A New One Stop Shop For Early Childhood Services

WBEZ is supported by Shed Aquarium, where animals, people, science, and conservation come together. Through community outreach, education, and research, shed protects the water that supports life in the Great Lakes region and beyond. More at shed aquarium.org. Shed Aquarium, for animals, for people, for communities, for love of water kind. Hey, Chicago, I'm Sasha Ann Simons, and this is In The Loop. For parents of young children, navigating the child care journey can sometimes feel like a full-time job. There's one office handling one service, another agency overseeing something else. And simply figuring out where to start isn't easy. Well, a brand new state agency is consolidating programs and services previously offered by three different organizations into just one place. But what does that actually mean for families, providers, and educators? Will it make getting help any easier? In this episode of the pod, we'll learn more about what the transition has looked like so far. At the table with me was Alison Belas, Executive Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago, and Elliot Regenstein, who's a lawyer, author, and Illinois Department of Early Childhood Transition Facilator. I wanted to get a sense of what the landscape looked like for parents before Illinois's new Department of Early Childhood was created a month ago. So Elliot filled us in. One of the challenges, as you said, that parents face is that there are different kinds of services that are all related to each other. but administered by different agencies. So for example, if you have a three-year-old and you're looking for them to have a good educational experience over the course of the day while you're at work, you might be looking for a Head Start program, which is funded by the federal government and administered by different agencies locally. You might be looking for a preschool program. The Illinois State Board of Education funded preschool that was administered by both school districts and private providers. Or you could end up looking for subsidized child care, which was provided by private providers in both center and home-based settings. And each of those was administered separately. And Head Start, because it's federal, will continue to be, but that now you have a number of programs, including but not limited to preschool and child care that are being housed at the Department of Early Childhood. And that allows the department to. develop systems for enrolling, determining eligibility, and measuring quality that cut across all of those and make it easier for families. So overall, that made for a more complicated process, you would say, Alison, up until a month ago. Indeed. So.

There's impacts on equity when things are segmented in that way. So the families in need, really those that need the most services are facing the biggest hurdles. So the idea of having a centralized place means there's really an open door and a one-stop entry point for any family in need that can get connected to the various agencies. And you've been working, Elliot, in collaboration with this new agency. So tell us exactly what your role has been. So my role has been supporting. stakeholder engagement and the advisory function. One of the things that's really important about a new agency like this is that it has a new kind of authority over the early childhood system. And in order to use that authority to really help families and providers, you've got to talk to families and providers and listen to them. Right. So, you know. The world did not magically change on July 1st. There's a lot of work ahead to actually build the systems that integrate all of the different pieces. And so in that, the agency wants to be really thoughtful about how is it hearing from all of those key constituencies. And I want to clarify, I'm a contractor to the agency and don't speak for it. But I think that commitment that the agency has made is a really important one. And a lot of people have contributed to that process in a meaningful way. Yeah, I mean, to your point, this consolidation didn't just happen overnight, right? A month ago, it happened in stages, right? Back in 2019, there was an early childhood funding commission, which you were appointed to. Years later, we saw that 2024 law signed by the governor to create such a new agency. So it took some steps to get here. It took a long time to get here. And even getting to the commission took some number of years. I think that in some ways, the pandemic slowed down the mechanics of the process because people were focused on just managing the pandemic. But that it accelerated the vision and the need because in many states, the early childhood system, it sort of limped along with this diverse management. And that when the pandemic hit and that that forced states to react in a way that they had never reacted before, they realized this is not okay. And so you've seen a wave of states across the country. There were a few pioneers that had made the change before the pandemic. But since then, the pace has really picked up. And I'm going to get you both to sort of unpack what that's looked like, you know, Illinois compared to other states. But before that, you mentioned Elliott hearing from the families themselves, right? Talking with providers. Tell me more about what they told you. So one of the things that has been very common in the political world of early childhood across states is a whole host of interagency advisory groups, right? That because it was administered by different agencies, you have various groups that have a representative from each agency and some other advocates talking about how to develop policy. And one of the things we heard is that Both, it's important to have parents on those groups and be better represented than they were before.

