This commentary is by Wendy Rice of Burlington, a volunteer with Let’s Grow Kids and the principal for Vermont Connector, a small business that connects community resources and opportunities.
As a new parent on the cusp of a global pandemic, I was doubly impacted by existing child care shortages and statewide Covid closures. My journey to find full-time child care spanned over 18 months.
This lack of child care necessitated a prolonged departure from the full-time workforce for me.
Despite the obvious need for more child care openings, I watched in horror as center after center closed their doors over the last two years. High operational costs for child care, increased health risks for essential early childhood education workers, and staff burnout and turnover depleted an already taxed system.
Some centers that did remain open had to significantly decrease services and hours of operation. Vast labor shortages meant that child care program administrators had to be full-time classroom teachers, on top of their daily leadership responsibilities. Programs had little to no capacity to respond to personal illness or a Covid outbreak.
Abrupt and extended school closures became common, forcing families into difficult juggling acts. Many families exhausted all personal leave and jeopardized their employment to meet their child care needs. Other families made the difficult decision to remove a parent from the workforce or to leave Vermont altogether.
In short, Covid highlighted longstanding systemic issues of accessibility, affordability, equity and compensation in child care. The pandemic revealed just how essential child care is for everyone.
Prior to the pandemic, the child care advocacy organization Let’s Grow Kids estimated that three out of five Vermont children (10% of whom are BIPOC children) did not have access to child care. And, according to its latest child care capacity report, this unfortunately is still the case.
Meeting Vermont’s child care needs requires the creation of nearly 9,000 additional child care slots statewide. It also necessitates hiring 2,000 more early childhood educators. Yet between 2016 and 2022, Vermont actually lost 522 child care spots statewide and Vermont’s labor force shrank to its smallest size in 30 years.
Even if additional openings are created, child care remains largely inaccessible to our children because of its outrageous cost. A typical Vermont family spends $20,000 a year on child care, literally more than a year of in-state tuition at a Vermont State College.
Addressing child care availability and affordability are two of the three most needed solutions to our child care shortage. Strategies to recruit and retain qualified early childhood educators are also imperative.
Although child care costs equate to a monthly mortgage payment, early childhood educators are among the least well paid professions nationally. In Vermont, the median salary for a center-based early childhood educator is $39,315. Although this number has gone up, it is still among the lowest for individuals with a college degree.
To address our urgent child care needs, we must boldly invest in our child care infrastrastructure now. The near-unanimous passage of the Child Care Act (H.171) was a monumental first step. The bill creates targeted investments in the workforce, the state subsidy program, and IT systems development.
Implementation of this bill will require continued advocacy and leadership from everyone affected by the child care crisis — parents, child care educators and businesses alike. Easy actions everyone can take to join the movement for affordable, high-quality child care include:
- Joining over 40,000 Vermonters in signing Let’s Grow Kid’s policy agenda, which ambitiously aims to make child care accessible to all Vermont children by 2025.
- Lobbying your local legislators to continue to implement H.171, to provide emergency relief funding to the child care industry, and to safeguard child care appropriations.
- Voting for political candidates who prioritize child care system transformation.
Early childhood educators can help improve their industry by participating in Let’s Grow Kids’ Early Educators Group. This network collects data needed by legislators to make continued investments in our child care infrastructure. It also provides critical resources to child care centers such as supplemental funding opportunities, business management tools, and marketing software (Vermont Child Care Lynx).
Business leaders can endorse a publicly funded child care system outlined in H.171, which caps family child care expenses at 10% of annual income. It would also ensure fair compensation for early childhood educators.
Additionally, businesses can also audit their internal practices, such as flexible work, child care reimbursement, and on-site child care services, to better address our child care shortage.
Together, we can build a strong child care system and lead the nation in these needed changes and investments. We can create child care that is affordable, accessible, and equitable for all Vermont families and children.
Resources
A Vermont Employer’s Guide to Child Care Solution
Child Care Resources (Vermont Connector)
Let’s Grow Kids Action Network
Why the US Doesn’t Have Universal Child Care Anymore (VOX podcast)
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April 20, 2022 at 06:07PM
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Wendy Rice: Affordable, high-quality child care is essential for Vermont’s working families - vtdigger.org
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