Restoration of State Child Care Program a Significant Victory for GPSS

The state Higher Education Coordinating Board's (HECB) Child Care Matching Grant program, which provides financial aid for students with children across the state and was suspended in an earlier legislative session, has been restored to previous funding levels with the Legislature's passage of the state budget Wednesday night.

The reconciliation budget bill included $75,000 a year in funding over two years for the program, which is awarded to four-year and community and technical colleges as grants to match existing campus childcare investments.

The reinstatement is an unlikely and significant development in a legislative session in which lawmakers were facing a $5.3 billion budget shortfall and cut funding to higher education by $535 million. The University of Washington's operating budget was cut 33 percent, or $209 million.

"It is an amazing advocacy accomplishment for a suspended program to have its funding reinstated, given this budget climate," said Ben Henry, Graduate & Professional Student Senate (GPSS) Vice President and Washington Student Association (WSA) legislative liaison. "As a result, hundreds of students with children across the state, including at UW, will see fewer barriers to completing their degrees."

WSA Executive Director Mike Bogatay says it's a "done deal," as Gov. Chris Gregoire will not be able to veto this particular budget line item. "The Governor can only line-item veto what is written in the budget," he said. "Since it was included in carry-forward funding and not written in as budget proviso, she doesn't have the authority to (veto) it."

GPSS and WSA spent much of this legislative session advocating for restoration of this program, proposing what became Senate Bill 5795, which would have created a funding mechanism for the program via unclaimed lottery prizes. The bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, would have funded the program at $250,000 a year.

"The Legislature did not fund Child Care Matching Grants at what we were asking for in the bill, but, given what we were up against this year, this was a huge victory for us," Henry said.

Said GPSS President Sarah Reyneveld: "The reinstatement of the program demonstrates that the state Legislature feels strongly that funding child care for student-parents is worth the investment, as it increases access and timeliness to degree completion."

Sam Shaddox, the student member of the HECB, says the program is "critical to maintaining educational opportunies for all Washington citizens, and this keeps the door open for more funding in the future. Each and every dollar this program receives goes toward maintaining accessibility to higher education for Washington's citizens. This is recognition by the Legislature that child-care funding is a barrier to higher education that has to be addressed."

While this program's reinstatement presents a win, it was a very rough session for graduate and professional student interests. Besides institutional funding cuts, funding for what had been the last remaining state financial aid program that benefits graduate students, State Work Study, was cut by $31 million, or 66 percent, to $16 million.

"While we are very saddened by this drastic reduction in funding and gutting of the program, GPSS considers the preservation of Work-Study as a victory, given the fact that the House originally proposed an outright suspension of the program," Henry said.

Other changes to the State Work Study program include increasing the required employer share of wages and discontinuing non-resident student eligibility for the program. Further, the HECB will adjust employer match rates and revise distribution methods to institutions by considering other factors such as off-campus job development, historical utilization trends, and student need.

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Past blog posts on childcare

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Past news coverage on this state program:

Daunting assignment: Students lobby against cuts to higher education

Seattle Times, March 15, 2011

Child Care funding bill stopped in state senate

The Daily, March 9, 2011

Child care bill would provide more aid for student-parents

The Daily, March 1, 2011

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Past news coverage on childcare on campus:

UW students bring kids to classes, seek child-care help
Seattle Times, May 9, 2011

Kids in the Quad
The Daily, May 5, 2011

New GPSS task force meets to discuss increase in resources on campus for student-parents
The Daily, January 31, 2011

The cost of care
The Daily, October 5, 2010

Student-parents concerned with campus resources
The Daily, September 29, 2010

Helping Students With Children Is About Opportunity and a Better Society

I wanted to share my response to a misinformed column that was published in The Daily last week, "Child care is not the UW’s responsibility" (May 19, 2011).

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By Ben Henry

Many years ago, an ambitious and talented college student was pursuing his dream of becoming a journalist. He had experience as a sports broadcaster and a knack for the gab, and many believed he had a bright future ahead of him.

But he would never get a shot at realizing his lifelong ambition. Alas, fatherhood beckoned, and he did what made the most sense to him at the time, dropping out of school to provide for his family.

That man, my father, went on to become a cab driver — an honorable profession, but not exactly the stuff dreams are made of. We led a difficult life, scrambling, on a seemingly month-to-month basis, to make rent.

For my father, his dream died with the birth of his son. But it didn’t have to be that way.

As a parent and public policy student at the University of Washington, I have had the opportunity to experience first-hand what UW does well and not so well for students with children. Like my father, I, too, have faced difficult choices. I am finishing a master’s degree while trying to raise my 2-year-old son, Jack, in a time when tuition and cost of living are exponentially greater than when parenthood unceremoniously claimed my father as a college dropout.

The Graduate & Professional Student Senate (GPSS), which has advocated for student-parents for many years, has been a leader in determining the unmet needs and telling the stories of this underserved population, through our Students With Children Awareness Day on May 9 and the Students With Children Census.

Through our efforts, we have found student-parents who are strung-out, desperate and barely surviving. We have encountered students who are walking an incredibly tight line between being able to pursue their dreams and having to drop out. These are students who are a baby’s sneeze away from having to miss an important exam, and must face the cold, hard reality that they aren’t spending the kind of time with their children that they so greatly desire.

