JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Cheryl Howard, the executive director of the Nora Stewart Early Learning Center, is one of thousands of childcare providers across the state relying on state reimbursements to keep their daycare alive.

However, due to a backlog in the state, Howard says the NSELC, which has been operating in Columbia for 91 years is in jeopardy. 

“In the last two to three years our enrollment has dropped half. We have not received the grants we applied for so that is hurting us real bad,” Howard said. 

Howard was one of dozens of daycare providers to testify in front of the Missouri House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee on Tuesday after technological issues delayed state reimbursement payments for months, putting daycare centers at risk or out of business entirely across the state. The Department of Secondary Education was grilled by committee members after more than 3,000 childcare providers were left waiting for subsidy payments from the department. 

Three members of the Harris family, who have worked in childcare for more than 40 years, said they had to sell their car, shut off their utilities at home and dig deep into their Social Security to keep their daycare center alive. Even with all of that, they say they are $60,000 in debt. They were not alone. 

Latonya Williams, the executive director of the Bartlett Center, which specializes in children with trauma, told the committee that if her business closes most of the children they provide service for will have nowhere to go. 

“I have over 100 kids in my program and I’m about 98 percent childcare subsidy. Up until a week ago, I had not received any payments,” Williams said during the hearing. “I had eleven thousand dollars in the bank. I have been using my own money to buy cleaning supplies for our program.” 

The state has pointed the finger at a new data system launched last December, which has led to a backlog of payments. Many daycares rely on those payments to fund staff and stay in business. The new data system has also caused issues with attendance, with many who testified at the hearing saying they were unable to get any support when they called and asked for help. 

“There won’t be a modicum of satisfaction until these providers are paid and paid with some manner of interest. I’m listening to people take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans that they’re going to have to pay interest on people who you’re talking about how their lights are off just so they can continue to provide services for this state’s children in alignment with this current gubernatorial administration,” Rep. Raychel Proudie (D-Ferguson) told ABC 17 News after the hearing. “What they were saying is that they were going to provide for these people. Somebody has to make good on what we said that we were going to do for these people. And frankly, we just simply weren’t doing that.” 

Minority Floor leader Crystal Quade (D-Springfield), who took part in the hearing, says that she would like to see the state issue payments now.

“What we’ve been told over the past few weeks is that this is an IT problem. And it goes down to the fact that they have to recertify not only these parents with these providers in check attendance and all of these things. That is all fine and well, I understand that there is a system that has to be done to verify that the kiddos know where they are and that the payments need to be made,” Quade said. “That said, we have so many providers who are already contract providers with the state of Missouri. We have parents who are already certified to be receiving these subsidies and we could right now issue checks in this moment to those providers to cover these costs for the folks that we know are already qualified.” 

Once the new data system was launched in December, the state began to encounter backlogs in payments. The problem snowballed into issues for families trying to apply for subsidy assistance and provider contracts.

Part of the issue is attendance. Under the system, parents are forced to take attendance for their own children, which has been a nightmare for daycares and affected payments. The system only operates for Android users and is outdated. DESE says that the attendance system was put into place in 2018 before the new data system was launched. The vendor contracted to operate the new system and subsidy program is World Wide Technology, which operates out of St. Louis.  

Quade said its a multi-layered issue that starts at the top. 

“I think that we need to be having conversations about should the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, be the ones overseeing our early childhood subsidy program. The point that was made today, we have a lot of these families who qualify for multiple services,” Quade said. ”It goes back to the fact that we don’t have direct care caseworkers, that our call centers are outsourced and that we have had folks in charge in our state continue to lay off state employees and outsource this stuff to private entities, to their buddies or whoever, instead of actual employees of the state who are doing the job well.“

DESE said during the hearing that it will begin issuing stipends “sometime this week” but for many it’s too little too late. 

“It is already too late. There are, especially in the Saint Louis area where I can speak to because that’s where I live, they’ve already closed. There are people who already have creditors closing,” Proudie said. “The apologies that these folks were offered here today can’t pay their electric bill. Their gas bill  is not going to pay their rent if they’re renting a space.”

On Wednesday, there will be a budget committee hearing to address concerns about how much these issues cost and what potential solutions could look like. Quade advises parents impacted to contact her office or their local elected official to share their story.

Proudie still has questions.

“I want to know what happened with the differential for people who are opening up their hearts, opening up their centers to take children who are, you know, suffering through poverty there that are lower-income kids, and that’s the majority of their center. They were assured and promised that they would get a 30 percent differential. And if they spent the money on becoming accredited, would get an additional 20 percent all of a sudden, out of the blue, there was a decision made not by the legislature, but by someone in staff to stop doing that, which will certainly hurt centers,” Proudie said. “They weren’t prepared for it. No one told them it was coming. I want to know who made the decision and I want to know why. I also want to know what they intend to do with their money. They’re not going to pay it to providers like they told them that they were going to.”

