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 about the need for systems change and collectively engage in advocating for action.

“The burden of child care is driving women out of the labor force.” The UW-Madison Extension’s 2020 Wisconsin Economy Survey provides compelling evidence of just how big a factor child care is in employment decisions, especially among moms. In a survey of parents, 51 percent of women and 34 percent of men reported that the cost of child care was a consideration in planning for their own career, and 42 percent of women and 20 percent of men reported that they had cut back on hours or quit a job because of child care costs. The report also drives home the short- and long-term impacts of reducing hours or leaving the workforce, including lower income and less household spending, a loss of benefits such as healthcare, a loss of contributions to retirement savings, and lost working years that would factor into future social security benefits. Read the full report here.

Three investments to improve early care and education in Wisconsin.  The Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) is a statewide, cross-sector group charged with helping to ensure that all children and families in Wisconsin have access to quality early childhood programs and services and making recommendations to the Governor to accomplish that goal. The ECAC’s recently-released 2020 annual report includes recommendations for investment in three key areas: Recruiting and retaining early childhood educators as a way of expanding access to quality, affordable early childhood education; Expanding access to family support services, including abuse and neglect prevention, through Family Resource Centers; and Reducing early childhood suspension and expulsion through expansion of the Pyramid Model, infant and toddler mental health consultation, and expansion of Behavior Help Wisconsin. Read the full report and related budget papers for each recommendation here.

New resources for early childhood. The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families has been awarded a $30 million Preschool Development Grant Birth to Five Renewal. This federal grant will be allocated in annual $10 million allocations over the next three years and will be used to implement the state’s strategic plan for advancing early care and education access, affordability, quality, workforce, and equity. See the announcement here and the full strategic plan here.

Federal update.  As part of a larger economic stimulus proposal, President Biden has proposed a $40 billion investment in child care, including a $25 billion emergency stabilization fund to help child care programs stay open or re-open and $15 billion for the Child Care Development Block Grant which helps low-income families afford child care. The president has also proposed a significant one-year increase in the Child Care Tax Credit, which would allow families to recoup up to half of their spending on child care. Read more on the President’s proposal here.

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