Important Message from the
Early Learning Coalition of Palm Beach County
Reimbursement Questions & Answers
Dear Early Learning Provider,

It's been almost a month since the pandemic reached our shores and changed the way you care for children, serve your families, operate your businesses, and virtually every other aspect of daily life. You've had to make tough decisions and the decisions keep coming and growing in magnitude.

We hear you. Whether you are open or closed today, we hear your worries about your employees, your families, and the businesses you have built. " Will our families come back?" , "Will our teachers stay?", and "Will we make it through this?".

Every decision, every email, every policy, and every conversation, at the Early Learning Coalition of Palm Beach County, has you and your families in mind. We are advocating for your children, your employees, your businesses, and our industry.

Sometimes it takes more time to get clarification on policies, implementation guidelines, and for our advocacy to take hold in Tallahassee. We continue to work in coordination with the Office of Early Learning and Florida Department of Education on the policy decisions that affect your bottom line.

Below, we will clarify what to expect in your reimbursement payment for the month of March. We are optimistic we may have additional news and updates regarding this payment in the near future. For this reimbursement payment, we are obligated to follow the current policy and will update you the moment we have more news to share.

Sincerely,

Early Learning Coalition of Palm Beach County
March 2020 Reimbursement Update
Waived Parent Fees
  • The Office of Early Learning is waiving the deduction of parent fees for your reimbursement beginning April 1st.

  • For the March reimbursement, the parent fees were deducted for the entire month.

  • We continue to work with the Office of Early Learning to (hopefully) finalize a funding mechanism to reimburse school readiness providers for parent fees from March 16th through March 31st. Please understand, at this time, nothing has been finalized. We will let you know as soon as have an update.
March 16-20 and March 23-27
For the additional week the School District closed (March 16-20th, 2020) and the original week of Spring Break (March 23-27th), providers serving school-age children will paid/reimbursed as follows:

  • If the facility was open for business, the provider was paid at the full-time rate for school-age children based upon their pre-approved schedule.
  • If the facility was closed, the provider was paid at the part-time rate for school-age children.
  • Please note, we are advocating for full-time payment for school-age children with pre-approved full-time schedules for the original week of Spring Break (March 23-27th) for providers that were closed. However, we will not know until further guidance from OEL is provided. We will update you as soon as we have additional information.
Have a lot of questions? This may help.
Listen to last Thursday's Provider Q & A Webinar with CEO Warren Eldridge and key leaders from the reimbursement team, provider services, program services, and more.



If you have additional questions, please call our provider hotline: 1.877.767.4659 or email: provider.services@elcpalmbeach.org.
We're all in this together.