In the amended version of House Bill 649, the bill would require DCY to approve each instance and only when the approval is necessary to accommodate a system outage or a natural disaster. Thus back taps would not be allowed at all without extenuating circumstances and approval would be required in each instance In those extenuating circumstances only if DCY approves a Y could back tap and use the 14-day window laid out in the bill. This provision would completely disallow back tapping simply because a family missed a tap. Thus, Ys would never be reimbursed for care provided to a family that made maybe one mistake. YMCAs would be forced to discontinue care for a family if that family missed any single tap. This change to the bill would prevent thousands of families and children from receiving child care. In conclusion, Ohio's child care system depends on stability, clarity, and fairness. We respectfully urge the committee to reconsider or revise the amendment to remove language around facial data points for children and remove all language disallowing back taps only in extenuating circumstance and with DCY approval for each back tap. Thank you for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you for your testimony on both bills. Ranking Member Lett, you had a question?
Thank you, Chairwoman. Thank you so much for your testimony. I am a learner observer, so it takes me a second to think through. my questions, but one of the things that I've really struggled with with both of these bills is the whole TAP system to begin with. We have students going to our public universities that are receiving scholarships that are public money. They show up for class or they don't, regardless the university or college gets paid. So I struggle to see how the workforce that supports our workforce should have to live under this burden to begin with when there's no other place in society where we can see this paying out. So that is my problem, one, with the entire system in and of itself. But secondly, I am deeply concerned that making the TAP system even more burdensome will actually decrease child care capacity. You mentioned in earlier testimony that you already have a full-time individual dedicated to, you know, verifying with parents and correcting any of these errors, you don't increase capacity, you know, with this. There's a possibility that you would actually decrease and then have to hire an additional individual. So I guess my overall question is, do you believe that that decrease is imminent? Do you think that this bill and potentially 647 as well would actually decrease our child care capacity and are you worried about that for the why? Thank you. Through Rep. WI-E, thank you for trying to understand this very
complex system and something that we live with every single day. So I do worry that we will see fewer and fewer providers that will serve publicly funded children. You know, for my locations of our 22 sites, we're about 60% private pay and 40% publicly funded. So, you know, if the continue burdensome, you know, if we continue to have more and more burden in this system, we may have to consider certain programs not serving publicly funded students just because of the sheer fact of the amount of work that would be put into that Or we would have to really create policies for our families that would almost deter them from even enrolling with us which we already done We already done that We already implemented new policies around public funds at all of my facilities around attendance requirements around absence day usage I'm at a point here where some of our families are already running out of absence days due to this lovely winter we had. And I'm at a point where we're going to have to start charging families. That's nothing we've ever done before. You know, so I do worry that those families who need us the most are now going to maybe have to carry that weight of that. And are they even going to be able to afford something like that? So, yes, I do worry that there will be fewer and fewer providers that serve publicly funded students.
Thank you. No follow up.
Are there any other questions for this witness? I did have one question. So, again, prior to COVID, our state had 10 absent days every six months. Right now, we have one of the most generous absentee policies in the country at 20 days every six months is my understanding. But if anyone has data to dispute that, which I see some heads in the back, I'm interested in seeing that. I guess my question is, what did you do before COVID when you had 10 days? What was the practical realities of that?
Sure. Thank you. And Representative White, I think we were living in a little bit different time. You know, the hour requirements currently in the new full-time, part-time, hourly categories has greatly changed. And where, as a YMCA, we serve a large group of school-agers in our programs. So prior to this change, seven hours got us to a part-time week. Now at 10 hours, that is challenging for a school-ager. Even, they would almost have to come every day before school and after school. and even if they came one morning, we wouldn't be able to use an absence day in the afternoon either. So we are somewhat using more absence days for families that are not attending to try to get to that 10-hour mark. So that is part of it. We weren't facing that pre-COVID. It was a different category. You know, 25 hours to be full-time was different, especially in our early childhood, you know, programs. getting somebody to 33 hours a week, that's pretty much a family has to be there every day for, you know, their full eight hours. They really can't miss a day. So that is one thing that we're still struggling with and has created a little bit more burden and why we had to implement stricter policies.
Thank you for the clarification. And so I guess I would ask. so part time my understanding is 75% of the full time rate so in the past you were getting paid 75% of a full time rate for 7 hours a week is that my understanding
Chairway I don't believe that that was the rate that we were receiving at that timeline School age was lower, that in referring to school age care.
Okay, so school age care, and if somebody has information, feel free to share it at the podium. But if in fact, right now, forget the past, before the operating budget was passed, last January, if a child was there seven hours a day, my understanding was that the part-time rate is 75% of the full-time rate. That's my understanding for part-time care, not after school and before school. So maybe there's a different percentage rate for those. If you could help elaborate Thanks Thank you Chairman White Again Karen Lampe So the school age rates are set up a little bit differently than what our infant through preschool are
I'd have to go back to look at the actual percentage to see if it's 75%. But it's based upon what we charge our private pay parents, which for private pay, regardless of how many hours they come, they pay the full amount. in my case for the entire month regardless of their attendance. They pay the full amount for the month. For publicly funded, we have to patch together this patchwork of how many hours did they come, how many absent days do they have, can we use an absent day, does the absent day get us to the number of hours that we need. But regardless in any of that, the cost for our insurance, the cost for our electricity, the cost for gas, the cost for your equipment, for your food, for your teachers, doesn't change. So what has changed is that the state used to pay us our rate based upon the child attending 25 hours, and then we swung the pendulum all the way to the extreme to 33 hours. It's too far. I understand if the state needs to make tweaks to things. we are swinging the pendulum too far. And that's the difference between where we were pre-COVID and where we are today. We've swung the pendulum too far.
Okay. Thank you for clarifying. And I will get verification from DCY, but my understanding is part-time rates are kicking, you know, seven hours was the... So we'll go ahead and clarify that just to make sure, since you said you're not 100% sure. But tell me about the other states. You were saying
I said we had a more generous policy than other states in absentee days.
Can you clarify what information you know?
So, Chairman White, I will have to get back to you with exact details. But while we do have what seems like a large number of absent days, structurally how we create our system together does not make it necessarily to where it is more beneficial than what other states are. And so it's really about the patchwork system that we create in Ohio that makes it difficult. So we'll get back to you with that exact data, though.
Yep. Thanks very much. And I'll get additional information for the committee regarding enrollment versus attendance of other states. I know some other states have started restricting eligibility because of the finances related to that. But we need facts in front of us as we consider this. So thank you all very much for coming in. And, again, I want to apologize for the delay. And thank you for your patience today that we were able to get through all of this before we take a break until after the primary. I did want to point out a couple things. I did request for DCY to provide us with information on exactly what does the KinderConnect system utilize if we were to upgrade through their system regarding is a photo actually needed, if you're doing a data points as 649 has been amended to include or not. The upgrade they were looking at, it would still require a photo, is the understanding, but I will submit that information to the committee. The other piece of that is, there was one other thing I was going to mention regarding this, the ability of AI if it's just data points, because one of the questions committee members had is, if it was hacked, could AI... use the data points to create a photo of the child's face? And the answer from the vendor was yes. So again, this is the particular vendor they're using, but some of those questions came up, so I will provide that information. Are there any others that wish to testify on either bill today? And I will again point out the written testimony of Ms. Favor as well as Dr. Moses, and I thank you all for your patience, and with that, we will adjourn. Thank you.