But also that for a lot of parents, being on a group like that is not easy, right? They're scheduled meetings or often at times that are hard for them. Right. And that sitting with a bunch of policy types isn't necessarily their idea of a good time. Also, it's like hard to do it nine to five because they're, you know, working. But then, you know, five to nine p.m., they're back home with the kids. Right. Or they might be working five to 11 right or into the night. So one of the other things that came through loud and clear. is the importance of having ways for families to contribute their insights without having to sit on an advisory body. And there will continue to, of course, be advisory bodies that can help the agency think through complex problems, but that direct feedback from families is going to be critical, making it easier for the families to share their views and for the agencies to learn from them. Alison, how do early childhood resources in Illinois compare with other states? Well, across the country, we see a lot of investment, and it looks different. We see both in health and as well as capacity building for the workforce. And I think this is one of the main constraints that a lot of states and local governments are facing when they expand an effort. So like I mentioned, equity. equitability. There are families who are paying private dollars, you know, for private centers. And the cost is going up for child care. Similarly, some people are staying at home or, you know, there's different home-based child care providers or maybe. a parent is staying home. And so then they can qualify for home visiting programs. So whether we're talking zero to three or three to five, we've seen expansions all over. And the state of New Mexico, I think, would be one of the newest programs, which states also making significant investments. They were the first to announce universal child care for the whole state. Are they consolidating like we have with the departments? Yes. So they have a... now a secretary in early childhood education and care department. And so that was in 2019. And in 2024, they saw wages go up, you know, more than 60% for that workforce as well as credentialing. And so you can't scale a program offer to everyone if you don't have that infrastructure. But from a research standpoint, some of the things that we look at. is the choices that families are making and kind of the distribution of things. So like I mentioned, some families are staying at home. Perhaps they are going to benefit from home visiting programs. Others are working and need alternative cares, but they have different preferences. Maybe they want to be at a center. Maybe they need a center with expanded hours because they work in the evening or, you know, they're going to go. Talk more about other states. Ellie, New Mexico and what's worked there seems to me promising. The New Mexico. Work has been very exciting. And I actually was fortunate to see Secretary Elizabeth Gersakinski from New Mexico at a conference a couple weeks ago to hear about some of the work they've been doing there. They, like Illinois, were able to make that change because of a strong commitment from their governor. And they actually created the agency right before the pandemic.

and have now been working to build the level of their investment, the quality of their offerings. So there have been a few other states that have made changes. And some of them, like Illinois, have created a standalone agency. Others have folded multiple programs into a single agency and created a high-level leader within that agency. So for example... Virginia and Louisiana, which are two states that have done a lot of really exciting work in early childhood, both have housed that work within their Department of Education. Alison, why don't you tell us more about what you and your research team at you, Chicago, have been doing and learning about early childhood and the way things work? So at the University of Chicago, I've worked alongside a Nobel laureate economist, Professor James Heckman. And for two decades now, we've been studying early childhood programs and thinking about how these programs, what are the mechanisms and best practices that are building skills. And what we have been fortunate to do is look at a number of programs with longitudinal follow-up. So these were randomized studies, meaning a child. entered a program and they either received the program or didn't. And we've looked at home visiting programs, center-based programs, full day, half-day. and studied them across the life cycle. And so what we find is that the effectiveness of the program is not just about the test score, you know, at a school entry or a third grade reading score, but really skills, begets skills. So that's why something like IDEC is exciting because... You know, these programs don't have effects in silos. It's not just health or education, but really these pay off over the full life cycle. Health is very, something that's very costly to society later in life. You need people who are healthy. You need people who are employed, not involved in the criminal justice system, having stable relationships. And so what we've found and been able to document is a... high rate of return for these early investments that pay off over the life cycle in different ways. But similarly, it's a multi-generational effect. So the parent, while the child is in this program, is benefiting their own labor market, outcomes, education, even their own confidence. We see spillovers onto siblings, younger siblings especially. And then also when these children who are in the programs are adults, then we see effects. positive impacts on their own children. So the entire family benefits here, right, when early childhood services are robust? Yeah, it's really a win and a no-brainer, but it does take political will. And consolidating here is necessary, but it's not sufficient. I think we need to evaluate this program. You know, we're one month in, but the success is really going to be about.

