Talking Points for thread’s 2024 Legislative Policy Ask
As child care businesses continue to close, staff turnover remains high, and the cost of care for families grows, sustainable state funding for the child care sector in Alaska is desperately needed. That’s why thread, along with our partners at the Alaska Early Childhood Advocacy Group (AECAG) have come together to ask the Alaska Legislature for a $30.5 million dollar increase to the operating budget Child Care Benefits line item. This money will got to support child care programs, early educators, and families across Alaska. Please consider the talking points below and send a message to Senators on the Finance Committee encouraging support for an additional state investment to our struggling child care system.
Child care is critical infrastructure in Alaska and needs additional, long-term and sustainable investment in order to stabilize, strengthen and grow.
The child care sector in Alaska remains fragile and without sustained funding, will likely see continued challenges including workforce shortages and program closures. In the last four years, Alaska has seen over 20% of licensed child care programs close. This has left the sector with increased demand for quality child care to support families. Of those that are open, most are struggling with recruiting and retaining a qualified workforce. The child care workforce is paid some of the lowest wages in Alaska and many do not receive paid benefits. With a workforce shortage across the state and in most sectors, this makes competition in the child care sector even greater.
Child care is an industry that has long struggled as a business model and the last several years have made the sectors challenges worse. With an extreme workforce shortage, high costs for families and inability to maintain solvent business operations, the child care sector needs state investment. Child care costs have exceeded inflation over the last three years and is unaffordable for most families. Families are now spending on average more than 15% of their household income. For single parent families, this expense is much more. Similarly, child care businesses are struggling to make ends meet. Unable to fully staff their classrooms, programs are unable to fully enroll creating a gap in the tuition income thy rely on to meet operating expenses.
thread advocates for an additional State investment of $30.5M for the child care sector. An additional $30.5M would match what is already invested in child care and would provide consistent funding to ensure the child care sector survives and can grow to meet the needs of Alaskan families. Alaska invests very little in early childhood education and this investment would create stabilizing resources to support child care to fully recover post pandemic and create infrastructure to allow the child care sector to grow to meet family’s needs for more access to affordable and high quality child care.
Our ask: $30.5M increase to the Child Care Program Office (CCPO) Operating Budget in the Department of Health. This would ensure:
Small Businesses/Programs
$10M for payments to child care programs to support stable operations.
- Investments made to stabilize the child care sector during the pandemic worked. Investments made a difference allowing child care to remain open and supported with consistent operating resources.
- 71% of families say availability and lack of providers is the biggest barrier toward finding child care.
- Stable and consistent funding is needed to support the child care business model. Currently the business model does not work with family tuition revenue alone.
$3M for investing in high-quality child care including Learn & Grow and SEED (System for Early Education Development).
- $3M would support Learn & Grow, Alaska’s Quality Recognition and Improvement System (QRIS) to be fully implemented and accessible to all licensed and regulated early childhood education programs.
- Learn & Grow is Alaska’s framework and system for high quality care. With program quality standards building over five levels, Learn & Grow offers customized technical assistance and coaching for continuous quality improvement in early childhood education programs.
- Currently, Learn & Grow levels 1-3 are available, and this investment would allow all levels of high-quality improvement supports to be available- through level 5.
- When early childhood education programs have resources and supports to focus on high quality care and education, there are greater positive outcomes for young children’s development and learning, more engaged and informed families, higher continuity of care in programs, more supported and well-trained early educators, and more small businesses equipped with skills and resources for operating a high-quality early childhood business.
$1.5M for strengthening Child Care Licensing. This could include adding Child Care Licensing staff, supportive training, and strengthening the onramp technical assistance and supports for those interested in child care entrepreneurship.
- The Governor’s child care task force recommends strengthen Child Care Licensing supporting including training for consistency and additional support.
- Child Care Licensing is important to ensure all child care is provided safely and healthy. Reducing the barriers for licensing, including ensuring adequate staffing, staff training are important to ensure those interested in starting child care are well supported.
- The Governor’s child care task force recommends technical assistance provided to ensure more child care start-ups are successful and have the resources needed to complete the steps necessary.
$1M for child care business recruitment including small business start-up supports, specialized training for new early educators and new child care administrators.
- Incentives are needed to expand the child care sector. This includes recruitment, small start-up grants and customized supports to new child care businesses.
- Specialized training will be offered for new early educators and new administrators setting them up for greater success entering and staying in the child care field.
Providers/Workforce: $8M
$7M would provide the System for Early Education Development (SEED) with resources to continue an annual early educator wage stipend, ROOTS (Retaining Our Outstanding Teachers Stipends).
- Early educators are paid on average $29,500/year or $ 14 /hour, less than a gas station attendant.
- Most early educators do not receive paid benefits from their employer
- Low wages create high competition for recruiting and retaining staff
- Low wages create an industry with high turnover (near 50%), which leads to disruptions in care and lower quality program experiences for young children and their families.
- Wage stipends are found to incentivize and provide positive reinforcement for early educators
- Wage stipends are found to help early educators cover basic expenses like transportation to get to work.
- Wage stipends are found to help early educators invest in their health including going to the doctor or dentist when typically they are unable to afford it.
- Consistent and reliable wage stipends are important to retain and support this critical sector.
$750K would allow thread to expand teacher wellness supports including offering access to tele-health and tele-mental health services.
- Child care is an intensive job demanding physical movement, emotional balance and mental focus.
- Focus on wellness is important for early educators as they are stressed, burned out and overall an exhausted workforce.
- Providing benefits and wellness supports demonstrate the importance of self care and wellness to ensure our educators are showing up healthy and ready for the care and education of our youngest children.
$250K for continuation of low-cost access to professional development training and supports, including small business/management resources, through thread.
- The Governor’s child care task force recommends continued investment in workforce supports that have proven successful and reported as helpful by early educators. This includes continuing investments in low-cost access to professional development training and small business resources.
- Early educators can build their skills, knowledge and early childhood competencies through affordable professional development training.
- Early educators will have access to resources developed by the Alaska Small Business Development Center specifically designed to support child care business development, management and HR skills.
Alaskan Families
$7M for increasing access to Child Care Assistance for eligible families. This could include free child care assistance for early educators, increased eligibility for families, waved copays or tiered assistance payments based on program quality or type of care.
- Child care is expensive for every family. It is even more so, for low/middle income families.
- On average, families spend 15%-35% of their income on child care.
- More access to affordable care and education options are needed. Currently fewer than 1,700 families utilize the Child Care Assistance program.
- 60% of families say that cost is their biggest barrier to finding child care.
- More than 25,000 Alaskan adults could enter the workforce or take on more hours if they had access to affordable and quality child care.
- Child care assistance is not accessible/affordable for most families. Expanding the eligibility of families would allow more to access the benefit and ensure their children can access quality child care.
- Eliminating the copay requirements for families demonstrated success in family support during the pandemic. thread recommends increasing the Child Care Assistance investment to allow for covering co-payments for participating families.
- The Governor’s child care task force recommends free child care for early educators as a way to recruit and retain more early educators. thread supports this expansion of child care assistance eligibility and access.
- Many states offer tiered child care assistance benefits. This would allow for more lower income families to have more access to high quality care. Additionally, tiered reimbursement can provide weighted supports for more expensive care, such as infant/toddler care, to ensure programs are paid closer to the true cost of care provided.
(Note: Current investment in child care: $30,508,565. This includes: $27,241,144 federal + $3,267,421 SOA required maintenance of effort)