Enrolled Bill Summary

            Senate Bill 76 amends the Education Code to enhance coordination of early childhood care and education programs and services. The bill requires a school district to consider the possibility of sharing an existing Head Start or other child-care program site as a prekindergarten site before establishing a new prekindergarten program, and it allows the commissioner of education to use certain appropriated funds to provide for coordinating early childhood care and education programs, developing and disseminating prekindergarten instructional materials and school-readiness information for parents, and developing standards for model early childhood care and education coordination that focus on certain preliteracy skills. The bill allows the commissioner to administer grants for early childhood care and education programs in a manner that provides the greatest flexibility under federal law.

            The bill requires program providers to coordinate with the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Workforce Commission, and local workforce development boards regarding subsidized child-care services and establishes requirements for that coordination, including providing applicants for child care with relevant information and ensuring that full-day, full-year services are available to low-income parents in the workforce or in workforce training programs.

            The bill requires each provider of government-funded child-care services to furnish each enrolled child's parent with information regarding effective early education settings and any indicators that a child is ready for kindergarten that have been developed at the time of enrollment.

            The bill provides for the development by the State Center for Early Childhood Development, in conjunction with a school district, regional education service center, college or university, local government, local workforce development board, or community organization, of a quality rating system demonstration project for assessment of the various types of program providers. The entities above also may develop coordination-of-resources demonstration projects under which government-funded child-care services are operated in a coordinated manner. Any entity implementing a project must report to the legislature and to the agency with regulatory jurisdiction and must include a project evaluation and any recommendations for statewide implementation.

            Finally, the bill requires the State Center for Early Childhood Development to appoint a 15-member advisory committee to evaluate the feasibility of coordinating government-funded child-care programs to promote program access and improve school readiness, prescribes the committee's composition, and requires the committee to submit a report with its recommendations to the governor, the legislature's presiding officers, and the appropriate legislative committees by September 1, 2004.