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Thank you.

The childcare shortage in Washington is critical.

It keeps parents out of the workforce, drains paychecks and puts kids without good childcare.

Behind the Learning Readiness eight ball almost from the start.

Tonight, the discussion about what steps have already been taken to improve the system and what remains to be done.

And our Steve Kitchens brings us the story of a family torn between earning a living and having childcare they trust the child care crisis in Washington.

Is the discussion next on Northwest Now.

Chances are, you know, several parents struggling with childcare.

Some can't find it, some can't find it, can't afford it.

Others can afford it but can't get a slot because of a shortage of frequently burned out providers.

The State Department of Children, Youth and Families says about 278,000 kids in Washington need childcare, but only about a third of them have access.

The state legislature recently invested almost $400 million into subsidies for families on drug court who are undocumented immigrants, have a disabled or tribal child, or have a parent that works in child care or is involved in apprenticeship programs.

But those categories probably don't include you or your adult children raising your grandkids.

And that's why childcare advocates say it's just a drop in the bucket as Northwest.

Now, Steve Kitchens tells us, a local nonprofit called Lodge says funding shortfalls create long waiting lists and that families have few choices other than to leave the workforce or leave kids unsupervised.

is a village and everybody doesn't have that.

And I'm learning that single mom, Julia Nelson, counts her blessings.

Seattle Public Schools partnership with childcare, nonprofit Large folds her two kids into before and after school programs that allow her to work full time as a nurse.

There's a mother to make sure your kids, when you drop your kids off to a place that you don't have to worry about if they're okay, if they're safe.

That's a whole different feeling.

Lunch has been around for decades, operating programs from multiple locations in and around Seattle, creating supervised safe spaces for kids.

pre-K of the 12 years old.

The nonprofit says there are multiple reasons child care costs have continued rising over the years.

But even bigger lately are challenges securing donations and grants.

They've seen a push.

Similar programs out of business.

I'm getting notifications on a weekly basis of this.

Center is closing.

The center is closing.

Know that childcare providers are just we are we are not able to continue to run as businesses.

According to the largest most recent report from the 2122 school year, the nonprofit served 573 youth.

44% of those kids come from families earning low to moderate income.

56% of their kids are students of color.

In that same year, loss helped pay nearly a quarter million dollars in tuition assistance for needy families.

And that's up 50% from the previous year.

Who knows?

For every kid enrolled in its programs, many more get left behind without structured supervision.

They're very isolated.

They're not kind of getting opportunities to be with peers in a non-school setting.

Middle class kind of gets the the nastier end of the stick the most.

You know, because we want to work.

We want to do things.

We want to, you know, go to work.

We are.

Some single parent homes, even two parent homes.

You know, the finances aren't meeting what we need, but we want to work.

We don't want to sit on state assistance.

Nelson believes logic exposes her kids and peers to lessons taught beyond the classroom.

But meeting the growing need and expense is a challenge that will keep mortgage is from benefits of trained staff, says Lodge.

There needs to be some level of intervention from a governmental local Washington state national.

If kids don't have spaces to go after school, if there's no high quality preschool programs, if you can't put your infant into a into a space so you can go back to work, then it's going to lead to a massive impact to our workforce.

In Seattle, Steve Higgins Northwest now.

An in-depth conversation about the child care crisis continues on the Steve on the Street podcast streaming now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Joining us now are the director of Child Care Aware Washington, Ryan Prieto and Dr. Sally Boyd, who specializes in early learning at Washington.

STEM First, though, Ryan, tell us a little bit about child Care Aware.

Obviously, you're involved in child care, but how exactly do you interface with with with child care here in western Washington?

Well, we're a private nonprofit based in Tacoma, but we have regional programs around the state that provide a host of services to try to strengthen the child care system.

We help families find childcare.

We provide a lot of support directly to child care providers to help them provide quality care and really these days just sustain their business.

Through all that work.

We collect a ton of data about what's happening in the child care system, and we use that data to try to work with policymakers and influencers to get better policies and better investments in place so we can actually start chipping away at this child care crisis so you don't have a very big do list, in other words.

No, no, we don't we don't have a lot going on.

So let's talk a little bit about Washington STEM.

How do you interface with the child care issue?

Yeah, So Washington STEM is a nonprofit in Washington state, really dedicated to social justice through STEM.

And so we're really working towards credential attainment for all post-secondary students.

And the way we get there is from cradle to career.

So we really believe in starting early with those investments in young children and families, including child care.

Care is a really critical system because you can't do STEM if you don't have the child care.

No, you cannot.

And that's both for children needing to learn and access STEM and also for their parents who need to go to work and, you know, pursue those family sustaining wage careers.

Just got some recent news here from the.

From a national perspective, some 70,000 70,000 child care centers are slated to close here nationwide because of the loss of the $24 billion that was set aside during COVID to support the child care industry.