again, that workforce, trust that families have? Are they signing up for these programs? Are people staying in these jobs? Yeah, and I want to be clear, Elliot, especially for the folks who maybe just recently tuned in. It's not that we're saying things we're missing, right? These are services and resources that were there. We're available here in the state of Illinois, but we've put them under one umbrella. Talk more about why this overall transition was so necessary. Like, what was the glaring issue? So that's a great question. And there are a couple of different things that states have really focused on in these transitions. One is actually political leadership, right? When you look at. the way K-12 education or human services or health are administered at the state level, there is an entire agency with its own agency head who sits in the governor's cabinet, works with the legislature, and can advocate publicly for their issue. And that with early childhood, when it was sprinkled across multiple agencies at more of a sort of division manager level. Those folks in many instances were great people doing a good job of administering the service, but they weren't politically empowered in the same way. So one of the things that was really missing was that political leadership focused on early childhood. And one of the things we ask is, in a given state, who is the senior most empowered leader who? Early childhood is their full-time job and they have authority to make changes in it. And in Illinois for years, the answer was nobody. No one. But now there is a secretary who can do that. The other piece is when it comes to policy and oversight that when you have multiple programs that each have their own unrelated definition of quality or unrelated workforce development and professional training programs or even... data about enrollment that isn't connected to data from other programs, it's very hard to even understand which children are getting what services and what impact that's having. And once you understand that it's very hard to do anything about it in a holistic way. And so that's what this agency is meant to do is get a much deeper and richer understanding of what exactly is happening with young children, birth to five, and then be empowered to act to address any issues it's finding. So it's good that we're here. But I want to hear from you both. What else do you think early childhood families here in Illinois need? Anything else you want to see from government? So right now, our center is working with Casa Central on the north side, and we're starting a program in Back of the Yards, a home visiting program. And we've made it universal eligibility. We've picked a low-resourced community that, you know, has...

different needs, the families living there are facing different constraints. But we have taken this program. It's from Ireland called Preparing for Life and adapted it with the community and with Casa Central and the home visitors. And so when you take an evidence-based high-quality program, which would be the goal of Illinois providing early childhood services. We think about how the policy affects. So it's not just a program. It's really the policy, the constraints, the administrative burden that the workforce has. What are the eligibility criteria for the family? And this is really delicate. And so to roll out these programs to expand or even to keep, you have to be really intentional. And keep one of the things we would think is really successful across the programs that we've studied or the studies that we've studied would be really the autonomy of the workforce and the match with the community. And that's how you build trust. And then those are really the threads that make a strong infrastructure. I think it's going to really be about helping parents access the services that, again, they're already eligible for. but that they may not be aware of or may have a hard time enrolling in. And in turn, supporting providers to provide high quality, to get higher wages, all of those things, again, you can't snap your fingers and make them happen, but now having real leadership in an organized way in place to work on those issues. Over time, families should have a much easier time. getting to the services they need and providers should be better supported to deliver them. I want to caution from what Elliott is saying, I don't necessarily disagree, but I will add that, again, that expansion and opening eligibility and helping families get in doesn't always mean that they're going to take up those services. Families have different choices, different preferences. Right. Again, really to say those wishes for more and more seats and more quality seats actually looks different. And so in a way, that is where IDEC I think is good because they can provide that distribution and not have competing preschool versus home visiting. For example, it can be more coordinated. That's a good point. No, absolutely. And in that sense, one of the key things that IDEC can do as agencies around the country are working toward. is to recognize that the world around parents of young children is complicated. As Allison said, different parents want different things. Right. Different communities have different offerings, right? There's a lot of different public funding that's supporting it. There's a lot of private funding that goes into it. It is inherently... complicated to at least some degree. And so the question is, who is going to bear the burden of that complexity? Is it the families themselves? Or is state government going to take steps to make it easier for them and help them, help meet them halfway? And that's the thing that I think is exciting. We hope it's the latter for sure. We hope it's the latter for sure. Elliot Regenstein is a lawyer and author and Illinois Department of Early Childhood Transition Facilator. And Allison Belas is executive director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at UChicago. Thank you both.

