Latest news with #DayWithoutChildCare
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Hungrier kids, missed check-ups: Trump's cuts to childcare make it a lot harder to be a parent
'People don't think about those parents,' Angelique Marshall, a Washington, D.C.-based at-home childcare provider, told Salon. Most of the parents the 56-year-old serves have children with disabilities and don't have much flexibility in their schedules. 'They have to go to work to be able to take off when the children need surgery or they have a serious illness or impact on their life.' Under the Trump administration, the nation's pandemic-stressed child welfare system has taken a hit through temporary funding freezes, staffing cuts and Project 2025-aligned moves to weaken critical programs. The changes — some part of President Donald Trump's effort to slash social spending — place a strain on the government's distribution of funds and support for programs like Head Start and the Child Care and Development Fund, argued a group of U.S. senators in an April letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. By the time those changes trickle down to providers like Marshall and the families she serves, the impacts feel much more like crashing waves. That's why Marshall counted herself — and her students — among the attendees of last month's "Day Without Child Care" action in Washington, D.C. Organizers had asked that parents call off work and providers close their doors to demonstrate how critical childcare is to the nation's daily grind. But Marshall chose to keep the doors of her daycare, Ms. P's Child and Family Services, open; her parents, she said in a video call, can't afford to go without work for a day, even if it's in protest. At Washington's Freedom Plaza, a makeshift field day took place, where children enjoyed free swag, food and activities. Meanwhile, parents and providers shared stories during a rally at the plaza while organizers with SPACEs in Action, a nonprofit advocacy organization, led visits with city council members to advocate for early childhood education funds. 'Children and families with low-income wages, they won't get a quality start in education at all, and it's not because a child can't learn, it's because the underinvestment effect that they have [on] the overall potential,' Marshall said. 'We're going to see a downslide if they don't get the help and support they need because you're talking about defunding them, but you're not talking about what you're going to do with them.' The administration's effort to cut some 10,000 jobs at the Department of Health and Family Services has resulted in a roughly 37.5% reduction in staff at the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees childcare and child welfare programs. Those layoffs included staff of the Office of Child Care and Office of Head Start, a federal program that provides early childhood education, social and health services to more than 750,000 children of low-income families up to age 5 — and that was flagged for elimination in Project 2025. The reduction in force also shuttered five of the 10 ACF offices, which helped ensure that grants reached individual facilities in 22 states and five territories, and acted as liaisons between program administrators and the government. The Trump-backed reconciliation bill passed by the House on May 22 also stands to make matters worse for children and families. The bill threatens to cut more than $700 billion from Medicaid and nearly $300 billion from SNAP through 2034, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates of an earlier version of the bill. Medicaid serves more children than any other age group, while SNAP provides food assistance for more than 40 million people, including some 16 million children. Marshall said she became a childcare provider in 1995 out of need, having searched for nearly five years for someone who could care for her daughter, who she said has intellectual disabilities, while she worked for the federal government. After exhausting all of her options, she opened Ms. P's Child and Family Services in the downtown Washington area to provide services to middle- and low-income families with disabled children. Not long after she opened her doors, she realized that other parents of children with disabilities faced similar hurdles while not fully understanding how best to support their kids with the limited knowledge of disabilities available at the time. The issues she faced have become more complicated for her and the families she works with, as childcare has become less affordable. Living in Washington under Trump also means that a good portion of her clients are federal workers — or at least they used to be. Marshall said that several of the parents she serves have lost their jobs as a result of DOGE's recommended federal layoffs, which a judge blocked on May 22. Combined with threats to federal funding for public assistance, it has been too much for many of them to bear, she said. 'We're supporting the most vulnerable children in the District of Columbia and their parents who are working, and the ones who work in the federal government, who lost their job, who're now having mental health issues and breakdowns and anxiety — I mean, they're unpacking a lot of new things, and people are not realizing it,' she said. Potential funding cuts to needed federal services, alongside the stress of job loss and parenting a child with a disability, create layers of hardship that many of these parents are struggling to navigate, Marshall added. 