The New York Public Library shares reading recommendations to commemorate Juneteenth including ten books for younger readers.
Quotable & Notable
“Sustained investments in comprehensive child care infrastructure could serve as a critical counter-inflation measure by easing the worker crunch, while also contributing to economic growth—helping to support providers and early educators; putting more parents of young children, especially mothers, back to work; boosting business capacity and productivity; and supporting broader economic recovery.”
who:
Hailey Gibbs, Senior Policy Analyst, Center for American Progress
Federal pandemic-era relief packages have resulted in historic investments in the child care industry. Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that when American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds expire in September 2024, all 50 states plus D.C. will face a funding cliff of over $48 billion. Without new investments from the federal government, the child care supply crisis will likely get even worse.
Beyond the Buckeye State
This article about job opportunities in California’s transitional kindergarten (TK) program illuminates pay and benefits disparities between the two sectors – early care and education and K-12 - as well as challenges when both are recruiting early educators into their workforce.
On a similar topic, New America outlines examples from states that have addressed the growing crises facing the early childhood workforce.
What We're Reading
In a new report, the National Women’s Law Center examines child care assistance policies across every state and includes a trove of data on how/whether states have improved policies related to income eligibility limits, waiting lists, copayments, and more.
Dana Suskind, author of the new Parent Nation, pens a piece in Scientific Americanthat frames high-quality early care and parental leave policies as critical to staying globally competitive.
The deadline for Congress to extend pandemic-era USDA child nutrition waivers is fast approaching. This piece by Elliot Haspel looks at this issue from the perspective of family child care providers. The waivers cover not only the national school meals program but also the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) which is used to reimburse child care programs for food expenses. However, a policy change from the 1990s divided reimbursement rates for family providers into two tiers depending on the income of families served. A pandemic waiver brought all family providers into the higher reimbursement tier, which will expire on July 1.
Research Round Up
Hechinger Report discusses the latest study on preschool quality – this time, from research in New York City that showed that the location of preschools (i.e., in higher-income census tracks) was correlated with higher quality programs. Quality also fell along racial lines as well as governance/operational structures (those run by community organizations versus by the nearby schools). Children in lower quality programs were less engaged and less likely to have a range of activities planned for them.
This edition written by: Jamie O'Leary and Caitlin Lennon
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