from the Education Committee meeting to take final action on bills of April 1, 2009 (transcribed from CT-N):

"Sen. Gaffey: Going to the second item on the agenda, An Act Concerning Early Childhood Education Planning...
moved by Representative Reynolds...

Rep. Reynolds: Thank you Mr. Chairman.  You will recall the Governor's budget made a number of rather significant changes to the early childhood education governance structure for the state of Connecticut.  There were some concerns that...the remaining structure would not be adequate to continue our work on building an early childhood system that crossed all state agencies, that insured that we were going to be integrating early care and education with health, early intervention and family supports, that we would continue to comply with federal mandates and that we would continue to commit ourselves to the RBA framework that early childhood has done so well.  

That being said, the bill has two primary focuses.  One is to eliminate all statutory references to the existing Early Childhood Education Cabinet, and instead, establish a Connecticut Early Learning Advisory Council which has two primary functions, one of which is to continue to provide the interagency facilitation that is so critical and secondly is to meet federal requirements both for federal stimulus funds and all other federal programs.  Secondly, it creates under the State Department of Education an Office of Early Childhood Planning, Outreach and Coordination, which is what I hope will be a first step in a long series of steps to consolidate responsibility, authority and accountability in the State Department of Education for a vast majority of our early childhood education programs.  

And I encourage your support.  Thank you.

Sen. Gaffey:  Thank you, Representative Reynolds, and thank you for your hard work on this bill."

Note: RBA stands for Results-Based Accounting.  The bill number for this bill is S.B. No. 941.