'That's like an onion.' As her families adjust to the upheaval in their lives, Marshall said she's had to make some changes herself. She has had to lay off two members of her four-person daycare staff since January on account of Congress' 2025 budget change for D.C. Even with the pay equity fund's support, the increased costs and 80-to-100-hour work weeks associated with providing care for children with a range of disabilities also mean she's unable to pay her remaining staff more than the mandated minimum, let alone what she believes they're worth. While Marshall said she's left the door open to her former employees to return should they choose if the funding increases again, she's also had to work with parents to find temporary solutions to the problems introduced by their new normal. In some cases, she's helped some parents with resumes as they start job hunts, facilitated exchanges of leftover baby formula and clothing, and connected them with others to create a sort of weekend childcare network. 'It's all about strategizing and thinking through some things,' Marshall said. 'I mean, if we got two parents who lost their jobs and on the weekends you want to work, let's see if this parent will be able to take care of your child, since they have the same disability. It's all about community and building it.' In Washington, SPACEs in Action organizers pressed council members to vote for Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser's then-upcoming budget proposal, which promised to fully fund child care programs, including the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, a fund that supports childcare facilities in offering competitive minimum wages and healthcare for staff. Destynee Bolton, a childcare organizer for SPACEs in Action, told Salon that they also wanted to make sure that the funding included increases and adjustments to account for inflation and program educators' growth in credentials. Meanwhile, the city is facing a $1.1 billion shortfall for the 2025 fiscal year after Congress decided to revert its budget to the 2024 fiscal year allotment, following the House of Representatives' refusal to vote on a new proposal. While Bowser has invoked a law allowing the city to autonomously increase its budget, she also planned to reduce city spending by $410 million in response to the federal budget together with the threats to public assistance, these potential cuts to local dollars will only worsen the inequities in education, food security and health care access already affecting the district, Bolton said. 'That means a child loses their education, and then they lose that access to food security, in addition to Medicaid services being cut as well,' she said in a video call. 'Not being able to have that security — that means that children and families, low-, middle-income, working families, won't be able to go to doctor's appointments and get health advice that they would need.' Bowser, however, unveiled her response to the district's budget deficit on May 27, which included full funding for core childcare programs like the Child Care Subsidy Program and the pay equity fund. While her proposed budget still needs approval from the D.C. Council, the mayor also asserted that the city was still calling on Congress to restore its spending to its initial budget. Both Bolton and Marshall say that a substantial federal and local investment in early childhood education through a comprehensive approach to the workforce and revenue raisers, as well as an equitable tax system, would alleviate the difficulties that low- and middle–income families face. 'If high earners in D.C. are to contribute at the same level that low- to middle-income individuals have to contribute, that would help a lot with the programs that we have in the district,' Bolton said. 'They're able to have more viability because it's always the same thing every year — something always ends up on the chopping block.' The impact of New Mexico making childcare free for about half of the state's children is a prime example of the value of adequate investment in childcare, Bolton added. Five years after implementation, the state began to see the percentage of New Mexicans falling below the federal 'supplemental' poverty drop from 17.1% between 2013 and 2015 to just 10.9% today, according to The Guardian. Simultaneous wage increases for childcare workers in the state had a similar effect, with just 16% of childcare providers living in poverty compared to 27.4% in 2020. Marshall questioned where the funds the Trump administration has recouped from layoffs and federal funding freezes will be going — and why it couldn't go to childcare. 'I believe that the United States of America is one of the most industrialized countries, but we do not budget childcare as an essential part of the infrastructure. Why not?' she said. 'But let me tell you, you can tell a lot about the heart of the nation when you have to care for the most vulnerable children and the seniors, and when you don't care and you're just throwing things away, what are you doing?'
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wisconsin is Cutting State Funding for Child Care. Providers are Taking a Stand.
