Page 82

82 | P a g e FFY 2025–2027 CCDF State Plan

understand relative access to early care and education (ECE) services for multi- language learners throughout the state. The Lead Agency has a Rising Pre-K Summer Transition Program, funded in part by CCDF, that targets children who are age eligible for Pre-K the next school year and whose home language is Spanish. The program includes bilingual teachers and a strong family engagement component. Services and resources are provided to families in English and Spanish. Lastly, the Lead Agency is currently working with the Urban Institute to examine strategies to define and measure access by demographic factors.

ii. Method of tracking progress: The Lead Agency, with researchers from the University of Georgia, are conducting an ongoing evaluation of the Expanding Parents’ Access to Nontraditional Delivery (EXPAND) grants to determine effectiveness. iii. What is the plan to address the child care shortages using family child care homes? For nontraditional hour care, two licensed family child care learning homes have received Expanding Parents’ Access to Nontraditional Delivery (EXPAND) grants. For nontraditional hour care, licensed family child care homes offer the advantage of having a smaller scale and therefore can increase their hours of operation for a lower cost. The EXPAND grants are a pilot program and the Lead Agency is testing how effectively licensed family child care can be leveraged to meet the demand of nontraditional hour care for families. As to shortages related to other special populations, the Lead Agency is currently working to better understand supply and demand to establish criteria by which to measure supply at the statewide level and various local levels where greater variation may exist in order to identify shortages and develop strategies for supply building. iv. What is the plan to address the child care shortages using child care centers? For nontraditional hour care, five child care learning centers have received Expanding Parents’ Access to Nontraditional Delivery (EXPAND) grants. For nontraditional hour care, licensed child care centers may incur higher cost of operations to expand their hours of operation. The EXPAND grants are a pilot program and the Lead Agency is testing how effectively licensed child care learning centers can be leveraged to meet the demand of nontraditional hour care for families. As to shortages related to other special populations, the Lead Agency is currently working to better understand supply and demand to establish criteria by which to measure supply at the statewide level and various local levels where greater variation may exist in order to identify shortages and develop strategies for supply building. 4.5.4 Strategies to increase the supply of and improve quality of child care Lead Agencies must develop and implement strategies to increase the supply of and improve the quality of child care services. These strategies must address child care in underserved geographic areas; infants and toddlers; children with disabilities, as defined by the Lead Agency; and children who receive care during non-traditional hours.