They figured that somewhere around 3 million kids losing child care across the country.

Obviously, we're just 1/50 of that problem.

But Ryan, talk a little bit about what the scope of that problem is in Washington State.

We have both providers.

We have a providers problem and also an access problem.

Dive in.

So, yeah, that money is about to go away and that's very alarming to a lot of states around the country that are really reliant on federal funding to sustain their system.

We're fortunate here in Washington that our legislature was really forward thinking when they receive that money and they leveraged it to pass the Fair Start for Kids Act, which basically equated into the largest investment in a child care and early education in our state's history.

So they use that money as a down payment, but they're providing that money ongoing now so that families have more support, thousands more families that were previously not eligible for child care assistance.

Now are they reduce their co-pays.

There's also money that goes directly into child care programs to help them sustain their business and support their staff.

The problem we're seeing is that the way that the public system interfaces with child care is entirely around trying to help those furthest from opportunity just go to work.

And that's really what the Fair Start for Kids Act was.

Those families are getting more support than they've ever had, but the system needs to be updated and financed in a way where all families are able to afford child and middle income and up.

And we need to also finance a system where childcare educators themselves don't make poverty wages.

And that's that's that's one of the hard things about this, too.

I have a note here that talks about a story and the Seattle Times did the middle income families seems to be the ones that are also hit.

It's low income, too, but but hit very hard by this.

In King County, those earning between 65 and $110,000 can face a $40,000 child care bill with an infant and a preschooler.

And so I'm thinking about somebody who's, you know, making a decent living.

They're making 30 or 40 or 50 grand a year, but they want to upgrade and do something like STEM, get continuing education, try to improve themselves.

But I mean, that's just such a roadblock, 40 grand.

I mean, they can't even begin to think about even trying it.

Right.

And if they want to really make that jump from that low income wage to something higher, they might lose access to something such as their subsidy.

Right.

The state does help low income families pay for childcare.

But if you make just a little too much, you no longer qualify.

So families really make choices.

Am I going to take this raise?

Am I going to take this promotion?

Because it may even be an economic setback for me in the short term because of my increased price of childcare or the employer benefit that says we'll put we'll pay for your classes.

Right.

Which I think you have to is counts as compensation doesn't it.

Well and also that you know for families that want to access that increase and that that that benefit from their employer you know they're really put in a hard place.

So yeah it's very difficult for families and another big one to hear, you know, the long days, people trying to drive, for instance, you know, our studios in Tacoma here.

But we do a program that pretty much touches, I hope at least it does all of western Washington.

So you have people in here since no home and all over the place, making these long drives, trying to get into Seattle to try to make that living wage and turn right around and spend a good chunk of it in Pearce or Snohomish or whatever it is, if they can find a slot, if they can find affordable place, and they are really in a pickle, too, so much of that paycheck gets eaten by childcare.

Ryan What's what's your experience when you talk with families as you're trying to resource them?

Is this is this a story I made up, but is it a story that you're being told?

Well, we operate a family center where we help families look for childcare every day.

And we hear these stories every single day.

So is absolutely right.

Families are put in a position where they have to decide between the well-being of their kids and their own livelihood.

And it's an impossible choice.

And until we get to a point where we actually use public dollars to invest in the system similar to how we invest across the rest of the education system, to ensure that every family has access to affordable care, and every provider who's providing this critical early education to our kids can make just a living wage and have benefits so that they're not fleeing the industry like we're seeing right now.

Until we get to that point, we're going to continue to feel this child care crunch across all of our communities.

You talked about fleeing the industry, and either one of you can answer this question why the pandemic really apparently put a lot of people out of business, out of the child care industry, which to me seems a little counterintuitive.

It seems to me that that would have been a time where maybe they might have thrived as parents needed a little time.

They were working, they were working in their house and needed a break from the kids going crazy around them so they could work at home.

Why did the why did the pandemic end up putting people out?

Well, and a lot of parents, though, chose to keep their children at home because of the pandemic and because of those safety issues.

And many child care programs themselves needed to close for their own health and safety.

This is an industry where not everyone has access to health care.

It's a germ factory.

And and there's that which, you know, would probably be true anyway.

And so it was really it was a concerning time for a lot of people.

And about a third of the childcare spots in our state disappeared during the pandemic.

Most of them have come back.

We've made a really amazing recovery and we have an incredible early care and education field.

But there was huge fluctuation and instability both for families, but also for childcare providers who depend on that income.

And so they weren't able to sustain those wages for their staff.

Of course, we've seen a lot of great comeback, but now I think we're just seeing major turnover because of those wages.

The wages are so low.

We're going to talk a little bit about policy.

But before we get to that, I want to ask you, Ryan, for who cares?

