By Wayne Yoshioka

It was Early Childhood Day at the Capitol and pre-school students rallied for a number of bills before the legislature that impact them.  Children’s Action Network executive director, Deborah Zysman.

“So there’s a couple of really critical bills to help our youngest keiki.  First of all, we are rallying to expand public preschool both in the Executive Office of Early Learning and within the Charter Schools. So, we’ve got some growing programs in public preschool for our 4 year-olds and we wanna see those continue to grow.  The second thing we are rallying behind are some bills to expand what’s called the child and dependent care tax credit.  So, from our middle-income families who are paying for child care out-of-pocket, giving them a bigger tax refunds when they pay their state taxes in April.  So they get money back and right now, there’s a very small tax credit.  We wanna see it much larger and closer to the actual cost of child care.”

Early Childhood Day is an annual event during the legislative session.

https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/post/early-childhood-day-capitol