Check back for updates.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas is among officials helping to raise awareness of Missouri’s 988 mental health help line.

Tuesday marked World Suicide Prevention Day. Officials marked the day by launching a new campaign “Get the Words Out” to raise awareness for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

The campaign aims to destigmatize calling for mental health resources, and encourages people to call and talk if they feel they need it.

Every month, roughly 1,800 people call the line in Missouri.

Part of the campaign includes trucks with neon lights displaying real quotes from callers. They’ll be seen driving around the Kansas City area through the month of September.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas hosted the event, he said,

“What I think you see from these words is us, 988, saying it’s OK just to call and say, ‘Hey, I need someone to talk to,’” Lucas said at a press event Tuesday morning.

Lucas hopes the idea of calling 988 for a mental health crisis becomes as ubiquitous as calling 911 for emergencies.

KSHB 41 reporter Grant Stephens covers issues connected to access to housing and rent costs. Share your story idea with Grant.

(OSV News) — As ballot deadlines approach, Missouri joins Nebraska as states where ballot initiatives to enshrine legal abortion in their respective state constitutions this November now face court challenges.

Late Sept. 6 in Missouri, Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled against the proposed abortion amendment, declaring that the initiative campaigners, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, had not done enough while gathering signatures to fully inform voters how the measure would undo the state’s abortion ban.

Missouri law requires that the “full and correct text of all initiative and referendum petition measures” should also include “all sections of existing law or of the constitution which would be repealed by the measure.”

Limbaugh rejected the campaign for having “purposefully decided not to include even the 8 most basic of statutes that would be repealed, at least in part, by Amendment 3.” The judge said that he “does not suggest that every initiative petition should speculate as to every single constitutional provision or statute that it could affect.” But he said the failure to include any statute or provision — such as the state’s ban on abortion except in cases of medical emergency — was a “blatant violation” of the law’s requirements.

Limbaugh — a cousin of the late conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh — did not remove Amendment 3 from the ballot; instead, he gave the initiative campaign the chance to file a last-minute appeal before the Sept. 10 deadline to make changes to the Missouri ballot.

The case now heads directly to the Missouri Supreme Court, which hears oral arguments Sept. 10.

Mary Catherine Martin, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based public interest firm, said in a statement that Amendment 3 “is designed to commit Missourians to allowing and funding an enormous range of decisions, even by children, far beyond just abortion.”

“We will not allow Missourians to be deceived into signing away dozens of current laws that protect the unborn, pregnant women, parents, and children,” Martin said.

Missouri’s near total ban on abortion, which has exceptions for the life and health of the mother, went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and related abortion precedents in the June 2022 decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The Missouri Catholic Conference, which advocates for the church’s position at the state level, has opposed Amendment 3 calling it a “deceptively worded amendment.”

“The amendment would effectively repeal long-standing health and safety standards for women,” the conference said in an Aug. 13 statement. “These include basic health and safety requirements for clinics where abortions are performed, requiring that abortions be performed only by a physician, informed consent requirements, laws prohibiting public funding of abortion, and parental consent requirements before a minor’s abortion.”

In Nebraska, the state’s high court is hearing a last-minute challenge filed by the Thomas More Society against an initiative to enshrine abortion in the state constitution as a “fundamental right” Sept. 9.

Nebraska, like Missouri, is one of 10 states with abortion on the ballot before voters Nov. 5.

The Thomas More Society brief accuses the “Protect the Right to Abortion” initiative of containing “remarkably misleading terms” and is “unconstitutionally riddled with separate subjects” in violation of the state constitution’s single subject rule.

The brief also contends the initiative’s language on a “fundamental right to abortion,” combined with the description “without interference from the state or its political subdivisions,” means virtually unregulated abortions. The brief claimed this would effectively “abolish popularly enacted Nebraska statutes limiting abortion and probably common medical regulation of abortion clinics.”

Since the Dobbs decision returned the issue of abortion back to legislatures, Vermont, California, Michigan and Ohio had successful initiatives to enshrine abortion in their state constitutions.

Along with Missouri and Nebraska, the states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, New York, Nevada and South Dakota also have abortion-related initiatives on their ballots Nov. 5.

Kurt Jensen writes for OSV News from Washington. Peter Jesserer Smith, national news and features editor for OSV News, contributed to this report.