On Monday, child care providers across the country participated in the fourth annual Day Without Child Care, closing their doors and gathering to demand a better child care system with more public dollars. In Wisconsin, some providers may remain closed for quite a while longer, according to Corrine Hendrickson, owner of a family child care program in Wisconsin, and one of the organizers of a prolonged protest — dubbed 'State Without Child Care' — which intends to push back against the state legislature's cuts to essential child care funding. While direct actions — a form of activism that uses strikes or public demonstrations — by child care providers remain relatively rare in the U.S., it may be an increasingly important arrow in the quiver when fighting for the system children, parents and providers need and deserve. At issue in Wisconsin is the fate of the state's child care stabilization fund, known as Child Care Counts. Wisconsin is one of six states that doesn't fund child care, relying instead entirely on inadequate federal funding. That temporarily changed during the pandemic, when providers began receiving regular payments through Child Care Counts that allowed them to maintain operations and kept parent fees from spiking. With these pandemic funds drying up, Gov. Tony Evers proposed $442 million over two years to continue the fund, but last week the Republican-controlled joint finance committee voted to zero out the child care money. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter If this funding ends, there will be massive consequences for children, families and providers, which is one reason providers are engaging in such an unprecedented action. As the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported, 'A quarter of child care providers are more likely to close without further funding from Child Care Counts, and those that remain could be forced to raise their rates, according to a survey released April 10 by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.' This does not appear to be hyperbolic: funding reductions to Child Care Counts over the past few years have already caused providers to increase fees and to have more difficulty hiring qualified staff. Providers have seemingly had enough. Hendrickson stated in a press release that, 'While politicians negotiate over our funding and our lives, Wisconsin working families are once again left without. We've done everything we were told to do. We called. We showed up. We shared our stories. And still, lawmakers voted to cut child care from the budget. No plan. No replacement. No respect. We've had enough and we are drawing the line.' Providers across the state began protest actions in Madison on Tuesday, May 13, and according to Hendrickson, some will remain closed until the legislature guarantees they'll restore the child care funding. Single day child care protests are increasingly common. These have been seen in Australia and Ireland, and they have proven useful at garnering media attention — in fact, the 2020 Irish protest is credited with making child care a major campaign issue that year. These have also occurred regionally in the U.S.; for example, in Connecticut in 2022, providers organized a 'Morning Without Child Care,' which became a landmark event that sparked other communities to follow suit via the now national Day Without Child Care. The Wisconsin protest sets itself apart from these one-day actions though, in that the intention is sustaining activism until the state legislature meets a specific demand. Perhaps the most notable modern example of a sustained child care work stoppage comes from Germany. In 2015, German child care staff across the country went on strike for four weeks to protest their low wages, marking one of the nation's largest post-reunification labor actions and making international headlines. (The strike ended with a modest salary increase.) Similarly, in 2004, Scotland saw a strike of 5,000 child care educators that dragged on, in some localities, for more than three months. One structural element that has made direct child care actions in the U.S. less common than in other nations is the fact that there is less government involvement to begin with. Both German and Scottish child care workers are largely hired by — and have their wages set by — municipalities, and most workers belong to a labor union. In the highly privatized and fragmented American system, there is little unionization and the divisions between employers and employees can be fuzzier; in fact, in many cases it is the owners of U.S. child care programs that are protesting. However, both Connecticut and now Wisconsin have been able to tie their demands to state legislative action, with the presence or lack of state funds for child care acting as a sort of stand-in for collective bargaining. That said, the Wisconsin providers face challenges ahead. While the movement has received support from the community organizing group Community Change, the providers are not unionized. There is no standing strike fund, and for programs operating on thin margins, every day the doors are closed poses a significant loss of revenue. And of course, the participants would much rather be providing care and learning to the children in their programs. Participating in sustained closures is emotionally fraught. For early educators, it's difficult to deprive families of a vital service they rely on. For families who will feel the impact, it's expected that reactions will vary, but looking at Connecticut as an example, parents made it clear that given the choice between a temporary stoppage and permanent closure, reduced quality, or unaffordable fee hikes, they will generally stand alongside their child care providers. Child care providers in the U.S. have long advocated passionately for more support, but have rarely engaged in prolonged protests. In Wisconsin, we're about to find out whether sustained activism is a tool that can sway policymakers.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NM early childhood educators call for higher wages
