Chair Gutiérrez asks about network funding and support
Gutiérrez asks about the number of contracted networks and support provided. Phillips says there are over 40 networks and support includes professional development, policy clarification, and budget assistance.
How do you...
Do you have a sense of how many networks are contracted right now with 2, 3, and pre-K?
With how many networks we have right now.
So we have over 40 networks that we are working with right now across all of the 2K, 3K, and pre-K.
That includes Staten Island.
That does include Staten Island, yes.
I'm just, what kind of support?
I know you're in the preliminary, right?
But what kind of support, let's say for the pre-K expansion or 3K expansion, what kind of support existed for networks and what are you all looking at for 2K?
So the support, I would say, are in two buckets.
We are providing professional development to the educational directors of the family child care networks.
And so, you know, their usage of the creative curriculum and other curriculum pathways program
to make sure that they understand what programs are available and how to best coach and support family child care providers.
In addition to that, we are also providing clarification around policies, connection to resources for the networks who are then sharing this with their providers.
I mean, they have access to a translation hotline that the network or...
through the network the provider is able to access.
And our team is working with them around their budgets and what flexibility there is to make sure that if there are additional resources that they need, that we have those.
I also think there's just a community that
other network directors are, you know, we're able to support so that they're learning from each other as well as our team is providing that support.
And is the idea or the hope in this kind of continued rollout is that more provider, home-based providers, for example, will be a part of the network or that there will just be more networks online?
Our hope is that more providers are a part of the networks.
I think some of those details in terms of how many networks and how many providers per networks are things that we are going to be projecting out once we have more clarity on where the expansion is going to be and what the need is.
Okay.
Well, I look forward to this continued conversation.
I think it's something that's very important.
We've heard from a number of advocates, and so we want to make sure that we're kind of collaborating on this and making sure that we're including them.