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EDITORIAL: Biden proposals will help rebuild vital child care programs

Santa Cruz Sentinel - 4/29/2021

Apr. 29—One group of essential workers whose futures have been clouded by 14 months of pandemic are our child care providers.

And as our country, our state and Santa Cruz County begins to come out of this long period of uncertainty, and parents seek to return to work, it will be essential to build and rebuild the support for early education and care programs.

So we are encouraged that President Joe Biden's administration is not overlooking child care, and that in his estimated $1 trillion American Family Plan, unveiled in a speech to Congress Wednesday, there will be money for early childhood programs, including universal pre-kindergarten, increased subsidies for child care and an extension of a tax credit for child care.

The plan includes a voucherlike program that would make child care free for all poor children and highly subsidized for middle-income kids. And the bill's plan is to extend the raised child tax credit through at least 2025. The credit has been bumped up from a maximum of $2,000 to as much as $3,600 per child, but the boost is set to expire at the end of the year. Part of the money will be paid out in monthly installments of $250 to $300, a benefit for families struggling to make ends meet during the pandemic.

The latest proposals come after the administration earmarked $39 billion for building and upgrading child care facilities in the American Rescue Plan approved earlier this year. California is set to receive $3.8 billion of that money, half of which is for stabilizing the child-care system and providing more assistance to families.

The proposals, if enacted, would provide a vital lifeline to child care facilities and workers across California, a state with almost 3 million children under age 5 and where the gap between the well off and the poor has widened during the pandemic.

COVID-19 has put the child-care industry, already short of qualified centers and workers, under unprecedented strain, while the lack of affordable day care has strained families, and sapped the economy by holding women back in the workforce. The pandemic toll has been fearsome: Day-care enrollment fell by about half in California as the state has lost more than 8,500 licensed child care sites in the last year and three in ten jobs in child care have been lost during the pandemic. Advocates say the sting from the closures will be felt when the economy fully reopens and parents start to look for care that is no longer there.

Research has consistently shown that children under the age of 5 who receive higher quality child care and early education reap educational benefits that last throughout their school years. But the key words are "higher quality," since poorer families often only have access to programs that lack sufficient resources or skilled workers.

But child care in California has existed on the edge of a financial cliff for decades. Providers operate on razor-thin margins and get paid less than living wages, while parents can hardly afford the fees. Government subsidies have not kept up with inflation, and only help a fraction of kids who qualify because the lack of providers leaves low-income families desperately looking for affordable programs.

The median hourly child care wage was $13.43 in 2019 in California, according to The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. The result: 17% of California child care workers live in poverty, the Center at UC Berkeley's Early Childhood Workforce Index found.

The tax credits, subsidies, even higher wages for child care workers would largely be paid for by higher taxes on wealthier Americans —a politically perilous journey that will have to make it through the thicket of Republican opposition to tax hikes.

Make no mistake, however. We need more day care, not less, even in work places; more child-care workers earning a living wage, not fewer; and a sustainable funding source for this industry. Investing in early childhood education and day care is vital to our future as a nation and for beginning to chip away at the widening gaps between the rich and poor in America.

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(c)2021 the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.)

Visit the Santa Cruz Sentinel (Scotts Valley, Calif.) at www.santacruzsentinel.com

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