Education: Child care: individualized county child care subsidy plans: the Every Kid Counts (EKC) Act.

(1) The Child Care and Development Services Act has a purpose of providing a comprehensive, coordinated, and cost-effective system of child care and development services for children from infancy to 13 years of age and their parents, including a full range of supervision, health, and support services through full- and part-time programs. Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop standards for the implementation of quality child care programs. Existing law authorizes the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Marin, Monterey, San Benito, San Diego, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, and Sonoma, as individual pilot projects, to develop an individualized county child care subsidy plan, as provided. Existing law repeals each of these pilot programs on specified dates. This bill would repeal, recast, and revise the law relating to the above-specified counties' individualized subsidy plans and make related conforming changes, as provided. The bill would extend the operative dates of the individualized pilot programs by 6 months. (2) Existing law authorizes the City and County of San Francisco and the City of San Mateo to develop and implement individualized county child care subsidy plans that include specified elements. Existing law authorizes the plans to supersede state law concerning child care subsidy programs with regard to specified factors, including eligibility criteria, as provided. This bill would, among other things, make changes to the eligibility criteria and would allow the plans to supersede state law on ratios of four-year-old children in state preschool programs. (3) This bill would make legislative findings and declarations as to the necessity of a special statute for the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Marin, Monterey, San Benito, San Diego, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Solano, and Sonoma. (4) Existing law establishes the Every Kid Counts (EKC) Act, which requires the Scholarshare Investment Board to implement and administer a college savings program that incentivizes families to participate in a qualified tuition program established under the Golden State Scholarshare Trust Act or other college savings programs. Before implementing the program, existing law requires the board to make specified considerations, including how best to incentivize low-income families to participate in these college savings programs and whether and how proposed actions allow for rigorous evaluation of the effects of the EKC Act. Existing law requires the board and the Franchise Tax Board to exchange prescribed information in order to verify financial eligibility under these college savings programs. This bill would revise and recast the act to instead, among other things, require the Student Aid Commission to distribute grants to local governments and other entities that sponsor one or more comprehensive citywide or regional children's savings account programs to help families establish and maintain college savings accounts. The bill would make the amount of each grant $100,000, at a minimum, and would require each participating entity to meet certain requirements in order to receive the grant. (5) Existing law, the Budget Act of 2017, appropriates $3,000,000 for purposes of the Golden State Scholarshare Trust Program. This bill would repeal that appropriation and would appropriate that amount to the Student Aid Commission for purposes of the EKC College Savings Program. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as a bill providing for appropriations related to the Budget Bill.