Month: September 2020

Urge House Leaders to Prioritize Child Care in COVID Recovery Bill

SHARE:

Reports indicate House Democrats are working on a new COVID-19 recovery package in hopes of revitalizing negotiations with Senate Republicans and the White House.

It is imperative that your representatives hear from you that child care must be prioritized in the legislation.

  • The HEROES Act, which passed the House earlier this summer, included $7 billion for child care.
  • The House later passed the Child Care is Essential Act – $50 billion to stabilize the child care industry – with bipartisan support.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has introduced two recovery packages that included $15 billion for child care.
  • And the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus released a proposal that also included $15 billion for child care.

Without question, the child care industry will need significantly more than $15 billion for child care if providers are to be able to remain in business through this ongoing economic crisis. And more than 8 in 10 voters favor a federal child care stabilization fund in the COVID-19 recovery package – even up to $50 billion, which many advocates have been requesting all along – with overwhelming support across partisan lines, generations, and genders.

Tell your member of Congress to ensure Nancy Pelosi includes enough funding for child care to prevent the industry from collapse.

Day of Action to #SaveChildCare

SHARE:

Every Wednesday through the month of September, we’re asking you to join us in urging Congress to #SaveChildCare by ensuring providers receive the emergency stabilization funding they need to remain in business through the recovery – and beyond.

Here’s what you need to know for Wednesday, September 16th:

Did you know that 70% of parents have reported that their child care programs either have closed or are operating at reduced capacity or hours? While some parents have the option to work remotely, 1 in 4 parents cannot return to work in person without child care.

Tweet, call, and email your lawmakers and let them know that this is not sustainable for America’s working parents.

We’ve put together a few social graphics and tweets you can use, along with proposed call script and email language for contacting members of Congress. You can find those in this Google Doc to use throughout the day today.  We’ve also created links through the Child Care Relief action center/Social Press Kit to allow for direct tweets, emails and calls to Congress. 

Graphics for Social Media:

Former CEO Calls for Child Care Stabilization to Support The U.S. Workforce

SHARE:

In a recent op-ed published in the Des Moines Register, Robert J. Myers, the retired chairman and CEO of Casey’s General Stores, wrote about the need to stabilize the child care industry to support the workforce and America’s economic recovery. He wrote that “child care is a critical element of a successful workforce.”

As governors and mayors across the country evaluate public health criteria and data to inform how they reopen the economy, there’s a major data point that must also be considered: the availability of quality and affordable child care.

As the former chairman and CEO of Casey’s General Stores, the challenges around child care are not new to me. Casey’s operates over 2,000 convenience stores across 16 states, counting on more than 37,000 employees. With many employees working non-traditional hours, and a workforce that spans urban and rural settings, the challenges of child care are pervasive and complicated. During my tenure, I was proud to help establish a child development center at our headquarters in Ankeny, Iowa. The center not only provided quality care for the children of many of our employees, but also served as a tool to attract talent and increase retention while boosting morale, performance, and overall success. These results make sense, because child care is a critical element of a successful workforce.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our American workforce and child care sector have been in turmoil. For months, child care was primarily available to essential workers only. As businesses began to reopen and employees returned to work, many parents were faced with daunting questions about where they could afford to safely send their kids. As school districts now grapple with how schools can operate, we are facing another stress on the child care system. Traditionally, child care primarily serves our youngest kids, but, as K-12 schools operate virtually or students spend reduced time in the classroom, who is caring for those kids when they’re not at school?

Most child care providers are themselves small businesses and serve as a critical workforce support for all businesses, both big and small. Last year, the business-leader group ReadyNation released a report showing that the lack of access to quality child care, just for parents of infants and toddlers, costs the economy $57 billion a year. The health pandemic has put an immense strain on an already-fragile sector, and it’s estimated that one-third to one-half of providers may not reopen at all. For those that do, the reduction in revenue due to required smaller group sizes, coupled with increased costs for additional training and new health and safety standards and equipment, present a formidable challenge.