Hey, it's nudia. Join me at Talia Hall on Saturday, August 29th for the summer edition of Free For All with headliners Trish Toledo and Six Foot Blonde. I'll be at the main stage to host a game of lotteria. More at WBEZ.org slash events. Thanks for sticking with us. Now we'll turn to the top news stories of the day with WBEZ morning edition anchor Claire Lane, WBEZ reporter and weekend anchor Michael Puente, and Chicago Sun Time City Hall reporter, Brand Spielman. Now, before we get to some of the day's other headlines, we kick things off with the very latest in the Chicago mayor's race. Illinois Secretary of State Alexei Janullius announced he'll be running for the city's top job. Now, before he took the podium over the weekend, Fran sat down with him to learn more in an advance interview. Here's a bit of what he told her during their conversation. I think we just need to demand better, better public safety, better schools, better transit, better fiscal management, better customer service from government. And that means things like building more housing, making life more affordable for city residents, creating jobs, raising the minimum wage, universal pre-K, and asking those who make the most to help out. So Chicago has everything that needs to be the greatest city in America. What we've been missing is leadership that can make government actually work. Now, friend, you talked to Janulius for quite some time. What did he have to say to you about why he should be the next mayor of Chicago? He is selling competence, and that's not something he's been selling. You know, we're used to seeing him as a heavy social media presence, tweeting pictures of himself, shooting three-pointers at the Obama Center, walking in the pride parade with a wet t-shirt. He's been selling his fitness level, his cool and all that. He routinely repeats...

vanity license plates. He's been selling that kind of a thing. Now he's trying to show that he has the gravitas and the heft to be mayor of Chicago. And more importantly, as the coalition builder, someone who can deliver. for Chicago because he gets along with people where he says Johnson does not. Yeah. Some people also just know him as the DMV guy. So I want you to give us a little bit more of his backstory, if you will. He was the state's treasurer. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. He's currently, as we've just talked about, Secretary of State. But what else should we know about Alexei Janullius? Well, he is a, what his detractors say, this spoiled rich kid whose father owned Broadway Bank. At Broadway Bank went belly up during the 2008 financial crisis. It had alleged ties to organized crime. There were bad loans. There was a taxpayer bailout. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010. His opponent was David Hoffman, who once served as Inspector General for the City of Chicago. He became the nominee and narrowly lost to Mark Kirk. He was the state treasurer. He is a guy who made his name as a basketball playing buddy of Barack Obama, and he owed his election as state treasurer to Barack Obama, and Barack Obama remains one of his mentors. So when he lost the Senate, He then disappeared from politics for a while and then resurrected himself again as Secretary of State and came back with that. But now he's trying to sell himself as the guy who can bring together business and labor and deliver for Chicago and Springfield, most importantly, and get along with the city council the way Johnson has not. And Claire Janullius is entering a crowded race here. So tell us who else has jumped in so far. Yes. So far we have nine other folks with their hats in the proverbial ring. Congressman Mike Quigley, Illinois Comptroller Susanna Mendoza, government consultant, also lobbyist. That's John Kelly Jr. A businessman Joe Holberg. Former alderman George Cardenas. Yeah. Cardiologist, Dr. Lisa Ney, a tech entrepreneur, Liam Stanton, Cook County Treasurer, Maria Pappas, and former Chicago Housing Authority CEO, Matthew Brewer, one notable person not on that list, Sasha, Chicago Mayor Brendan Johnson, has not yet announced. No word yet on that. Now, Fran, Janullius, you know, he's got this massive advantage in fundraising compared to the rest of the field, more than 10 times. the campaign coffers of the next highest candidate, more money than certainly all of the other candidates combined. Is that unprecedented?

