CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources (STAR) announces the release of its 2023 Annual Report.

Says Caroline Wade, STAR Executive Director, “Looking back on 2023, I want to celebrate the progress we’ve made in establishing a new national organization and the partners who have made that progress possible. National STAR formally launched in September 2023, and in four short (and busy!) months pulled together a strong, collaborative, and proven team of passionate staff and partners who have hit the ground running.

We’ve been busy refining the STAR framework, tools, and strategies to offer more support and resources for producers and conservation partners to best fit their needs. We know from the work of our current state STAR Affiliates that a successful path must be locally led, producer-focused, scientifically sound, and flexible enough to accommodate the risks that come with change, the trials, and errors.

We continue to celebrate producer success but also the process of learning, which encourages incremental steps forward. We are grateful for the hard work and stewardship of STAR farmers and ranchers and the enthusiastic support of stakeholders and funders in Affiliate states and all across the US that have been promoting and encouraging STAR’s vision and expansion.

Thank you to our state Affiliate colleagues, STAR staff, contractors, supporters, and funders for your hard work and ongoing support.”

Download the report from STAR’s website

About Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources (STAR)

Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources (STAR) is a national, non-profit organization that helps farmers and ranchers adopt, evaluate, and benefit from voluntary conservation practices on their agricultural lands. Through its network of state Affiliates and partners, the organization collaboratively tailors its innovative STAR framework to connect producers with tools, resources, and reward programs to grow conservation implementation at scale across all types of agriculture.

Created for producers by producers, the STAR Tool is a simple, free, and confidential resource that generates a 1-to-5 STAR rating to evaluate conservation progress on individual fields and provides tailored recommendations and resources to enable conservation progress. STAR ratings are guided by science and expertise to address local resource concerns. The nationally standardized 1-5 scale gives producers and partners a clear and credible pathway to incentivize and reward conservation practice adoption – no matter where producers are on their conservation journey.

Learn more at STARconservation.org

— Saving Tomorrow’s Agriculture Resources

The post STAR Releases 2023 Annual Report appeared first on Morning Ag Clips.

They will now be using a 3-tier system to ensure students can get to school on time, which implements three different start times for the schools.

By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com

SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois House gave final passage Thursday to a bill establishing a new cabinet-level state agency whose mission will be to provide a kind of one-stop shop for services focusing on early childhood development and education.

By the time it’s fully operational in 2026, the new Department of Early Childhood will administer programs currently spread across three agencies. 

Among those are the Early Childhood Block Grants for preschools, now administered by the State Board of Education; subsidized child care, home visits and early intervention services administered by the Department of Human Services; and licensing of day care providers, which is now handled by the Department of Children and Family Services.

“We want to make a better Illinois,” Rep. Mary Beth Canty, D-Arlington Heights, the chief House sponsor of the bill, said during debate on the bill Thursday afternoon. “The way that we do our federal funding, our state funding for families, early education providers, etc. – it is scattershot across these three agencies. We see duplication of efforts, duplication of forms, and that means that we, in some cases, are not getting as many dollars into the programs that we rightfully need.”

Gov. JB Pritzker first announced plans to form a new agency in October, just as lawmakers were beginning their fall veto session. At that time, he signed an executive order directing agencies to start preparing for a potential consolidation and naming a transition director for the consolidation process. 

The legislation that has now cleared the General Assembly, Senate Bill 1, provides the legal authority to begin setting up the new agency. It calls for hiring a director and key administrative staff to begin what is expected to be a two-year process of shifting programs, personnel, and funding from their current agencies to the new one.

That initial cost, estimated at about $13.1 million, is expected to be part of the budget for the next fiscal year, which lawmakers will finalize over the next few weeks. 

But some Republicans expressed frustration that the Pritzker administration couldn’t provide an estimate of how much the new agency will cost per year once it’s fully operational in 2026, and questioned whether creating a new agency wouldn’t be more expensive than leaving the programs in their existing agencies.

“We’re creating an entire government agency here, guys,” Rep. Blaine Wilhour, R-Beecher City, said during floor debate. “This is a cabinet level agency, and we have no idea what it’s going to cost.”

Supporters of the bill argued the new costs would be minimal because the new agency’s job will be to administer existing programs that the state is already funding, and some argued that combining those programs into a single agency could create efficiencies that will save the state money in the long run.

“And it’s also possible that we may make better use of federal funds that we receive that support these programs,” Canty said.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 93-18. It previously passed the Senate on April 12 on a unanimous 56-0 vote. It next goes to Pritzker for his signature.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.