QUESTION You know, people have kids.

It's their choice to do it.

You know why?

What if I don't have kids or I'm not raising kids?

Why do I care about this problem?

Talk a little bit about the economy, Talk a little bit about workforce.

Why does this issue touch more than just the family that has the problem?

Well, it really impacts the economy in two ways, both in the short term and the long term.

Long term in child care, more and more kids are spending their early brain development time in child care.

So for right or wrong, their access to care and the quality of that care has a huge impact on their lifetime trajectory.

And what kind of worker they end up being, what kind of earner they end up being, what kind of contributor to society they are.

So long term.

Having access to high quality early education has a huge impact on economic growth in the short term.

Well, we know from some analysis that we've done recently with entities like the Association of Washington Business is employers are losing six and a half billion dollars every year because their employees are not able to access stable, consistent childcare.

And that extrapolates out to opportunity costs that go well beyond that.

And so this is an issue that's affecting the entire economy, continues to be a drag on our recovery from the pandemic.

And that's why you see organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce really come out and strong support in recent years for more support for the child care system.

Anybody who's worked in an organization has has heard of, Oh, so-and-so called in today because they got the problem with little Johnny's, got this, their child care for their sick.

So the I mean, those that switchboard is inundated every day with those calls.

You speak with employers, obviously in Washington, STEM, they must be between traffic and child care issues, productivity.

I wouldn't even be surprised if it wasn't cut in half.

I think that's a fair estimate.

Maybe ultimately.

Yeah.

And I mean, Ryan talked about that big number, six over 6 billion loss and really indirect loss.

It's about 2 billion in productivity, absenteeism, turnover, having to retrain new people.

And and you also just think about that economic cost to families who want to improve their situation.

But even if they can afford child care, if it's not available and if it's not consistent, you know, especially working moms who often pick up the pieces when childcare is not available, they're often not able to make those advancements.

So it affects everybody.

Yeah, effect on women.

Women are said to be much harder hit by this.

And I don't want to fall into the trap of gender roles but but you brought it up too.

It is women that are kind of shouldering the the bulk of this.

Right.

Right.

And we saw during the pandemic, so many more women were sort of picking up those pieces as children had to stay home, students had to stay home.

We know, you know, whole families care for young children.

But it did fall disproportionately on women and it continues to do so.

So this is really, you know, about that, that fairness and that opportunity to participate in the workforce for women alongside men.

Here's here's one I just came up with.

Do you think that there are I'm sure there are individual examples.

Do you think there is a semi substantial number of kids out there, Ryan, who are home alone?

I mean, little kids home alone at some point during the day?

Is that happening?

I would venture, yes.

I've never seen a study that really puts that number.

I haven't either.

But I can tell you anecdotally from talking to our phone counselors who are talking to these parents, particularly single moms over the phone every day looking for care, like I said before, they have an impossible choice.

Do I stay home with my child and take care of them because I cannot take them anywhere else?

Or do I give up my career and my livelihood?

That's that's not a choice that any parent should be put in the middle of.

And unfortunately, you know, our lack of support or lack of investment in this system is really forcing probably way more families into that situation than we really want to put our minds around.

We're in the studio so people may not be able to see it.

I see the emotion in you, though.

Yeah.

Answering that, it's it's tough.

You know, I I've talked to phone counselors who are crying in front of me because of a story that they heard earlier that day trying to help homeless families access childcare so that they can just go to interviews and go to counseling and get them do the basic things that they need in order to try to get their lives back on track.

Child care impacts every facet of our lives, particularly once you do have young children.

It's it's so central to everything that you do.

And unfortunately, the options are just not there now for most families.

Well, let's talk about solutions now.

We've definitely laid out the problem and seen what it is.

And I think I think you can see the solution from outer space in terms of what will be proposed.

Does it is there pushback?

Yes, and I'll provide some.

But but the obvious solution to this is a universal child care program where there's funding for providers, where there's funding for people to participate, maybe graduated on income, some of those things.

What does Universal Child A First of all, I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Are you a proponent of it and what does it look like?

I'll start with you.

Ryan Yes, we are a proponent of universal child care, but maybe not in the way that other folks think about it.

I think when you hear that term universal, most people go to universal pre-K for us, pre-K is high quality child care for four year olds.

Really what we want to do and what we are advocating for is financing the system in a comprehensive way that protects parent choice, that provides birth to 12 programing for all families that need it, that invest directly in the people that provide care so that they can make a career out of this and and stay at their programs long term and also protect the diversity of our programing.

We don't want to lose our private small child care businesses that are really a reflection of their community and serve their communities in their home language and in their home culture.

And so, yeah, you want a hyper local network?

Yes.

Yeah, we want to exit.

We want to invest and expand.

And this incredible existing system that we have.

