2022 Session Wrap-Up - Fight Crime: Invest in Kids Washington

Legislative Session – Overall and Early Learning

The 2022 legislative session was a supplemental budget year or what we refer to as a “short session” because it is scheduled for 60-days rather than 105-days. Our Legislature drafts two-year, or biennial, budgets for operating, capital, and transportation in the odd-numbered years. In the even-numbered years, the Legislature makes adjustments to the two-year budget based on case load forecasts and uptake to ensure programs and services are paid for at the appropriate levels. Additionally, supplemental budget years can be times to ask for new investments, but it is typically not a time to ask for major new investments.

However, our state was in a unique fiscal position due to two reasons. One, state revenue forecasts continued to trend positive. Two, our state had $1.3 billion in unspent federal relief dollars heading into the session. Thus, there was the opportunity to seek larger than normal investments in a supplemental year. As expected, budget writers cautioned that the state should think about how to sustain any new services or program expansions that were due to one-time federal funds.

Regarding early learning generally, in the 2021 legislative session, a historic omnibus early learning bill called the Fair Start for Kids Act was passed. This put into place many needed supports for children and families as well as early learning providers and programs. Fair Start essentially doubled the state budget for early learning. As a result, many items like a variety of grant programs, rate increases, and the expansion of some existing programs were supported by federal one-time funds. These items need to be implemented over the 2021-2023 biennial budget cycle. Thus, much of the preparation for the 2022 legislative session involved contemplation on what would be appropriate requests knowing there was major implementation of robust new investments for early learning underway yet there was an optimistic revenue forecast. At the start of the 2022 legislative session advocates were seeking specific supports for ECEAP and childcare to ensure continued work on Fair Start and to ensure the requests matched what could be successfully implemented in the field. In the end, we saw more significant investments in high-quality childcare and ECEAP.

About ECEAP

ECEAP is our state’s proven high-quality preschool program called the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (or ECEAP, pronounced “e-cap” for short). ECEAP helps our state’s most vulnerable young learners get a strong start in life, prepares them for success in school, and is comprehensive to support the health of children and self-sufficiency of families.

High-quality programs like ECEAP are shown to help ensure kids meet school readiness benchmarks at kindergarten entry, thereby reducing the likelihood that they underperform in elementary school and increasing the likelihood they graduate from high school on time. We know the latter metric to be especially important, as six in ten US inmates never graduated high school. Research also highlights how high-quality early childhood programs build the important social-emotional and executive function skills that impact school completion and later behavioral outcomes. In fact, numerous longitudinal studies support the link between high-quality early education and crime reduction.

Increasing access to ECEAP through investments that cover the cost of quality care, slots so that more children have access, and learning space so that there are more physical classrooms to welcome children is a primary goal for Fight Crime: Invest in Kids WA.

Read more about ECEAP and its role in protecting public safety.

ECEAP summary

Here is a list of the key investments in ECEAP from the 2022 legislative session. Thank you to everyone who took action to advocate!

1. Quality supports: A $1.268 million investment will help cover the costs of curriculum, training supports, and assessment. These items were previously funded by a private grant that concluded. Without this state funding, these costs associated with quality would have been passed onto ECEAP programs that are already struggling to make ends meet.
2. New slots: A $4.709 million investment will ensure there are 326 new ECEAP slots and 40 flexible slots so that more children can be served, and programs have options to enroll students mid-year.
3. Slot conversion: A $2.664 million investment will allow 777 three-hour ECEAP slots to convert to six-hour slots. This helps working families who need longer than a three-hour program.
4. Summer ECEAP: A $5.970 million investment means 2, 212 summer ECEAP slots will be available to support preschoolers getting summer access to ECEAP before the start of kindergarten. 2,011 of these slots are in-person and 201 slots are for family support, wrap around services.
5. Early learning facilities grants and loans: A $23.137 million investment in a competitive early learning facilities grant and loan program will be available to ECEAP providers. The program aims to help ECEAP and childcare providers increase their classroom space to serve more children.