Name: How The COVID-19 Relief Bill Could Save The Child Care Industry
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How The COVID-19 Relief Bill Could Save The Child Care Industry

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×U.S. EditionPart of HuffPost Politics. ©2022 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved.×AdvertisementLate last Friday, the House of Representatives offered a lifeline as part of the COVID-19 relief bill: $39 billion in federal funds distributed through block grants to states, an unprecedented number.AdvertisementThat’s more than 10 times the amount set aside for child care in the CARES Act in the spring and follows $10 billion in aid that passed right at the end of 2020. The money would be crucial for centers struggling to keep their doors open, advocates and lawmakers said. The amount in the bill is also right in line with a that passed the House with bipartisan support last year but never made it to the Senate. “Though essential to working parents, child care centers operate on a shoestring. The workers responsible for educating little children earn poverty wages. The median annual salary for a child care worker is just $11.65 an hour.”AdvertisementThe rescue would send a signal that child care matters — a sign of a growing understanding that without this industry and these workers, parents of young children can’t go to work. Advocates have been banging the drum on this for years, but the pandemic drove it home as millions of women were forced out of work due to school and child care closures. AdvertisementThe child care sector in the U.S. is kind of a hodgepodge industry made up primarily of small businesses with a few larger operators like Bright Horizons tossed in. The data on the industry is spotty, but experts point to this to estimate that there are around 130,000 centers and around 433,000 in-home providers (many unlicensed) where parents bring their children to someone’s house.“It’s hard to track. You could be in someone’s home, in a bigger center, on a military base,” said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, the director of child care and early education at the Center for Law and Social Policy.About 12 million children rely on the system, or about half of all kids under the age of 5, . Certainly, many more families would turn to child care if it were more affordable or available. There are shortages around the country.And while there’s been a big conversation lately about reopening public schools, there’s been far less attention paid to the child care sector, partly because many of these centers were open throughout the crisis.“The expectations for this workforce have always been very high, for very low reward and very little support.”- Caitlin McLean, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC BerkeleyAdvertisement“We knew all along that the work we were doing was essential,” said Davina Boldin-Woods, director of a preschool in Burlington, North Carolina, that didn’t shut its doors over the past year.Yet that’s not how Boldin-Woods or any of the primarily Black and brown women who work at the center have been treated, she said. Teachers at her child care center make between $13.50 and $18 an hour, with some working multiple jobs and receiving government assistance. Boldin-Woods earns around $45,000 a year for running the whole place, far less than the median U.S. wage or what an elementary school principal would earn.Yet even for that low pay, Boldin-Woods says her employees kept showing up: “Putting themselves at risk in a pandemic that is killing us at disproportionate rates,” she said. “No one asked us how we felt about this. No one asked us our thoughts and feelings on what we needed to remain safe during this pandemic.”Though essential to working parents, child care centers operate on a shoestring. The workers responsible for educating little children earn poverty wages. The median annual salary for a child care worker is just $11.65 an hour in the United States, according to a released last week from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. Kindergarten teachers make $32.80 an hour.Advertisement“The expectations for this workforce have always been very high, for very low reward and very little support,” said Caitlin McLean, a senior research specialist at the center and a co-author of the report. Only 2% of all U.S. occupations pay lower wages than in the child care industry, which is made up of primarily female workers of color.The pandemic only exacerbated these preexisting conditions. Once the shutdowns began in March, parents with means or the ability to work from home pulled their kids out of day care centers. That meant less money coming in while the cost of doing business exploded. Many centers shut their doors.Last December, Marcia St. Hilaire-Finne, who runs a child care center in Washington, D.C., wondered how much longer she could stay in business, operating at loss with fewer kids and less money coming in.“We need a lot of help,” she told HuffPost at the time.The aid from the CARES Act has helped many centers muddle through, but that’s run out. The money Congress set aside in December is also helping at the moment, but experts say it won’t last the year.By February, Hilaire-Finne had gotten enough help; with a mix of grants, funding from Washington, D.C., and through a program from the new Biden administration, she’s been able to get money for retaining her employees. Advertisement“I’m good,” she said. For now, anyway. “We need continuing support.”AdvertisementSuggest a correction

×U.S. EditionPart of HuffPost Politics. ©2022 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved.×AdvertisementLate last Friday, the House of Representatives offered a lifeline as part of the COVID-19 relief bill: $39 billion in federal funds distributed through block grants to states, an unprecedented number.AdvertisementThat’s more than 10 times the amount set aside for child care in the CARES Act in the spring and follows $10 billion in aid that passed right at the end of 2020. The money would be crucial for centers struggling to keep their doors open, advocates and lawmakers said. The amount in the...

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How The COVID-19 Relief Bill Could Save The Child Care Industry

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