It is for these parents that we are saddened by the shockingly uninformed rantings of columnist Peter Sessum ("Child care is not the UW’s responsibility," May 19). Mr. Sessum claims that “there is no secret part of being a student with a child that the rest of the campus needs to recognize.” Clearly, the despair that student-parents face are a secret to him, which is precisely why awareness needs to be generated.

Don’t just take my word for it.

"Most days when I am alone, I am crying from the stress,” says one undergraduate Business Administration student. “I consider quitting every few days. I have tons of guilt for not spending enough time with my kids, and for always being cranky and tired from studying all night. I feel like I am swimming upstream without an arm or leg."

One graduate Public Affairs student says she feels she is failing as a student and a mother.

“These feelings are cemented when advisors ask me how I feel about ‘underperforming in grad school,’” she said. “These feelings are cemented when I have to choose between going to class and nursing my sick infant. These feelings are cemented when I struggle to find the time to write my degree project when my son is buzzing around me in all his 2-year-old fury. The past two years have been a constant struggle, a constant feeling of failure, and the recurring relief of finding out I have just barely passed quantitative analysis or some other class.”

For most, parenthood significantly delays their graduation and impacts their academic performance. A preliminary analysis of the GPSS-sponsored census finds that 71 percent of all survey participants say parenthood will delay their graduation. Meanwhile, 63 percent say parenthood has a “moderate” or “significant” impact on their academic performance.

Readers who are not parents may ask, Why should I care? Why is it important for the greater University community to be aware of the challenges students with children face?

The fact is, parents on this campus have been marginalized and made to feel like they have committed some kind of crime just for having a child. This manifests when some professors are unsympathetic when a student must stay home because their child is sick. Or when students are called "bad parents" by people like Mr. Sessum for having the courage, for one simple day, to come to campus with their little ones in tow to proudly declare to the university community that, yes, I am a mother, I am a father, and I am not ashamed to say it.

A lack of affordable childcare is the third greatest barrier to degree completion, and mitigating those barriers increases the likelihood that parents — and their children — become productive members of society.

Is it not in taxpayers' interests to give low-income parents who aspire to earn a degree a path to their dreams, providing them with an option beyond social services? Give a parent a fish, and they will feed their child for a day. Teach a parent to fish, and they will not only eat for a lifetime, but they will teach their children, as well.

Student-parents are not asking for a hand-out. We are merely asking that it be just a little bit easier to acquire some fishing line.

GPSS Concerns Cited on 'Inside Olympia'

With the imminent passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, a bill that grants universities tuition-setting authority, we are entering a new era in Washington higher education. There was an interesting discussion on the subject in "Inside Olympia," in which host Austin Jenkins referenced GPSS concerns several times.

In this clip, Jenkins refers to a "false promise" on a provision in the bill that claimed to provide a cap on tuition increases for low- and middle-income students. However, in practice, tuition would have to practically double for those protections to be triggered.




GPSS also called for the reduction of the sunset clause to revisit local tuition control from eight years to four years:




Finally, GPSS called for the creation of mechanisms for student input, like public testimony at Regents' meetings:



Here are links to the GPSS documents referenced in these clips:

• Press release
• Tuition cap triggers

Historic Tuition Bill Passes With No Provisions for Student Input in Tuition Setting

The Washington State Senate rushed through the passage of E2SHB 1795, the “Higher Education Opportunity Act,” readying the bill for Governor’s signature into law. This bill represents a significant and historic policy shift, granting local undergraduate tuition-setting authority to institutions.

The shifting of tuition-setting authority from the Legislature to universities’ Boards of Regents and Trustees eliminates the mechanism for student input in the process. Legislative authority has an inherent mechanism for student input through the electoral process and the responsibility for legislators to listen and respond to their constituents. However, governor-appointed Trustees do not carry these same obligations. This bill will severely limit students’ ability to have a voice in the process.

A joint GPSS-ASUW proposal outlined three concrete mechanisms to protect the student voice in the process. However, the Senate avoided having a conversation with the No. 1 stakeholder, students.

”This bill, absent crucial amendments to ensure student voice and opportunity, signifies the end of opportunity for students,” said GPSS President Sarah Reyneveld. “GPSS is concerned that the bill passed without an opportunity for students to weigh in on the proposal in the Senate and with virtually no additional provisions to ensure student input in the tuition-setting process.”

The proposal included the following elements:

• Limit the eight-year sunset clause to four years.
• Mandate that institutions create budget advisory committees made up of students that report directly to the provost of each respective four-year state institution.
• Mandate public comments periods at board meetings.

“The House ignored our concerns. And when the Senate ducked debate on potential amendments, we were not given the opportunity to pursue our proposal,” said Ben Henry, GPSS Vice President and legislative liaison.

The bill, expected to be signed into law by Gov. Chris Gregoire, is, in essence, a historic policy shift after decades of student opposition to local tuition control. ASUW and GPSS hopes to pursue this proposal with the UW administration, and then to propose a bill next legislative session.

“Higher education and, specifically, students, now stand to be the biggest losers of this legislative session,” Henry said. “We have lost on institutional funding and on financial aid. Now, students are relinquishing the ability to have a voice in the tuition-setting process. The Legislature is making a clear and calculated statement that students of higher education are not a priority in this state.”

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The Daily: University to have control of tuition for extended period of time
Seattle Times: Gregoire says she'll sign bill letting schools set tuition