Sarasota County defunds child care program after cutting United Way ties over abortion

Changes afoot for the care of children with autism.

On the heels of cutting ties with the United Way because its helpline includes Planned Parenthood, the Sarasota County Commission defunded the county’s only child care nonprofit qualified to get state funds that help the working poor.

The 4-1 County Commission budget vote will end 20 years of funding for the Early Learning Coalition (ELC) of Sarasota County. The disappearance of $500,000 in county funding means that the organization will no longer be able to draw down matching money from a program that Republican Sen. Joe Gruters of Sarasota was instrumental in advancing during the state budget process.

The action appears to have exposed a split between Sarasota County’s state delegation and its local leaders, who have been making headlines for their particularly conservative viewpoints.

“I’m upset,” Gruters said after the vote. “There’s a lot of us in the delegation who have worked very hard for early childhood funding. I hope there’s some other solution that comes about, because people who need it the most are going to get hit hard.”

County Chair Michael Moran, who upended the ratings system that determined which human service agencies would be funded, could not be reached for further comment. The lone vote against killing the ELC’s funding came from Commissioner Mark Smith.

The irony of the Commission’s April decision to pull county funds from the United Way for listing Planned Parenthood among its 211 resources, paired with Wednesday’s budget vote, was not lost on Smith. His daughter, wife and sister are currently teaching or retired from it.

“It seems like if you don’t want people to abort their children, maybe you ought to help them educate them,” Smith said. “That’s my thinking anyway.”

The end of about $1 million in funding that pays for children to go to school readiness and pre-kindergarten programs while their parents work will reduce the number of those eligible for the subsidies. Only those who make 150% of the federal poverty level or less will qualify for the help through the ELC. And about 300 families of the 1,100 currently being served through the ELC-supported programs will be cut off starting Oct. 1, according to Sarasota County ELC officials.

The county funding and the state match had meant a single mother with two children, earning between $38,730 and $51,640, could qualify for child care subsidies. Brigid Kolowith, Chief Operating Officer of the Sarasota County ELC, pointed out that a single parent of one child making $14.30 an hour would be making too much to qualify without the state matching funds that now threaten to go missing.

“Families who benefit from this … represent hard working, employed individuals, many of whom work in local first responder entities, the county itself, the school district and our local health care facilities,” Kolowith wrote in an email.

Gruters, who recently announced he’s running for Chief Financial Officer, said he’s sympathetic to working parents who need a little extra boost as they provide for their families.

“Our day care bill was routinely more than our mortgage,” said Gruters, whose three children were all in day care at one point.

The cut to low-income families’ day care subsidies through the ELC was also made last year. But then an outcry, including from Republican Rep. Fiona McFarland, prompted the Commission to restore the funding.

“Some calculations we’ve done at the state level show that for every $1 invested in school readiness saves you $7 in other social services costs,” McFarland of Sarasota told the Commission last September.

“So, whether you’re doing it for the kids to get them ready for kindergarten, or you’re doing it for the parents to get them in the workforce, or you’re just doing it because it makes good financial sense because we’re going to match it at the state level, I urge you to do so.”

Last year, Moran aroused controversy when he asserted that his 91-year-old father believed that children don’t learn before kindergarten and therefore arguing that the subsidy was unnecessary.

The ELC’s Executive Director, Janet Kahn came up in front of the Commission briefly on Wednesday to discuss her program.

“Having appropriate access to child care means safety,” Kahn said, explaining how the ELC qualifies for county funding. “Without it, parents have no place to put their children and could be in potentially unsafe situations.”

None of the Commissioners except for Smith addressed her assertions before voting to defund it.

Later, Kahn said she could not understand why other child care programs, like the YMCA’s, received county funding but the ELC did not, even though it’s the only one that meets the criteria for matching funds from the state.

“It seems like it was so arbitrary,” Kahn said. “We are a pass-through for high quality, early education for an infant all the way through to kindergarten. Parents can go to work knowing their child is in a safe, high-quality program while they work and achieve their own goals.”