STARS Montana Early Education Program

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Republican Montana lawmakers halt implementation of child care reform rules

Against the recommendation of many day care providers, the Children, Family, Health and Human Services Interim Committee voted on Thursday to prevent the suite of rules from going into effect before the end of the next legislative session in 2025. The vote was on partisan lines with the two committee’s Democrats offering the dissents.

The child care system is broken. Here are 5 striking statistics that show why.

As more than 1,000 providers shut their doors for a Day Without Child Care, we examine a few numbers that reveal why the landscape is in crisis.

Parents say lack of childcare is hampering Big Timber, Montana’s growth – Why no Universal Pre-K in Montana?

Big Timber Daycare is the only daycare in all of Sweet Grass County, and community members agree that’s not enough childcare service for the growing rural community.

CBS News – Schools across U.S. announce teacher layoffs “Worst Staff Cuts ‘in a Generation'” Missoulian

American schools are facing layoffs as enrollment falls and pandemic-era aid dries up. CBS News reporter Bo Erickson has the details.

Biden sends a lifeline to the ‘sandwich generation’ with childcare and eldercare proposals

The initiatives were once part of Build Back Better, Biden’s gargantuan legislative agenda that stalled on Capitol Hill two years ago. Now they’re what Neera Tanden, the Democratic president’s top domestic policy adviser, describes as “unfinished business.”

Bozeman task force creates early plan to address child care accessibility

After “community input sessions and the 440-plus survey results,” the task force’s findings culminated in a new strategic plan, said Tori Sproles, who helps lead the group as the director of Child Care Connections. The plan’s details are listed in an online document.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

White House Announces New Resources for Small Child Care Businesses

The administration is planning to lean on the U.S. Small Business Administration to help it dispatch funds to alleviate America’s growing child care crisis.

How a second language can boost the brain

Being bilingual benefits children as they learn to speak — and adults as they age.

Video: 3D images of over 13,000 museum specimens now free to everyone

More than a research project, oVert was a collaboration between like-minded specialists across 25 institutions whose sole objective was to add value to museum collections by making them more widely available. Importantly, these images provide an insight that would only otherwise be obtained by destructive dissection and tissue sampling.

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Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations.

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Montana Bioscience Cluster Initiative - Collaborative program design and execution and integrated programs fostering innovation, technology commercialization, entrepreneurship and sustainable small businesses

Bozeman is a rapidly growing city with a high quality of life in part due to the easy access to the outdoors, burgeoning tech industry, and cultural experiences it offers.

As the hub of learning, creativity and innovation in Northwest Montana, Flathead Valley Community College is expanding