The CARES Act in April provided relief to child care providers in the form of additional and more flexible Child Care and Development Block Grant dollars and forgivable loans to small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program. While the CARES Act was a critical relief bill, it proved insufficient to meet the unique needs of the child care industry, particularly for home-based providers, which care for the majority of our nation’s children in child care settings. Congress needs to come together to enact a child care stabilization fund. Providers need access to direct grants that will allow them to pay their staff, cover fixed costs, operate with needed safety precautions, and sustain their businesses as parents return to work and school schedules evolve.

While many sectors of our economy have been adversely affected by the pandemic and are looking for relief, every sector also relies on the availability of child care to support their workforce to ensure that our nation’s children have a safe place to thrive.

We all must work together to address this crisis. Child care is essential to our economy, and our nation’s economic recovery depends on it.

Robert J. Myers is the retired chairman and CEO of Casey’s General Stores. He is a member of the ReadyNation CEO Task Force on Early Childhood and resides in Ankeny.

Child Care Providers Experiencing 47% Increase in Operating Expenses Amid Pandemic Crisis

SHARE:

Home-based providers face 70 percent increase

A new interactive tool created by the Center for American Progress (CAP) estimates the true cost of providing child care that meets pandemic-related state guidelines. Child care is a necessity for working families, yet providers are struggling to stay open due to increased expenses and lower enrollment during the pandemic.

Using the tool, CAP found that, on average, child care providers are facing a 47 percent increase in operating costs during the pandemic, with home-based family child care providers facing a 70 percent increase. Driving this increase are personnel costs and the increased spending on sanitation supplies:

  • Personnel Costs: Personnel costs remained at the same level, or even increased, during the pandemic, as child care centers have been required to have fully dedicated staff for each classroom as well as staffing to manage the new pickup and drop-off procedures.
  • Sanitation Supplies: While child care providers have always had high sanitation standards, they have had to purchase additional personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves, thermometers for temperature monitoring, and additional hand sanitizer and disinfectant. 

The increased costs of providing child care during the pandemic are too high for providers to shoulder on their own. Many states have used funding from the CARES Act to help offset their increased costs. However, data from CAP’s calculator shows that the CARES Act only covered 30 percent of the cost of child care slots for one month. 

These findings provide more evidence of the need for greater, immediate federal investment in child care to ensure that providers can meet these additional costs, stay open, and provide safe care for the millions of children and families who rely on it.

You can find the methodology for the cost calculator from the Center for American Progress here.

Child Care Providers, Working Moms Face Big Challenges Amid COVID-19

SHARE:

In a recent MSNBC News special, Ali Vitali spoke with child care providers who are struggling to stay open and serve their communities, and with working mothers who are being forced to make difficult decisions between their careers and ensuring their children have access to safe, healthy child care.

During one interview, Lynita Law-Reid, a child care provider in Washington, DC, shared her story about the difficult decisions she faced in reopening her business and caring for children. 

“[If] they don’t go to work, many of them don’t get paid,” she told NBC News, noting that many of these parents are the heads of their households and describing the kinds of phone calls she got while closed. “Things like, ‘Miss Law. When are you guys gonna reopen? Because my baby has gone from my sister’s house for one week because I have to work, to my grandmother’s house. Next week, I’m not quite sure where I’ll put her, you know, but I have to get to work.’”

This pandemic has pushed an already struggling child care industry to the brink of collapse and data show that women are carrying the bulk of the crisis as they make up a vast majority of the child care workforce and are more likely than fathers to leave work to care for their children in the absence of care. At the beginning of the pandemic nearly a third of child care jobs were eliminated between February and April, with women accounting for 95 percent of those losses. As of July, the workforce was still 20 percent smaller than it was pre-pandemic. New data from the Bipartisan Policy Center indicates 70% of the nation’s child care facilities are either closed or operating a reduced capacity. 

While there have been bipartisan efforts in recent months to provide additional child care relief through a stabilization fund, negotiations between Congress and the White House on a final economic recovery package have stalled.