Yesterday afternoon, special provisions attached to the NC House biennium budget proposal were disclosed to the public, revealing a positive, yet incomplete, reorganization of the Smart Start administrative structure. This administrative reform – in tandem with a $37 million budget reduction – includes increasing a private funds matching requirement, removing the availability of certain funds to be used to grow administrative budgets, and setting a state salary cap for Smart Start administrators.
Overall, administrative cuts will total around $10 million.
As stated in previous articles, Smart Start is the vehicle for a small portion of North Carolina’s childcare subsidies. However, it typically contracts oversight over those subsidies out to the local Department of Social Services (DSS) – only 20 DSS branches across the state do not administer Smart Start subsidy.
Currently, Smart Start local partnerships are legally restrained to administrative costs of 8 percent of their budget. Curiously, however, even the millions of childcare subsidy dollars actually administered by local DSS branches are counted as part of their budget. Such a formula allows for extra administrative costs to be factored in to the actual administration Smart Start performs.
The House proposal would remove subsidy funding from Smart Start’s administrative cost formula. Combined with the proposed $37 million Smart Start reduction, total administrative costs for Smart Start would be lowered by around $10 million.
Another provision, which caps North Carolina Partnership for Children (NCPC) salaries at $80,000 and local partnership salaries at $60,000, does little to curb large salaries paid to Smart Start employees due to the following passage in the special provision:
“Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to prohibit the North Carolina Partnership for Children, Inc. or a local partnership from using non-State funds to supplement the salary of any employee.”
It is regular practice for Smart Start employees to supplement their salaries using non-state funding. This provision would merely require Smart Start administrators to reshuffle their funding streams so they can continue to receive the same level of salaries.
While the House’s recommendations are headed down the right track, they fall short of realizing the full extent of reforms possible (such as consolidating Smart Start’s childcare subsidy into the Division of Child Development) in a way that could increase childcare subsidies while simultaneously saving millions of taxpayer dollars.
Take subsidy elsewhere, PLEASE!
Why is Civitas focused on Smart Start and subsidy, when there is so much more that Smart Start does in this state for families of pre school-age children and those children, themselves?
I don’t know if it realizes, but in the process of lobbying for changes to how subsidy is administered, Civitas is actually dismantling most of the other good works Smart Start does.
Fine! Move subsidy somewhere else! Smart Start is not subsidy – that’s only a small part of what it does. In the focus on the one aspect, Civitas is destroying the majority of what Smart Start accomplishes beyond subsidy. Look deeper into the myriad other, locally-focused programs that Smart Start administers and see the good being done.
Come on, Civitas. Draw some distinctions. Help inform the legislators you’ve so effectively lobbied that the remaining programs cannot withstand the ‘reforms’ being set before them. Take subsidy elsewhere, PLEASE! But leave Smart Start with its main mission intact and do not hobble it with punitive changes, simply because subsidy is not being doled out to your taste.
Civitas, do the honorable thing with a course correction to fine-tune your agenda and leave the remaining Smart Start programs viable.
“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do!”
Smart Start and More at 4 need to be totally dismantled, not tweaked or hobbled…dismantled.
Studies have shown that any gains in school performance are lost after the 3rd grade.
This is yet another failed social experiment. When will politicians learn that not all children can learn, not all children will learn and not all children want to learn.
Smart Start and More at 4 need to be totally dismantled, not tweaked or hobbled…dismantled.
agree with Jeff studies i have seen show that by 2nd grade there is no difference between those who had it and those who did not. this is free daycare for votes!
As a former teacher and substitute teacher, I discovered that children are often forced into the program because the schools want more money and that too much of the food is simply thrown away and not wanted by students nor teachers.
Yes, by all means move more money into the DSS system where the poor directors are only paid six figure salaries. That blasted Smart Start and their high administrative costs. Move all the money into the DSS system where their administrative overhead is over 40% in some counties.