Dear child care providers,
The Child Development Division is committed to helping providers provide high quality early education and care to the children in their programs. Since August of 2014, the Child Development Division was fortunate to be able to use $600,000 to $750,000 in Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant funding each year to provide annual bonuses to programs that maintained their STAR level. These funds are no longer available, and the annual STARS and Nutrition bonuses will unfortunately end this fall.
The Division has been looking for funding to make these bonuses permanent, however we have not yet found funding to support these bonuses beyond November 2018.
There are two different types of bonuses that have been awarded related to STARS:
- A STARS achievement bonus, this bonus was awarded the first time a program achieved a new level of STARS. For example, if you achieved one star in 2016, your program received a STARS achievement bonus of $250 that year.
- An annual STARS and Nutrition bonus, this bonus was awarded each year to programs that maintained their current stars level. If you received one star in 2016 and maintained that one star in 2017 your program received an annual STARS and Nutrition bonus in 2017.
The annual STARS and Nutrition bonuses will no longer be awarded once the current funding is unavailable. We expect that the bonuses will no longer be awarded after November of this year.
The STARS achievement bonuses for first time stars level achievement, funded by the Child Care Development Block Grant, will continue to be awarded.
The Division will explore how to best use the funds that are currently used for the first-time stars level achievement and design a STARS bonus system that is both supportive to child care programs and encourage increasing STARS levels. We are looking for help with this and will be forming an advisory group of providers together in late spring/early summer 2019. The advisory group will make recommendations to the Division for a bonus system. If you have any ideas for how to change the bonus system with the current funds, or would like to be part of the advisory group please fill out this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/STARS_Bonuses_Advisory_Group_Sign_Up
Thank you,
Melissa Riegel-Garrett
CDD Policy Director