The unraveling of California's child care system
by Denyne Colburn, CEO of CAPPA. Since release of Governor Newsom's May Revision and his failure to even address rate increases for family child care providers nothing else makes sense.
So 100,000 slots were put forward in the May Revision, and since that time the legislature has added an additional 100,000 slots to a budget sent to the Governor. This is good news. However, if you add 200,000 new slots but fail to increase reimbursement rates for providers, then you will have fewer higher quality family child care homes and centers willing to accept a subsidized child care voucher. Said another way, if rate increases don't materialize, then our poorest working families, mainly Black and Brown single mom households, that rely on a subsidy for child care will be unable to truly access higher levels of care. These working moms and their babies will once again be left behind and further disconnected from child care settings that will support them with their care and learning needs.
The Governor proposed universal transitional kindergarten (TK) but has neglected support of a mixed delivery model that meets the needs of real working families. Further, he has jeopardized the funding of California Head Start programs that support cognitive, social and emotional needs of infants, toddlers, and preschool aged children from the lowest income families. Examples of families that are going to be harmed by the Governor's TK model include migrant workers who are in the fields at 4:30 am. They cannot leave their job when a TK program begins their day (candidly no schools are located out in fields) and then be able to pick them up a few short hours later. Or those that work in an hourly hospitality position that begins at 7:00 am to 5:00 pm with a one hour lunch and two breaks. How is a school based TK program supposed to work for them? These were some of the questions that should've been answered before such a brazen proposal bull dozed through. Below is a quote from an article that appeared in
Ed Source last week:
Finally, let's talk about the funding for some of the programs put forward.
- Enrollment of 200,000 slots - not one penny provided to community based agencies tasked with the enrollment. I see Governor Newsom saying "Look at what I provided," but at the same time making sure that the slots cannot be filled.
- Governor Newsom proposed TK for all four years holds by partially taking funding from General Fund (GF) child care for our poorest families and giving more monies to those funded under Proposition 98. Let's see if I understand this point? Billions of dollars were proposed to be taken out of the child care for poor families and given to the schools that already receive 40 percent of the state budget, so roughly $106.8 billion in 2021-22, an additional $500 million to support TK expansion, provides an additional $24 billion for one-time activities and $6 billion for ongoing costs, $30 billion on top of the 40 percent guarantee. Oh and let us not forget, they closed down during the pandemic.
- It has always been an adage that for care and learning for children from birth on, there would be a focus to raise "all boats" , meaning to fund providers fairly whether taking care of an infant or a preschooler. The May Revision and specifically the TK proposal disregards that adage and rather overly funds TK ONLY PROVIDED BY SCHOOLS and moves to shutter private child care centers by the hundreds in addition to threatening the ability of Head Start to support the needs of the very poorest.
This sounds preposterous as I type but I wonder, if child care had closed down during the pandemic, would Governor Newsom then care? Or does he think that this honorable profession and workforce will continue to be taken for granted, stepped on and forgotten? I surmise, that if no reckoning of the above is realized, then I see a revolt coming. I think this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. is on point:
“We have, it seems, shut the poor out of our minds and driven them from the mainstream of our society. We have allowed the poor to become invisible, and we have become angry when they make their presence felt. But just as nonviolence has exposed the ugliness of racial injustice, we must now find ways to expose and heal the sickness of poverty-not just its symptoms, but its basic causes.”
Governor Newsom, not providing honorable rates to child care providers forcing them to close their doors on the poorest children amongst us is cruel. Not providing real access to moms to access meaningful child care so they can work will continue the cycle of poverty for hundreds of thousands of Californians. Governor Newsom, you have a chance to make a difference and change a child's trajectory from a continued downward spiral of poverty to one that is upward where potential is limitless. Be the leader we know you are and make the right choices now.
