{"id":22947,"date":"2018-01-24T10:02:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T16:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=22947"},"modified":"2018-01-24T10:02:11","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T16:02:11","slug":"bill-would-include-early-childhood-in-city-comprehensive-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=22947","title":{"rendered":"Bill would include early childhood in city comprehensive plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nebraska cities would be required to add an early childhood component to their comprehensive plans under a bill heard Jan. 23 by the Urban Affairs Committee. The bill would apply to cities of the metropolitan, primary, first and second class. It would not apply to villages.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Matt Hansen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lincoln Sen. Matt Hansen, sponsor of LB880, said state law already requires cities to develop and release comprehensive plans. Other required elements of those plans include land use, transportation, community facilities, energy and annexation.<\/p>\n

Hansen said the requirement would assist cities with labor force needs and would promote children\u2019s healthy development by focusing resources on wise investments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collection and analysis of this information provides greater transparency to the public\u2014including new businesses that may wish to relocate to the area, knowing that they can attract and retain new, young talent who will raise their families in thriving communities,\u201d Hansen said.<\/p>\n

The bill would require the addition of an early childhood requirement before Jan. 1, 2022, which would include three elements:
\n\u2022 promotion of early childhood health and education measures that benefit the community;
\n\u2022 an assessment of the supply of quality licensed early childhood education programs for children younger than six; and
\n\u2022 an evaluation of the availability and utilization of licensed child care capacity and quality for children younger than six.<\/p>\n

Sarah Ann Kotchin of the Holland Children\u2019s Movement testified in support of the bill, saying cities could use existing resources and data to fulfill the measure\u2019s requirements. Calling the proposal the \u201cnext logical step\u201d in strengthening Nebraska cities, she said early childhood is central to success.<\/p>\n

\u201cEducators and business leaders alike know it is smarter and more cost effective to get products or services right at the beginning than to fix problems later,\u201d Kotchin said. \u201cAnd this requires thoughtful planning like that proposed [in the bill].\u201d<\/p>\n

Tracy Gordon of the Nebraska Association for the Education of Young Children also supported the bill, saying that quality early childhood care and education fulfills two goals: keeping kids safe while their parents work and preparing them for success in school and in life.<\/p>\n

The conventional view of economic development typically focuses on things like company headquarters, office towers, entertainment centers and sports arenas, Gordon said, but early childhood education should be at the top of that list.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs policy makers you are tasked with identifying and understanding the investments that yield the highest public returns for Nebraskans, and here the literature is clear,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cInvestments in early childhood education yield extraordinary public returns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynn Rex, testifying on behalf of the League of Nebraska Municipalities, took a neutral position on the bill. Cities in Nebraska understand and appreciate the significance of early childhood education, she said, but many feel ill-equipped to assess the quality of such programs as required by the bill.<\/p>\n

Rex said that if the entities that have conducted such analysis\u2014such as the state departments of Health and Human Services or Education\u2014were required to provide that data to cities, they likely would support the measure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re hearing from our cities is that this is something they don\u2019t feel like they are in a position to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

No one testified in opposition to LB880 and the committee took no immediate action on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nebraska cities would be required to add an early childhood component to their comprehensive plans under a bill heard Jan. 23 by the Urban Affairs Committee. The bill would apply to cities of the metropolitan, primary, first and second class. It would not apply to villages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-22947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-urban-affairs","tag-sen-matt-hansen"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22947"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22949,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22947\/revisions\/22949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}