DELC Community Newsletter – Page 7

August 2024 Community Newsletter

August 2024 Department of Early Learning and Care Updates

A Message from the Director

Welcome to the July Edition of Chatterjee Chats! This month represented a big milestone with the celebration of One Year of DELC! This past year has been a blur of activity – we have accomplished so much together, and there is still more work to do. Here are some reflections from me as we close out the month and head into Year Two 😊

Do you want to receive this update in your email? Sign up for our Community Newsletter and Child Care Updates twice monthly send by subscribing here.

Our August Update

Customer Service Survey
As a new agency, we will be launching our first DELC Customer Service Survey in August. If you have received funding from us, called our customer service team, been licensed or interacted with us in any way – we want to hear from you! While all agencies are required to conduct a customer service survey, we are particularly excited to hear from you as we’ve offered services as DELC. This survey should take you less than five minutes, and any feedback you share with us will help us operationalize our value for continuous improvement. For more information, please check out our website: Department of Early Learning and Care : About Us : State of Oregon

Budget Development
This will continue to be a topic here for awhile! We are entering the last month of Agency Request Budget (ARB) development. ARB will be released by September 1, 2024. Given the current revenue forecast, our ARB requests will be smaller compared to last biennium, but it is just the first step in the process and there is still a lot of work to do before the Governor’s Recommended Budget (GRB) is released in December.

Legislative Concepts
In addition to budget development, another part of preparing for the Legislative Session is preparing legislative concepts (LCs) for consideration. While ARB will be released in September, LCs will take a bit more time. We won’t expect to receive a draft of our legislative concepts until late October, and we will have a very short turnaround (a few days). From there, our legislative concepts will still need to be reviewed and approved by the Governor’s Office prior to release. More information to come, but this is still in the works.

Tribal-State Government-to-Government Summit
On July 24, DELC’s Tribal Affairs Director, Paulina Whitehat and I had the great pleasure of attending the 2024 Tribal-State Government-to-Government Summit, co-hosted by Governor Tina Kotek and the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. The summit took place in Canyonville at Seven Feathers Casino Resort. Tribal leaders of Oregon’s nine federally recognized sovereign Tribal nations along with staff from multiple state agencies discussed a range of issues including evolving best practices in Tribal consultation approaches, indigenous ecological knowledge, and topics related to economic and sustainable futures. It was wonderful to see so many colleagues and partners in person, and the summit is always an informative and moving event. We are deeply appreciative of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe for hosting this year’s gathering.

Click below to view other Community Newsletter articles

July 2024 Community Newsletter

July 2024 Department of Early Learning and Care Updates

A Message from the Director

My name is Alyssa Chatterjee, and I am the director of the Department of Early Learning and Care, also known as DELC. Going forward, this will be a segment where I share my reflections on some of the big work we are doing across the agency each month. Today though, I wanted to take a look back at the past year – our first year as an agency.

Do you want to receive this update in your email? Sign up for our Community Newsletter and Child Care Updates twice monthly send by subscribing here.

Our one-year anniversary update

There was an incredible amount of work that went into creating DELC between 2021 and 2023. But the work isn’t finished! Here are a few high points I’d like to share with you from the past year:

DELC Strategic Planning & DEI Action Plan Implementation – Our team worked with you – parents, providers, community partners – as well as our internal staff to design ambitious, but achievable plans for our agency that are now live. You can now check out Growing Oregon Together and our DEI Action Plan for yourself! Last week, we kicked off our first Implementation Team to keep this work moving – I am so excited to start making progress on these plans and share more with you in the coming months.
Birth Through Five Literacy – The Governor’s Early Literacy Success Initiative recognized the important role that early care and education plays in literacy development. We released our first Birth Through Five Literacy Plan in December, and are in the process of releasing a Request for Applications for programs to apply for the Birth Through Five Literacy Fund. As part of the Governor’s focus on early literacy, we were honored to be part of the expansion of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program! Now, even more young children will have access to a free, developmentally appropriate book to look forward to every month.
Child Care Licensing and Risk-Assessed Rules – We have updated the Certified Center licensing rules and completed the first stage of Risk-Assessed Rules data collection. This is a critical step in creating consistent, objective licensing monitoring and compliance that reflects the spectrum of risk to children. We are beginning engagement to revise our Registered Family and Certified Family rulesets as well.
Child Care Infrastructure Fund – This week, we cohost a webinar with Business Oregon to share more information about the Child Care Infrastructure Fund application that will go live later this month. This is an amazing opportunity for child care providers, community-based organizations, culturally relevant programs, and other partners to access funding specifically for capital investments and improvements in their programs. This is an amazing example of how agencies can work together for a common goal, and highlights the shared responsibility many agencies have in supporting access to child care.

This is just a small sample – there is so much more incredible work we have accomplished together over the last year. I encourage you to read the anniversary press release for additional highlights. I am excited to continue on this journey together.

Cheers to 1 Year of DELC!