CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

Cartwright touts need for child care, early learning in Plains Twp. visit

Times Leader - 9/3/2021

Sep. 3—PLAINS TWP. — Sarah Valonis put a very human face to the call for more affordable child care, talking of her daughter pulled from the Building Blocks Learning Center program during the pandemic.

The girl seemed to disappear at home, until the Laflin mother found her under the dining room table crying, a math workbook nearby.

"She said 'I can't do it. I just can't do it'," Valonis told the people gathered at Building Blocks Thursday for a visit from U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright. That's when she reworked everything to get her daughter back into the center, provoking a gleeful response on the return: "She ran through the door."

Valonis joined Building Blocks CEO Zubeen Saeed and Wyoming Valley Chamber of Commerce officials Wico Van Genderen and Lindsay Griffin, among others, to discuss the need for quality child care and early learning centers. Cartwright touted $1.2 billion for child care that Pennsylvania received through the federal American Rescue Plan.

While the allocation of that money has yet to be finalized by the state, Saeed and others from Building Blocks stressed how additional state and federal subsidies for early learning and child care help pay for more teachers and staff, which in turn means serving more children. The added money can increase wages as well, making such centers more competitive with public school districts that often lure center teachers away with better pay and benefits.

The pandemic hit child care centers hard, Saeed said,with more than 800 closing permanently statewide in the past year and another 360 closing temporarily. And that means more parents forced to stay home — and out of the workforce — adding to the worker shortage in many industries.

In a survey of 300 businesses across the state, 54% said the reason they had lost workers in the past year was lack of child care so people could remain on the job during the pandemic, Van Genderen said. "One thing emerging from the pandemic is that it's abundantly clear how crucial quality child care is to parents being able to work, and thus to the overall economy."

Valonis said she had asked her daughter what she liked best about coming to Building Blocks and the response was "I learned to read there," proving how much of an advantage children can get from good early learning centers even before entering kindergarten.

Cartwright, who has long pushed for greater government subsidies for child care and early learning, said the various comments show the two big reasons he champions the cause: "It's great for the economy, and it's great for the children."

And by giving children that extra support early, Van Genderen said, you make it more likely they will succeed later, keeping the national economy competitive globally in the long term. He noted the chronic waiting lists for Head Start's various early learning programs.

"This kids on the waiting list are left behind, and they are left behind for life."

___

(c)2021 The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)

Visit The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.) at www.timesleader.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.