Greetings,  We welcome your engagement in efforts to harness and align our collective assets to advance local, regional, and state action in service of a re-imagined early childhood care and education system.  With this newsletter we aim to educate and inform our community - from Greater Green Bay to Oshkosh - about the need for systems change and collectively engage in advocating for action.

Utilizing federal investment in the child care sector.  Governor Evers and the Department of Children and Families have proposed a plan to use $148 million in federal child care funds from the December 2020 federal stimulus package. Under this proposal, the state would allocate:  $106 million through Child Care Counts, an established program for getting emergency support to child care programs to remain open, keep staff employed, and safely serve children through the pandemic; $10 million for technology infrastructure in child care settings; $10 million for child care workforce recruitment and retention; $5.5 million to expand shared services programs, which allow child care providers to work together to leverage economies of scale in operations; $10 million for private sector partnerships; and $5.5 million for workforce training.  Read more about the proposal here. And see members of the Greater Fox Valley Child Care Alliance’s letter of support for the proposal here.

Federal Reserve Chair connects child care and the labor market. In more evidence of the vital role child care plays in women’s workforce participation, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently told the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee that “Our peers, our competitors, advanced economy democracies, have a more built-up function for child care, and they wind up having substantially higher labor force participation for women.” As a result, he said, exploring ways to expand access to affordable child care is “an area worth looking at.” Read more here.

Parents’ work schedules can lead to unstable child care arrangements.  According to a new report by Zero to Three, over a third of young children in households with low income have a parent who receives less than a week’s notice of their work schedule, meaning less than a week to make sure child care is in place, plan travel logistics, and rearrange everyday routines.  In fact, inconsistent parental work schedules can result in increased levels of stress and depression for employees and diminished cognitive and language development for children. So what can be done? Employers can prioritize predictable and stable schedules and protect workers requesting schedule changes for child care. Read more here.

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