Originally Posted by Josiegirl:
Just got an email today saying the state is no longer getting the funding that has been allowing for all the annual participant's rewards. They're looking around for different funding but until then it'll be interesting to see if the participant numbers start dropping like flies. 
I know a whole lotta dcproviders that were only doing it for the $$ incentives. And especially now with jumping through even more hoops to get to a level 3 and beyond, I highly doubt as many will be motivated as they were before.
I know that $1000 every year I was getting, bought some nice materials, paid for dc insurance and a few other dc things. 
I am betting you are right. We have providers here that were rated at the highest level but when it came time to re-rate they purposely went down in stars just to work their way back up because....yep, you guessed it...with each star level came $1,000.
I expressed my issues with that to the state rep in our area and she said although it's not technically ethical it's not against the rules so they couldn't really do anything about it.
I think it's sad. It's the reason some states/areas are running out of funding altogether. I think it's all part of the "game" though that is played behind the scenes of many "social programs".
For example when I worked at Head Start, we were allotted a specific amount of money each year for supplies and if we didn't spend all of it, we got "in trouble" or reprimanded.
Even worse if you tried to save them a $ or two, you got in trouble too. I got called into my supervisors office once for not buying a Candyland board game from Kaplan for $25 and buying it from Walmart for like $4.95. When I questioned it all, they said "if you don't spend it all, we won't get the same amount plus more next year."
I understand how that works but I just couldn't play that game. Guess my conscious is still something I like to appease.
Will you still be getting monies this year for the work you've done so far? Are you rated yet? Or are you re-rating?