Olga Grays, owner of Mrs. Olga's Daycare in Las Cruces, speaks during a "Day Without Child Care" event on May 12, 2025. (Photo by Leah Romero / Source NM) Olga Grays has cared for hundreds of children since she became certified in 2025 as a home daycare provider in Las Cruces, but her experiences have not been without difficulty. Grays owns and operates Mrs. Olga's Daycare near the west side of the city where she cares for 15 children throughout the day. She described the business to Source NM as a 'family' with her adult children working with her, as well as long-time employees. Grays joined the national 'Day Without Child Care' movement on Monday, where early childhood centers closed their doors for a full day to bring awareness to the necessity of childcare and the low wages teachers are paid to care for children. Albuquerque-based advocacy organization OLÉ New Mexico hosted three events in the state, including at Grays' home. Organizers, educators and parents spoke in Las Cruces about the need for a guaranteed $18 per hour base wage for early childhood educators; expanding the industry to recognize experience as well as education teachers have; and ensuring child care is accessible and affordable in the state. Maria Ruiz, a long-time employee of Grays, explained that she entered the early childhood education workforce soon after moving to the U.S. from Mexico and has at least 20 years of experience working with children. However, because she does not have a degree, she is stuck only making minimum wage. 'All my kids were so little and I saw them grow here,' Ruiz said in Spanish as an interpreter translated. She became a widow several years later and left the daycare to make more money to sustain her family, but returned to Olga's where she enjoyed better working conditions. She said her years of experience should qualify her for higher wages. 'We can't afford this kind of life. Everything is so expensive.' Marc Cordova, a single parent with two young children enrolled at Olga's Daycare, emphasized the flexibility a smaller daycare provides him so he can get to work early and ensure his children are cared for. Marc Cordova is pictured with his youngest children, Evalynn Codova, 5, and Marc Cordova Jr., 3, at Mrs. Olga's Daycare in Las Cruces on May 12, 2025. (Photo by Leah Romero / Source NM) 'Mrs. Olga and her employees have always gone that extra mile for our children. Mrs. Olga has even offered to get my Evalynn ready for school and drop her off, knowing my situation of being a single father. I don't know any other daycare programs willing to help like that,' Cordova said. Grays explained to Source that not only has she looked after and taught children during the day, but she's also done emergency foster care for children who, for example, do not get picked up or who need a safe place to stay while their guardians deal with other factors. She said she took in one four-month-old boy until he was 8 years old. 'It's my passion. I feel like kids that are the most in need, who lack the resources because either both parents are addicted or they don't have that support, that those are the kids who [don't get] seen. I understand there's parents who could afford expensive daycares with better quality,' Grays said. 'I chose to get a pay cut and stay in this because I feel like that's who needs it the most. And who sees them? Nobody really. And so I make sure that I tell my employees, my kids, they have the same heart as me.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Local Childcare owner rallies for funding before traveling to Madison
EAU CLAIRE—A local childcare center closed its doors Monday to participate in the fourth annual 'Day Without Child Care' to highlight the funding needs of centers across Wisconsin and the country. Amid concerns over the consequences of the loss of Childcare Counts funding, Julia Bennker of Ms. Julia's Schoolia organized a local rally and press conference before heading out to Madison to participate in Tuesday's larger rally at the state capitol. '[The center has] been licensed for just over a year,' Bennker said. 'It started as a play group when I was in Colorado seven years ago.' Bennker said said that American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding helped her with all of her start-up costs. 'That program isn't around anymore,' she said. 'I started really lucky. I got involved in child care advocacy in a meaningful way in October. Now that I own a business, it is very clear to me what role I can play in advocacy work.' While the 'Day Without Child Care' is four years old, this year's comes less than a week after the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee voted to remove Gov. Tony Ever's proposed funding for the Child Care Counts program from the state budget. This removes about $480 million, though those at the rally were still hopeful there was time to change this. This proposal was meant to supplement the loss of federal funding for the Child Care Counts program. The funding is set to expire at the end of June, with the last payments to centers coming in July. According to a report released in March by the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, a quarter of childcare businesses in Wisconsin are at risk of closure without an extension of the Childcare Counts funding. Closures in rural areas are currently estimated to be around 35 percent. Attending the rally and press conference at Bennker's center were Senator Jeff Smith (D), Representative Jodi Emerson (D), Representative Christian Phelps (D), Chris Hambuch-Boyle of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, and Eau Claire City Council members Nate Otto and Jessica Schoen. 'We, as a society, need to treat childcare with the same respect we treat any education at all,' Smith said. 'Ninety percent of brain development occurs between birth and six-years-old. Why would we not treat that period of time in a person's life as valuable as we do the rest of their educational process to prepare them for life? And yet the average pay for someone doing that work is $13 an hour.' Smith emphasized that the Child Care Counts program is not enough, but that losing it will have detrimental effects on families in terms of access and cost. Emerson expressed similar sentiments. 'Childcare workers are the workforce of the workforce,' she said. 