California's Child Care System in Chaos. Maybe that is Governor Newsom's Strategy.
In 2022, California’s subsidized child care system is in tatters. Employers are struggling to find workers. Families are struggling to find and maintain stable child care. The child care workforce continues to shrink. Provider rates are outdated. The lowest income families are pitted against each other. And the promise of building upon community nonprofits to support the most fragile of families and children with coordinated social supports to lift them up and provide them stability to move forward is filled with smoke and mirrors.
More concerning is a governor that either doesn’t care or doesn’t understand what is going on. In either case, what is happening in California is a crumbling of the existing child care capacity and no sign of relief that new child care providers are on the horizon.
The only time that child care is even mentioned is when Governor Newsom’s Early Childhood Policy Council meets. Candidly, what a sad state of affairs this Council has become. Meetings are a rehash of work that has already been done via other opportunities such as Assembly Speaker Rendon’s 2019 Blue Ribbon Commission on Early Childhood Education or in past rate reform workgroups. Strong concerns from Council appointees and the public wanting to move forward with real strategies for reform and change fall on deaf ears. While providers are pleading to have this entity address real issues such as rates and capacity, Governor Newsom’s appointees only want to focus on how to require family child care providers and centers to do more without any promise of meaningful reimbursement.
Compounding the frustration and anger that is beginning to come to the surface are proposals to have child care for two-year olds on up delivered through the public school system. Seriously? Seriously!
Could this chaos actually be the plan that Governor Newsom wants?
Maybe by collapsing the child care workforce, reimbursing providers outdated rates, issuing new child care slots but with no funding to actually enroll the families and help families access child care and finally threatening to disenroll tens of thousands of children from their existing stable child care come June 30 could this be what our governor wants?
I hate to entertain this thought but cannot deny the facts. The fact is that California has a governor that wants all child care to move to the schools. For child care outside of the public schools, he has made sure there is inadequate funding. He has made it a point to exclude from his $1.7 billion workforce build-up plan, child care. However, for expansion of Universal Transitional Kindergarten and Universal Pre School, the schools get monies thrown at them to plan, to reimburse teachers, and to guarantee consistent funding regardless of whether the schools are open or children are attending.
For those reading this, all should be concerned. Child care capacity for both private pay families and for subsidized families is not a nicety for the state to have; it is a necessity. For California’s economy to thrive and strengthen, parents must have real and accessible child care.
