Early childhood education: reimbursement rates.

(1) The Child Care and Development Services Act establishes a system of childcare and development services for children up to 13 years of age. Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to implement a plan that establishes reasonable standards and assigned reimbursement rates, which vary with the length of the program year and the hours of service. Existing law requires the reimbursement system to be submitted to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. This bill would require the Superintendent to implement a reimbursement system plan that establishes reasonable standards and assigned reimbursement rates that would vary with additional factors, including a quality adjustment factor to address the cost of staffing ratios, as provided. The bill would require the reimbursement system plan, including methodology, standards, county rate targets as provided, and the total statewide funding amount necessary to reach annual rate targets for all agencies to be annually submitted to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, on or before November 10. The bill would require the plan to include a formula for annually adjusting reimbursement rates, as provided. The bill would require the department, by July 1, 2020, and annually thereafter, as provided, to establish a reimbursement rate target for each contracting agency that meets specific quality standards based on specified elements, including quality adjustment factors for the age range of children proposed to be served by the contracting agency, as a multiplier, which the bill would also require the department to establish. (2) Existing law establishes adjustment factors for a provider agency's reported child days of enrollment in order to reflect the additional expense of serving specified children, including an adjustment factor for infants and toddlers who are 0 to 36 months and are served in a child daycare center or family childcare home, as provided. This bill would, as of July 1, 2020, delete the above adjustment factors and would make conforming changes. (3) Existing law requires reimbursement rates to be adjusted by specified adjustment factors for childcare and development programs and, for childcare and development providers serving children for less than 4 hours per day, requires the reimbursement factor to be 55% of the standard reimbursement rate. This bill would instead require the above-described reimbursement factor to be 50% of the standard reimbursement rate. (4) The bill would make its operation contingent on the enactment of SB 174 of the 2019–20 Regular Session on or before January 1, 2020.