Well, Rahm Emanuel had probably relatively the same amount when he ran for re-election based on inflation. He says that he needs the money to get his message out, and he is going to take major shots because everybody else without money is going to be gunning for him, and he knows it. And what are they going to go after? They're going to say that he's not bright enough that he's a dumb jock. They're going to say, you know, as Maria Pappas did, she had some kind of vendetta with him. I don't know exactly what it is, a fellow Greek American who's running just to stop, Junulius. And when I asked her why, she said that she thinks the mayor of Chicago needs to have an IQ higher than their body temperature. So she will portray him as a dumb jock, not with the intelligence, an intellectual lightweight. Others will go after Broadway Bank. They'll go after him. I think Kelly will go after him for giving license plates to illegal immigrants. Kelly's got a wife who is a very arch conservative who has tweeted about that. And so Kelly is going to go after the very conservative vote. Susanna Mendoza is going to go after the police and fire vote. She doesn't have enough money. So she will also be targeting Alexi and already has, calling him the spoiled brat rich kid. So he knows that he's going to have that bull's eye on his back. He already does. And he needs the money to tell his story and not be defined by them. I see. Now, you know, you talked about the fact that the money in Janullis' coffers comes largely from business leaders and the building trades. He told you in your chat with him he's not beholden to them, though, right? That he does, for instance, support a millionaire's tax. Did that surprise you? He supports a millionaire's tax. He supports a tax on second home. He mentioned Mayor Mamgani in New York, which was interesting. So you can see that he's going right after the progressive vote. He is not seating that to Johnson. And he is also saying that he will close schools, which is a gutsy thing to say, taking on the Chicago Board of Education for doing what they did. in passing a $10 billion budget that relies on money. They do not have $150 million from Springfield, $250 million, and TIF money that the city council has not approved. And so he's taking on those stands directly, but they're going to try to portray him as Rahm Emanuel reincarnate because he's going to close schools. And they're going to say. that he's the boogeyman that, you know, this is Rom 2.0, that he's going to do exactly what Ron did and ignore the black community and so on and closed schools in the black community. But what he's saying is that this is the elephant in the room for the Chicago Board of Education that they must confront this, but it has to be done differently. It has to be done from the ground up. It has to be done with parents and community leaders and selling the parents on the fact that...

half empty or more than half empty schools are not good for their children, and that what he's offering is going to give them something better for their children. Michael, what's on your mind, as you see, Janulius officially step into this race? Well, I think one of the key issues is this bear stadium. What's his position on it? We know Brandon Johnson has tried to make a last-minute push to try to keep the bears. Is that on Janulius' priority list? Or, you know, it's a year away. So the bears might already make a decision on that. But who knows? Maybe Janulius wants to keep the bears or just figured that's a... You know, that ship has sailed. Yeah. Fran, as you mentioned, Janulius said over and over in his interview that he's a coalition builder. He criticized our current mayor as well for what he says are major failures in that area. I want to play a little bit more from Janulius. Leadership is about forming coalitions. and working with people. And he's failing at this. City Council, Springfield. He cannot work effectively with Springfield, jousting with the governor, making demands at the end of session rather than working earlier to develop policy and build support, which is something we've done as Secretary of State. His support on the Chicago City Council has shrunk over time. The governor himself has noted the mayor that there's not good communication. That's malpractice. His attempt to raise property taxes was rejected by the City Council 50 to zero, and the City Council passed the budget. 29 to 19 when he failed to advance his own because he would not back off the job killing corporate head tax. A mayor who could not move an agenda through Springfield and City Council is having difficulty, which makes sense, looking out for the interests of Chicagoans. Fran, does Genulius, as he says, have that track record of being the coalition builder that he claims to be? Well, he has the unions, and he probably will also have SEIU, which was a very major part of the Brandon Johnson Progressive Union Coalition. As you know, and I'm sure your listeners know this, CTU and SEIU have split. And so Johnson cannot count on. the other half of his progressive union coalition that gave him the other $5 million that helped him raise $13 million for his last race. And so if SCIU jumps in with Junulius, which I believe they will, this gives him not just the trade unions, which were with Valus and were with Rom, but also... a progressive union like SEIU. And so that begs the question, where will Johnson's money come from? He only has $631,000 right now. He has not raised money in earnest. You know, it does, he has the power of incumbency if he runs. And I'm saying if he runs, because we still don't know that.

