"Parents cannot afford to pay more, and child care workers cannot afford to make less."
by Janet McLaughlin Recent coverage of the Child Care and Prekindergarten Capacity Baseline Report by the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office has largely misread the findings of that study. We do have a child care crisis in Vermont—the shortage of early educators and lack of spaces affect nearly every aspect of life in our state. It is a situation that will only get worse if we fail to address it.
It’s important to note the historic and complex reasons for child care closings to correctly interpret the JFO report. Despite decades of research demonstrating that the most critical time in human development is from birth to five, we consistently underinvest in our children during these years and in the workforce of early educators and child care providers who support them and their families.
Providing high-quality child care requires not just meeting benchmarks for safe provider-to-child ratios but also education, ongoing professional development, and environments that support activities suitable to early childhood development. In other words, providing high-quality child care costs time and money—two valuable resources that are becoming out-of-reach for existing early educators—and aspiring early educators are paying attention. The increased standards of the field are based on what we know our children need to support their healthy development, so we should not back away from our commitment to them. But the lack of adequate public investment is creating a tenuously balanced system on the backs of early educators and parents. The result: aspiring early educators are deterred from joining the field and Vermont’s children and parents suffer as a result.
The report highlights this well when citing the rationale for fewer programs: “This is mostly due to older providers leaving the market and fewer new entrants.” It reflects what we at VB5 have long understood and what early educators have been sounding the alarm on for decades while calling for more investment in child care.
Looking more closely at the challenge, middle-income families are paying up to 40% of their household income on child care while child care workers earn a median annual salary of $26,440, often without benefits. Parents cannot afford to pay more, and child care workers cannot afford to make less. At the same time, the need for child care is substantial. Nearly 70% of Vermont children under the age of 6 have all available parents in the labor force and need out-of-home care while their parents work.
These are tough numbers backed every day by difficult stories from parents and early educators about the hurdles they face when supporting the healthy development of children. But it’s a solvable problem.
Vermont Birth to Five launched a Make Way for Kids program that provides financing and coaching support to local communities with the goal of building or expanding quality child care across the state. We’re on track to increase quality child care by nearly 800 spaces within 12 months. Working with our strategic partners and the motivated field of early education experts, more children will benefit, but to fully meet the needs of Vermont’s children, their families and businesses that need a reliable workforce, we need significant public investment in child care.
That is why our sister effort, Let’s Grow Kids, and its partner organizations are calling for a long-overdue public investment in child care that will benefit all of us. A realistic realignment of the Child Care Financial Assistance Program; scholarships, loan forgiveness and other educational incentives for early childhood educators; and small employer tax credits and other assistance in securing child care options for employees are essential first steps in creating affordable, accessible, high-quality child care for all Vermont children who need it.
So, this is a watershed moment for Vermont. We can meet the child care challenge if we work together to tackle the tough issues that keep us trapped in a losing cycle. The investment we make today has a very high return that forecasts a healthy future for Vermont, for our children, and for the dedicated educators who care for them.
Janet McLaughlin, executive director of Vermont Birth to Five and interim CEO of the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children