'Think about all the people that you work with who have kids at home. How many of them would not be able to show up at the office or [would need to] work virtually without these childcare providers.' Emerson mentioned that 60 percent of her daughter's take-home pay goes to providing childcare for just one child. 'Every place in the workforce is looking for workers right now and so this is what we can do,' Emerson said. 'We know that the childcare workers, the educators are drastically underpaid, but we can't keep on putting that on the backs of young families. Look at what young families are going through right now. Housing costs are skyrocketing. College costs are skyrocketing. They're paying off their student loans and then they're paying 60 percent of their weekly wages to a childcare provider.' In addition to several planning to drive out to Madison today, several who attended the rally were also aiming to speak at Monday night's City Council meeting where City Council members Otto and Schoen would be introducing a resolution to support the governor's $480 million funding for early childhood education. 'We want to send a message to the legislature that our community supports investment in early childhood education,' Otto said.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'We're not trying to become millionaires': New Mexico early childhood centers push for better wages
ALBUQUERQUE — Fernando Noriega says first and foremost, being an early childhood educator requires patience and love for the work. But Noriega, a teacher at Caterpillar Clubhouse Daycare in Albuquerque, says he sees what amounts to a revolving door in educators, who despite loving what they do simply cannot sustain their families on $15 per hour or lower wages. Instead, many opt for easier — yet better-paying — jobs. 'We're not trying to become millionaires,' he said, speaking in Spanish. 'We just want to cover the necessities of our families, and to keep doing what we want, what we love, which is to care for children. That's it.' At least 18 early childhood centers throughout the state temporarily closed their doors Monday as part of a national annual 'Day Without Child Care.' In New Mexico, providers and educators demanded state lawmakers and officials institute $3 per hour pay bumps, to about $18 per hour, and a more clear path for compensation for workers. Ana Castro speaks during the news conference Ana Castro calls on lawmakers and state officials to implement pay increases for early childhood workers during a news conference Monday in Albuquerque. The conference, at the Love and Care Child Development Center, was part of a national day of action calling for improvements to states' early childhood systems. 'I ask: What would our community do without our service, without our training, without our calling?' asked Ana Castro in Spanish during a Monday morning news conference outside one of the temporarily closed centers in Albuquerque. '... We deserve more.' The call comes after advocates and the Early Childhood Education and Care Department during this year's legislative session asked lawmakers for more than $150 million to implement pay raises and a wage and career ladder for workers. State and federal dollars provide significant assistance to child care providers, which are often small businesses, including setting aside $77 million for grants to fund $3 per hour pay bumps in 2022. The request for a wage and career ladder came with a $10 million price tag. The pay raises proposal was bundled into a larger $104.6 million request for a pilot program to broadly improve child care outcomes across New Mexico. Neither ask, however, made it into the state budget for fiscal year 2026. Regardless, the early childhood department Monday said it will keep working toward increasing pay for workers. 'Governor [Michelle] Lujan Grisham's administration remains deeply committed to increasing compensation and wages for early childhood professionals,' early childhood department spokesperson Julia Sclafani said in a statement. 'As we move forward, we will actively engage providers and early educators to ensure their voices are heard and reflected in the decision-making process.' Fernando pushes Eva in a toy car Fernando Noriega pushes his 3-year-old daughter, Eva, in a toy car at the Love and Care Child Development Center in Albuquerque on Monday. The two were attending a news conference as part of a national "Day Without Child Care" meant to demand better pay and supports for early childhood workers. Last year, the Legislature appropriated $5 million for each of the following three fiscal years for the early childhood department to pilot a wage and career ladder for educators working in infant and toddler classrooms with children whose families are enrolled in child care assistance. While that pilot is in place, it is 'not sufficient to roll out a full wage scale and career lattice across all early childhood program areas,' Sclafani said. Sclafani and Camille Ward, spokesperson for House Democrats, each noted the state has implemented compensation programs and other financial incentives aimed at workers who make less than $18 per hour. That includes a supplemental wage program, which can net workers as much as $2,548 over a six-month period if they have a bachelor's or master's degree in early childhood education and work 32 hours or more per week. 'State lawmakers are committed to making sure our transformational investments in early childhood education are directly serving New Mexico's kids, families, and the educators who care for them across our state,' Ward said in a statement. Advocates say they're sitting down with the early childhood department in hopes the agency can push the pay raises through administratively using money from its significant budget increase during the coming fiscal year. Between fiscal year 2025, which ends June 30, and fiscal year 2026, the early childhood department's budget grew from $784 million to $995 million, Sclafani wrote in an email. The budget increase could help the state enact wage increases for workers, Ward said. 'With this substantial funding increase, we fully expect the department to prioritize improving access to quality early childhood education and care for New Mexico's children and increasing wages for educators,' she said.