He needs money to defend his record. Right. And he will not have, he'll probably have five million from CQU. He will not have the other five. Now, we'll get to more on the mayor's race in a moment, but I want to dig into some other big stories this morning. Claire, Lollapalooza. It. Wrapped up last night, wet weekend for Lola. What a weekend. Cleanup efforts still underway. I got caught in a little bit of the traffic mess. What's going on out there? Yeah, road closures, as we've been contending with some of these now for three, four weeks, should all be wrapping up the barricades lifted by end of day today. So expect to be able to use major arteries, as you're mentioning Columbus, I'd be Wells, Balbo, Jackson, Monroe, even Congress Plaza, again, by the end of the workday. should be reopened most of them. But it all depends. I mean, some of the storm damage to the park, they might need additional time to have some of those big trucks, the water-sucking trucks, to have access to the park. So we'll let you know if that changes. But what a weekend for Grant Park. I mean, just all the photos, all the videos, kids. All the ponchos. All the ponchos, the umbrellas, people everywhere. The trains were jammed. I mean, I was downtown catching a theater show barely got on. the brow of mine. I can imagine. It's good to stand next to the youth and hear them discussing so much fun at law. Kind of secretly glad it's over. Yeah, your kids do. Yes, my daughter did two of the four days and it was, yeah, I was that mom just up until she got home each and every night. You know, you can't sleep when they're out there, of course. Michael, in other news, Indiana's Attorney General is suing the town of Merrillville over a proposed ice facility. Tell us more. Well, just to catch the listeners up, back in December, the Washington Post wrote a story listing areas around the country where DHS, Department of Homeland Security, was looking at putting up some of these detention centers. Marival was on that list. Marrival right away said, we're not the right location. It's a bedroom community, retail hub. You know, we're not. It's just not the right side for it. So they passed a resolution, not an ordinance, a resolution opposing a ICE facility in their town. Fast forward, Tiberakeda says that violates a state law that requires local municipalities that they must cooperate with ice. So the town... hadn't backed down. So last week, the Attorney General, Ty Todd Rokita filed a lawsuit against the town of Mareville. We don't know what Mareville's response is going to be to that. But if Todd Rokita wins the lawsuit, could he move forward and build this ice facility? Not necessarily, because even last week, DHS sent me an email saying, we have no plans for any detention center in Marival, Indiana. Will those plans change? remains to be seen. But as of right now, DHS has no plans to open a facility there. Interesting. Now, the ACLU of Indiana is also looking at this lawsuit filed by Rikita on First Amendment grounds that the town of Mareville has a right to express their opinion. The town of Marriville, the city council people there have said, we can't stop DHS from coming in the town. That's not what the resolution was intended to do, but it was intended to express our displeasure over this.

So that's what the fight's about. Yeah. Well, Illinois Institute of Technology has laid off approximately 160 faculty and staff. That announcement coming just before the start of the fall semester, Michael. So, I mean, what do we know about the cause of this? Why the layoffs? Well, that's right. It's coming right before the fall semester. The university and an email too shared with WBC saying that they're facing. research funding cuts and severe restrictions on international students from the Trump administration. So they're saying they're not the only university with his struggles. But again, the Trump administration has significantly cut federal funding for universities' research and tighten regulations on foreign students. What other stories are you watching, Claire? Well, if your daughter or anybody's daughter lost something at Lalapalooza, it might not be too late to get it back. There is actually an official lost and found for people to reclaim their items today, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hilton, Chicago downtown. And you can go and see if you lost, you know, a charm bracelet or an umbrella or one of your shoes. You might be able to get it back while the flusers are trying to help the kids out. Speaking of shoes, I saw my daughter this morning could barely walk because she said the... New cowboy boots she bought were too tight. Well, and so it goes lessons learned. That's also where Lollapalooza is all about. Yeah, it's a teen Lala lesson, that's for sure. Fran, back to the mayoral election. So we know it's coming up in February, February 23rd, I believe, of next year. What does life look like for the candidates now? Are they collecting signatures? What's the deal? Yeah, they are in the process of gathering the 12,500 signatures that they need to get on the ballot. In order to be safe, you probably need three times that much or close to it because there will be challenges. And that's a whole sophisticated parlor game in itself with candidates deciding who to support, who to challenge off the ballot, who could cut into them, and who has the money to do that, Alexei Junulius. So he may want to have, I mean, it's to his advantage if there are black candidates in the race. So he won't want to challenge Matt Brewer. He won't want to challenge Willie Wilson. The more black candidates in the race, the more it siphons from Johnson if Johnson gets in. I think the next real thing will be to see when Johnson gets in is he, you know, until such time as a candidate does declare there's always a chance they will not. And I recall that I was, you know, in 2010, I'm sorry, in 2019, 2018, actually, I was going off to a previously planned trip on vacation. And on the weekend before, I wrote a story that said, what is he waiting for? And it was Rahm Emanuel. And I suggested very strongly that he would not run. And I left on my trip.