http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/the-2011-best-illustrated-books/

In the budget that has been approved by Congress, and is expected to be signed by President Obama, we are pleased to share that the majority of programs that United Way has prioritized have stayed intact or even increased in funding. Given the conomic and political landscape, this is good news. Please see below for highlights of FY2012 program funding in our building block areas. Note: There is an additional 0.189 percent across the board cut to all programs not reflected in these numbers.

INCOME

• Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP): $120 million – the same as FY2011. (A special thank you to the nearly 700 advocates who spoke up for the Emergency Food and Shelter Program in the past couple of weeks. Given the 40% cut xperienced last year, we consider it a win that the EFSP maintained funding).
• Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) matching grants: $12 million – the same as FY2011
• Workforce Investment Act (WIA) adult training, youth training and dislocated worker grants: $2.61 billion – down $55 million (2.07%) from FY2011
• Workforce Innovation Fund (created last year with the input from several United Ways and written testimony from United Way Worldwide): $50 million – down $75 million from FY2011
• Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP): $3.48 billion – down $1.22 billion from FY2011
• Individual Development Account Initiative: $19.91 million – down $4.07 million from FY 2011
• Child Care and Development Block Grant: $2.28 billion – up $60 million from FY2011
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): $80.4 billion – up $15.19 billion from FY2011 (Passed November 18, 2011 in H.R. 2112)
• Section 8 Housing Vouchers: $17.24 billion – up $474.6 million from FY 2011  (Passed November 18, 2011 in H.R. 2112)
• Community Development Block Grant: $3.3 billion – down $192.9 million from FY2011 (Passed November 18, 2011 in H.R. 2112)

HEALTH

• Healthy Start: $104.78 million – up $415 million from FY2011
• Medicaid total grants to states: $184.28 billion – up $11.14 billion from FY2011
• Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion: $760.7 million – down $53.29 million from FY2011
• Women, Infants and Children (WIC): $6.6 billion – down $130 million from FY2011 (Passed November 18, 2011 in H.R. 2112)
• Child Nutrition Programs: $18.15 billion – up $830 million from FY2011 (Passed November 18, 2011 in H.R. 2112)
• Community Health Centers: $1.58 billion – the same as FY2011
• Maternal and Child Health Block Grant: $646.32 million – down $10 million from FY2011

EDUCATION

• Head Start: Funded at $8 billion – $424 million above FY 2011
• Title I Grants: Funded at $14.5 billion – $60 million above FY 2011
• Special Education programs: Funded at $11.6 billion – an increase of $100 million above FY 2011
• School Improvement Grants (SIG): Funded at $534.6 million
• Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy Program: Funded at $160 million – this is a restoration from FY 2011
• Investing in Innovation Fund (i3): Funded at $149.7 million
• Race to the Top: Funded at $550 million, and continues to allow those funds to be used for the Early Learning Challenge competition
• 21^st Century Community Learning Centers: Funded at $1.151 billion
• Promise Neighborhoods Initiative: Funded at $60 million – $30 million above FY 2011

A child in this program (who speaks little English) used to cry every time her mother dropped her off. However, when Kathy began reading the book Abiyoyo (by Pete Seeger), the little girl began to hop and sing along with the book, “Abiyoyo, abiyoyo….” Moments like this are Kathy’s favorite. When the children begin to count and point out colors as Kathy shares the story of a llama in red pajamas waiting for llama mama to tuck him in, she knows her reading is making a difference.

In 2008, Kathy heard President Obama speak at Seattle Center and decided, “I’ve got to put my money where my mouth is.” Passionate about the importance of reading, she began her own non-profit organization called Open Doorways Reading Room. Kathy realized that many middle-school students were missing the opportunity to enjoy the fun and thought-provoking experience books can provide, so she began reading aloud to seventh-graders after school. The same year, she became a Volunteer Reader.

By the end of the school year, students in Kathy’s Seattle First A.M.E. class are on the cusp of reading. They identify letters and sound them out while becoming confident in these skills. Kathy observes the children progress from simply repeating sounds to repeating words to forming sentences; she states, “You could see it, the light bulb was going on.”

“Last year when Nikko began his first year in the Parent-Child Home Program, he was easily distracted and unable to focus for more than a few minutes.  His mother would become frustrated and embarrassed by his behavior and she would become tense and sometimes yell.  Most of the visits were quite challenging as a fair portion of them was spent trying to coax Nikko into participating and calming mom down. Throughout the program year, his mother and I worked together to come up with different ways to engage him.  We are now in the second year of the program and the change in both mom and child has been monumental.  Mom fully takes the lead and comfortably finds ways to engage Nikko in books, toys and conversation in general.  She also praises and encourages him.   As a result of her hard work, Nikko now sits for the entire thirty minutes, wholly focused, on the activity.  He asks questions, offers his opinion about what he is experiencing and he and his mother smile a lot more this year.”

