House committee supports keeping First Steps program

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- An education budget panel on Tuesday said it supports the First Steps program -- targeted for cuts by Gov. Matt Blunt -- and will recommend the House Budget Committee continue to fund it.

But the panel did not offer ideas for finding that money.

Blunt's budget would eliminate funding for the First Steps program for developmentally disabled infants and toddlers.

Blunt has said people could receive services through private insurance or Medicaid, but he recently has taken pains to say that children now receiving the services would continue to, somehow. He has not spelled out how those services would be provided or how much that would cost.

On Monday, House Education Appropriations Committee chairwoman Kathlyn Fares offered a plan -- which failed on an 8-8 committee vote -- to cut spending on a handful of other education programs to free up money for First Steps.

Among other areas, she proposed taking some money from the basic formula that distributes money to public schools and to halve the $5 million increase Blunt proposed for Parents as Teachers.

That program sends people into parents' homes to help them teach skills to their preschool children and to screen for developmental and health problems.

Parent Cindy Scheer, of New Haven, said in an interview that it's important that one program is not cut to boost the other. Her 13-month-old daughter, Claire, participates in both First Steps and Parents as Teachers, and she said both provide critical services.

"There are other places they need to find the cuts," she said. "One works with the other. If I hadn't had Parents as Teachers, I wouldn't have known about First Steps."

Fares, R-St. Louis, said First Steps could gain some money from requiring co-payments from families and pursuing private insurance to cover services -- ideas that require changes in state law.

Committee members expressed support for First Steps but cringed at Fares' proposed cuts to other education programs, especially to the school funding formula.

Tuesday, Fares said the panel could instead send a letter to the full House Budget Committee saying the program should be restored in some form, without proposing how that would be accomplished financially.

"We are solidly behind having those services provided," she said.

The committee agreed on a unanimous vote.