Governor proposes changes to Early Childhood Iowa service areas

     Sherri Hunt, the Cedar/Jones Early Childhood Iowa (ECI) director and a member of the Family County Family Council, presented the Fiscal Year 2026 funding requests to the Jones County Supervisors during their Jan. 21 board meeting.

   ECI is requesting $4,500; the Family Council, $5,500.

   The funds for ECI will go to support the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. This initiative is for families with children 0 to 5. The child receives one free book a month until they reach the age of 5.

   "Some states have taken it on statewide," Hunt said of the program as a whole. "Then there is a sprinkling of communities throughout the rest of the states. It's also an international program. It's highly known."

   There are currently 390 kids enrolled in the program. Hunt estimates there's a total of about 950 children in Jones County who are eligible for enrollment.

   "So we're supporting between 40 and 45 percent of those kids," she said. "We get referrals from all kinds of community partners who we work with. I get a lot of positive comments; families love it. They can't always go to the library when they're working. Kids get excited."

   This is the 10-year anniversary ECI has been offering the Imagination Library at no cost to the families of Jones County. It started in 2015.

   "In those 10 years," noted Hunt, "we've raised $85,000 to support the program. We've spent about $80,000 of it. It's an ongoing effort.

   "The Jones County Community Foundation (JCCF) is the main supporter of our program."

   Outside of the Imagination Library, ECI does so much more for the families of young children in Jones County.

   "It's designed to support community-identified needs of children prenatal through 5 years of age and their families, ensuring that every child, beginning at birth, will be healthy and successful."

   "We want to get kids ready for school," Hunt said. "We know that learning begins at birth; not necessarily when they get to kindergarten."

   ECI helps to fund a nurse consultant to work with childcare facilities who can't afford such a position. They partner with YPN (Young Parents Network) and Lutheran Services of Iowa for home visitations for high-risk families. ECI offers preschool scholarships.

   "We work with all of the childcare centers in the county trying to promote quality, safety, and health," Hunt said.

   The Family Council is a 501(c)3 non-profit. The organization works alongside CPPC (Community Partnerships for Protecting Children), which is part of Child Welfare Decategorization (DECAT).

   "This year, the (Family Council) board chose to contract those (DECAT) services out to Linn County," Hunt shared. "We are trying to make sure as a 501(c)3 that we're defining ourselves, but yet a partner. I don't want to send our 501(c)3 to Linn County to be managed for Jones County."

   The Family Council and CPPC meet together, as their goals are one in the same: To provide gap funding for family services.

   Their initiatives include: Collect and distribute school supplies, provide equal opportunity funds, distribute car seats, graduation celebrations for seniors in foster care, Shop with a Cop, KCRG-TV9 Coats for Kids, Jones County resource materials, and more.

   "We did Warm Winter Hugs this year," offered Hunt, "which is an initiative for homeless kids. We reach out to the school districts, and they define who's homeless or in what we consider an unstable living environment. Right now we have 24 kids identified. We're working with Project Linus out of Cedar Rapids who make and distribute homemade blankets to children in need. We're supplementing those with some personal hygiene items and a note saying somebody is thinking about you."

   Hunt also took the time to inform the supervisors of some changes coming down the pipe from the state that will directly impact ECI's services in Jones County.

   Hunt attended the Governor's Condition of the State Address in Des Moines on Jan. 14. She shared that one of the Governor's new focuses is Early Childhood Continuum of Care, which is a grant program.

   "It's for those programs that have a half-day of preschool, but what are parents going to do (with the other half of the day)?" explained Hunt. "How do they get their child to childcare? The idea is to have childcare and preschool work together to figure out that (transportation) system.

   "My understanding is that those grants are going to be run through ECI and she'll be using part of our funds, then which changes the layout of what we're allowed to do."

   The state also intends to decrease the number of ECI service areas from 33 down to just seven. Hunt said with Jones County sitting between two urban counties, she's concerned that early childhood services will go away in Jones County.

   "We have to continue to weather the storm until the dust settles and see exactly what services are going to be here," she said. I'm a firm believer we have to advocate for this stuff.

   "We have an association that we're a part of," she continued. "Their big thing is local control and increased funding. Neither one of those is going to happen. I understand the need for efficiency in government, but I struggle with how do you get boots on the ground at the same time?"

   Supervisor John Schlarmann asked Hunt what the timeline might be for eliminating ECI areas.

   "ECI is currently legislated, so it's going to take legislative change," she said. "If the Governor is rolling out the Continuum of Care, that's probably a July 1 thing. How is she going to roll that out if our other ECI areas haven't merged down into seven (areas)? We're highly concerned, obviously."

   Hunt also urged the supervisors to have a handle of what's going on within all of the county departments and services to see where they can all work together rather than work independently.