Childcare: Early Childhood Policy Council.

Assembly Member Jackson advances a measure that reorganizes California’s Early Childhood Policy Council by adding two standing advisory committees and a defined 27-member structure to guide statewide early learning and care policy, paired with an annual public report and formal policy and budget recommendations on facilities, workforce, and family access.

The core change centers on the council’s redesigned role and composition. The council would advise the Governor, the Legislature, and the state department on statewide early learning and care policy, including planning, implementation, and evaluation of the state’s Master Plan for Early Learning and Care and related historical reports. It would maintain two ongoing standing advisory committees—the parent advisory committee and the workforce advisory committee—with membership drawn from multiple appointing authorities. The 27-member council would be distributed as: fourteen Governor appointees (one of whom chairs the council), four appointed by the Speaker, four by the Senate Rules, one by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and two members each from the parent and workforce advisory committees. The bill requires broad stakeholder representation reflecting geographic, ethnic, language, and other diversity, and sets a six-year term limit for members. If funding is provided in the annual Budget Act, the measure also requires language interpretation at convenings and reimbursement of reasonable expenses for participating members.

Key mechanisms and details address governance, process, and reporting. The council must convene at least four public meetings per year with statewide accessibility, advise on activities required by applicable federal standards, and prepare a formal public annual report describing successes, challenges, and gaps, plus recommendations to advance the state’s vision for children, families, and communities. The annual report must be submitted to the Legislature’s fiscal and policy committees in compliance with Government Code requirements. The council is directed to develop policy proposals and budget requests related to facility needs, workforce needs, and family access for legislative consideration. Staffing for the council and its committees would be provided by the California Health and Human Services Agency, with a cap of up to $300,000 for such costs, contingent on funding in the annual Budget Act. The two advisory committees—parent and workforce—are each nine-member bodies with specified appointment rules and consumer-representative categories, and the Governor is to designate the chairs of both committees.

The measure places emphasis on accessibility, equity, and two-generation approaches, and aligns the council’s activities with federal requirements and longstanding state policy efforts, including the Master Plan for Early Learning and Care and the 2019 Blue Ribbon Commission Final Report. It ties operational costs to annual budget appropriations rather than creating an automatic funding line, and it leaves governing details such as an explicit effective date, transition steps, and penalties for noncompliance to the enacted version and subsequent budget actions. In context, the proposal positions the council as a formal, statutorily defined body with enhanced public reporting, targeted stakeholder input, and structured policy and budget development related to facilities, workforce, and family access within California’s early childhood system.