United Way of King County is excited to continue partnering with not only Atlantic Street Center but also the other eight agencies that offer this wonderful program in King County.  We will continue to share success stories and other accomplishments gained through the Parent-Child Home Program in future blog posts!

To find out more about the Parent-Child Home Program, please visit the following sites:

http://www.uwkc.org/our-focus/children/pchp/

http://www.parent-child.org/

Occupy Wall Street is shining a useful spotlight on one of America’s central challenges, the inequality that leaves the richest 1 percent of Americans with a greater net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

Most of the proposed remedies involve changes in taxes and regulations, and they would help. But the single step that would do the most to reduce inequality has nothing to do with finance at all. It’s an expansion of early childhood education.

Read more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/opinion/occupy-the-classroom.html?ref=nicholasdkristof

Harry Bonnette is a Customer Service Specialist at United Way of King County and he has been a Volunteer Reader for four years. He started with a class of “Moonbeams” (3-4 year-olds) and graduated with them into “Rainbow Birds” (4-5 year-olds). He is fascinated by the way kids develop: learning new words; counting the fish on each page of Ten Little Fish; and pretending to be their favorite characters from books. Occasionally children act out familiar stories, albeit with some wild variations, but Harry chuckles“…that makes it even more interesting.”

A few weeks ago, Harry recognized a woman on the bus, the mother of a child Harry read to at Pike last year. She told Harry that her son is doing well in school, and described the advantage Harry’s reading helped create.

Every Thursday, Harry shares books such as the “so absurd it’s fun” Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, the wolf’s “true” story of his sneezing which blew the pigs’ houses down. The small students also enjoy reader Harry sharing his name with dog Harry, the dirty white dog with black spots in Harry the Dirty Dog. The children lean forward in concentration as the stories unfold, and Harry puts it plainly, “That’s what reading and books are; you can go to another world just like that and it’s all sort of magic and they…they get that.”

This recession is unique among recent recessions in the overall loss of jobs and revenue as well as the depth of the loss making the recovery not a swift recovery back to “normal”  but an extended period of high unemployment, rising costs of goods, high foreclosure rate and  overall lack of consumer confidence.  To illustrate, Washington has lost 195,000 jobs since the beginning of the recession and regained only 62,000.

The combination of deficits in anticipated revenue collections, caseload growth (reflecting greater needs) and higher than average inflationary costs have resulted in reductions totaling over $10 billion in state general fund dollars in the last three years.  The November 16 caseload forecast and the November 17  revenue forecast are expected to result in more shortfalls in
state revenue.

At an October 10 Senate Ways and Means budget briefing, the budget shortfall problem was described in these terms:  a $2 billion shortfall could be resolved if everyone in the state donated $3-400 or if all higher education and state employee salaries and benefits were reduced by half for 18 months.  Ending support for all higher education or closing the Department of Corrections did not generate enough savings to close the shortfall.

Since two-thirds of the state budget is constitutionally or legally protected (debt service, pensions, K-12 education), the $2 billion plus budget shortfall needs to be taken from $8.7 billion of the state budget resulting in a 23% cut.

Governor’s response

In anticipation of the September 15 revenue forecast, the governor had asked her state departments to submit 10% reductions in 5% increments.  Using that information, the Governor unveiled a Roadmap of $2 billion and $4 billion cuts on October 27.   The Roadmap is a picture of the cuts necessary to balance the budget without any new revenue sources.  This  picture shows how the deep cuts will decimate many of the state’s model safety net programs and includes such egregious reductions as:

Eliminating state support for domestic violence programs (affecting 16,700 people)
Eliminating Disability Lifeline medical (affecting 21,000 people), chemical dependency treatment (affecting 15,000 people), and cash assistance (affecting 15,000 people)
Potentially eliminating in home care for 25,000 developmentally disabled and elderly people
Suspending adult Medicaid pharmacy benefits (affecting 277,000 people)
Eliminating Basic Health Plan (affecting 35,000 people; reducing or eliminating Maternity Support Services (affecting 55,000 pregnant women)
Eliminating State Food Assistance Program (affecting 13,000 people)
Reducing state funding for subsidized child care (affecting between 4-6,000 children)

Susan Dreyfus reminded those attending the Seattle DSHS budget briefing in October that cutting state general fund also results in loss of federal dollars.  DSHS draws down 50 cents in federal money for every state dollar invested.

The governor will be presenting her FY2012-13 budget during the week of November 21 in anticipation of having the legislature back in special session beginning November 28. The Governor has said that her budget could include new revenue to balance the budget if she feels relatively confident that the revenue would be adopted by a two-thirds vote of the legislature.

