House Education Finance Chair Jenifer Loon (R-Eden Prairie) last week introduced a bill to continue to award grants to evidence-based early literacy parent-child home visiting program. The House Education Finance is reviewing the legislation for possible inclusion in the Omnibus Bill.
Parent-child home programs are designed to have instructors (called home visitors) visit families with young children (target age range of the children served is from 16 months to four years of age) to give parents added skills and tools to teach and interact with their children, building literacy skills for school readiness.
For the last three years, the legislature has appropriated $250,000 per year to the Minnesota Department of Education for a grant. The department has awarded the grant to Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Minneapolis for its parent-child home visiting program. The Northland Area Family Service Center in Remer, Minnesota, also has been awarded funding for the program recently.
The 2013 law requires the program to provide service in at least one suburban area, one rural area, and one urban area.
HF318 appropriates an unspecified amount of money for the grants and it continues the requirement that the program provide service in at least one suburban area, one rural area, and one urban area.