Policy Brief
Design a Sustainable Child Care Funding Model
thread supports Alaska designing a funding model that will provide consistent funding to help rebuild the child care market, focusing on innovation, partnerships, and quality.
Background
Families are struggling to find and afford high-quality child care. Low wages and lack of benefits are causing many early childhood educators to leave the field. Child care businesses, already struggling to stay open, can’t afford to pay their staff higher wages. Families, many of whom are already paying as much for child care as they are for housing, can’t afford to be charged more for child care. The child care system is broken.
The impacts of this broken system are widespread. Parents lose out on work opportunities, businesses can’t find workers to hire, children miss out on critical developmental experiences, and communities face poor economic outlooks. The impacts of federal relief money demonstrate that investment in child care does make a difference – for parents, children, businesses, and early educators. Sustainable funding is needed if the child care sector is going to survive.
Policy in Action
LOUISIANA
2017: Louisiana created a special state treasury fund to support early childhood education.
NEBRASKA
2006: Nebraska created a public-private endowment to provide sustainable funding for early learning.
(singasongofsixpence.org)
WISCONSIN
Wisconsin established Fund 80 that supports non-K-12 programs that positively impact the community, such as child care. (squarespace.com)
KANSAS
Kansas funds early childhood programs through a trust fund that includes multiple sources of public and private funding.
NEW MEXICO
New Mexico designed a permanent fund to support early childhood initiatives.
Impact
Families child care needs are met now and in the future (higher quality of life, strong economy).
A family with two working parents and two children under five has determined that increasing child care costs have created a situation where it is no longer feasible for both of them to keep working. One parent chooses to stay home, reducing their earning potential and creating a negative economic impact on the community and individual businesses. With sustainable funding that allows for innovative solutions to our child care crisis, families like this can have an actual choice in their parenting decisions instead of being forced one way or another by high costs and limited access to child care options.
Sustainable funding will support immediate policies needed to protect child care now and allow for innovative solutions to empower child care into the future.