Advocates meeting with the Governor

A group of human services advocates met with the Governor on Oct 31 to discuss the reductions, priorities and potential revenue responses.  The governor clearly conveyed several themes including: had Congress done its job in August, all states would be in a better financial position buoyed by stronger consumer confidence; she hopes the focus of the special session will be on the budget and the focus of regular session on how to get people back to work; advocates and policy makers need to focus on what services they would most like to save and how those investments/cuts would look 10 years down the road; and she would entertain all viable suggestions about revenue enhancements.  The advocates presented some revenue options and asked to maintain flexibility in use of reduced funding i.e. do not dictate how services would be delivered to vulnerable populations by program type.

Bonnie reading at Grace Children's Center

“What are we reading today?” Bonnie Rosalind asks the small pupils at Grace Children’s Center. Her favorite response is for a child to select a book that Bonnie herself loved to read while growing up; she believes that is “a true testament to the timelessness of books.”

Bonnie signed up for the Volunteer Reader Program on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2009. President Obama had declared that date a National Day of Service, and Bonnie took it as a call to action. Since then, she has been sharing her passion for books by reading every Tuesday at Grace Children’s Center. Bonnie does much more than read; she asks the children questions, encourages them to use their imagination, and makes friends. She watched a shy little girl blossom and become bold enough to speak up when Bonnie skipped a word in a familiar story! While reading Chalk, a wonderfully illustrated wordless book about magic chalk that brings drawings to life, Bonnie and the kids together create a story to accompany the book. She smilingly remembers one little boy’s response to the question of what he would draw with magic chalk: “a brother!”

Each August of Bonnie’s three years as a Volunteer Reader has been bittersweet. While she is sad to say goodbye to the graduating children she also shares that, “it’s exciting because I see the skills that they are walking away with.” Those skills will help them thrive in kindergarten and beyond. One of her favorite moments each week is when she walks into the classroom and hears a chorus of little voices calling, “I want to read, I want to read, I want to read!” Bonnie sums it up: “there is nothing sweeter than that.”

The children at Little Eagles Child Development Center are delighted when Miss Kitty, a well-loved puppet cat, comes to visit. Accompanying this now-famous puppet is another popular visitor, Volunteer Reader Joan Davis. Although Miss Kitty occasionally finds the kids’ exuberance a bit trying, Joan’s reason for volunteering is clear: “I am not their regular teacher, I am not their mom or dad or grandma or grandpa- I am a friend whose only mission is to show them great books, to read to them and to assist them in their own reading journey.”

Joan Davis reading at Little Eagles

Joan is a Senior Vice President at Umpqua Bank and since October 2010 she has been sharing her enthusiasm for reading. She has observed the children peering carefully at letters and words as she reads aloud, beginning to understand that the squiggles on the page contain mysteries, discoveries and stories. Joan remembers, “The minute that you see them really get it…that’s a big deal.”

Joan’s commitment is also a big deal. She has learned from her experience at Little Eagles, including the fact that her knowledge of dinosaurs, ballerinas, snakes, sharks and whales is woefully lacking. As the children and Joan learn together, she has noticed a shift in the way the kids think about books. Instead of seeing them as foreign, adult objects, the books become part of the kid’s world. While Joan was reading to a little girl from a home where English is not spoken, the girl suddenly took the book from Joan’s hands, and “read the book” – not the words on the pages, but she mimicked the English sounds she learns and hears while Joan reads to her. Joan and Miss Kitty return every week for one special hour, and when they arrive, Joan shares that, “…their happy smiles tell me all I need to know. I am needed.”

Want to be a Volunteer Reader? Find out how.

Learn more about our efforts to give kids an equal chance.

• The president will be allowed to raise the debt ceiling in three stages up to $2.4 trillion through the end of 2012
• The federal budget will be reduced by at least $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years
• The bill imposes spending caps that will reduce the deficit by $917 billion over the next 10 years
• A bipartisan budget committee with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats will be created to seek up to another $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction.  Should the Congressional committee members not agree to an additional $1.5 trillion in reduced government spending by November, that would set off automatic across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion over a decade, with about half coming from the military.
• Congress will be required to vote on a constitutional amendment requiring it to balance its budget.

Even though the compromise allowed the federal government to keep its doors open and bills paid through 2012, the jury is still out about whether the arrangement will result in the federal government and some local governments being able to keep their triple A credit rating.  The Moody’s agency said late Tuesday it will maintain the U.S.’ top AAA rating, but warns that the outlook for the country is negative and that it could downgrade the rating of local governments and the University of Washington .  A downgraded credit rating would increase the government’s cost to borrow money, and could raise interest rates on many consumer loans.

While some analysts say that downgrading to double A status will not seriously affect the economy, others believe that a downgrade will cause serious complications.  Washington state treasurer, Jim McIntyre recently shared his view of the possible fall out of a downgrade on the state.