Cuts to Early Childhood Block Grant Partially Restored

July 31, 2009

Governor Quinn has partially restored budget cuts to the Early Childhood Block Grant.

Governor Quinn has partially restored budget cuts to the Early Childhood Block Grant!

Over the past week, you have been flooding the governor and legislators with calls and e-mails about how cuts to the Early Childhood Block Grant would be devastating to young children in your community.

Because of all the pressure, we have something to celebrate. The governor has decided to partially restore cuts to the Early Childhood Block Grant and fund the program at 90% of FY 2009 levels. This means that we only took a 10% cut. The governor also partially restored cuts to early childhood programs in the Department of Human Services (DHS) budget.

While we celebrate this win, we can't lose sight of the fact that the early childhood programs funded through the Illinois State Board of Education and DHS sustained cuts at a time when the state should be growing investments in early learning.

There is still pain and our state's fiscal crisis is far from solved. We have more work to do to ensure that early childhood programs never again face the devastating cuts placed before us this year. Until every child in Illinois has quality early childhood services that prepare them for success in school and in life, we will continue the fight.

Thank you for your hard work!

Visit our Advocacy Action Center to read and forward past action alerts, get legislator contact information, or e-mail Ounce staff.



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