Because what we do know through systems like our quality rating and improvement system is that we have a high quality system for families that can get into.

Right.

We just don't have enough high quality programs out there available and families can't afford to access them.

And if we provide that, you know, that funding to bridge that gap, then we'll really see the system thrive and expand.

So what are your thoughts or what are your organization's thought about universal child care?

It seems to me that that that would put put be the rocket fuel for STEM and for education.

Absolutely.

So how do you view it?

Yeah, I mean, there are about 200,000 children in our state who need child care, who do not have it.

And so this is a really big problem that needs really big solutions.

And Washington STEM is completely behind that.

We want families to have access to the care they need.

This, as Ryan said, this is culturally aligned care.

This is affordable care.

This is care in their neighborhood.

You know, when we think about universal doesn't mean the same thing for everyone, right?

When we really think about young children with disabilities, it means having that high quality, inclusive care that meets their needs for all sorts of situations that families encounter.

And so totally agreeing that we need all these solutions, all these forms of child care to solve the problem.

Not one blanket approach, but we do need we really need to financially support this, these solutions.

Right?

That's the thing that they have in common.

They need that financial support.

So here's the big pushback here.

And I'm sure you've addressed this to school costs.

We're spending $17,000 a head on school.

We're spending billions.

The budget is exploded.

Seniors need care.

Career counseling needs to happen.

Apprenticeships need to happen.

School lunch, breakfast and dinner needs to happen now.

Child care, universal child care.

When do I get to stop paying to raise your brat?

Now I'm just channeling that.

You know, people are saying that at the television.

Absolutely.

So what's the answer to that?

Well, I think the answer would be as one.

You know, I think we have a duty to provide in our state constitution says we have a paramount duty to provide education for every child in Washington.

And we know now from pretty recent brain research that 95% of a child's brain develops before they ever enter kindergarten.

So if we really want to provide a high quality education for all our kids, we have to start early.

In addition to that, as we mentioned earlier, there's huge economic impacts.

When families are not able to access the child care, they need that so that they can go to work.

So what I'm saying is that investments in a child care and a high quality child care specifically provide a huge return on investment.

If we if we make these investments down the road, we're going to generate so much economic growth.

We're going to expand employment and we're going to see a lot of tax revenue come back into the state from more people, you know, getting their degree, moving on to college, getting higher wages, all of these things are connected to high quality early education.

All of that generates more economic activity for all of us.

I was going to say, and you know, to summarize that, because of all that, you might actually be able to make the cynical argument that it's cheaper.

Yeah, it's cheaper to do that than it is to do prison and to do drug treatment and to do, you know, snap and and and all those other.

Is there some clear thinking in that, do you think?

Absolutely.

There's, you know, kind of varies between a 1 to 3 or 1 to 7 return on investment.

But yeah, young children who have access to high quality early care and education, lower higher rates of high school graduation, reduced prison rates, you know, like all of these things are very real outcomes of that investment.

And so it's, you know, you could say, how could we afford not to do it?

You know, we want to solve all those other problems down the road.

The solution is right at the beginning, and that's where we need to put those dollars.

And to make it clear you've mentioned it, but I want to draw it out a little bit.

Some of that universal money, some of that pot isn't just for folks to put their kids in child care.

It's the providers that have to be propped up where they're not making $6 an hour.

They can pay to have the facilities, to put the toys in, to put the infrastructure in, to have a helper or two.

So when little Johnny's crying, little Mary's not over putting a hole in the television set.

I mean, it takes it takes some resources to do that.

Talk a little bit about that piece.

And I would say also to layered into that, one of the things I hear, too, is that it is such a pain to get licensed and approved to be a child care provider with good reason.

We don't want just some Yahoo doing it.

But by the same token, it really does seem to be a barrier to entry.

So could you talk about those two pieces for me?

Sure.

So, you know, before the pandemic, Burkley actually, you know, does a lot of study of the child care workforce and and the research they were putting out showed here in Washington that our child care educators ranked in the third percentile of all occupational wages, the bottom third, bottom 3%, and their turnover rate at that time is over 40% for lead teachers in child care centers.

Then the pandemic hits.

They're they're deemed essential workers.

They put themselves at risk to work through that.

And that was a very difficult experience.

Fortunately, the federal money came in that really kind of stabilized things.

But The New York Times estimates that nationwide we lost 10% of our workforce and programs have been trying to recover and bring those people back ever since.

At the same time, coming out of the pandemic, we're seeing pretty remarkable wage growth, grades, growth in a lot of sectors and these small child care businesses can't keep up with that wage growth in their own program without charging parents more money.

Right.

And we all know parents are already paying too much.

They see that doom loop.

Yes.

Of increased.

So just like parents have an impossible choice between their livelihood, what's best for their kids programs are facing this impossible choice.

Do I cost our parents in my program or do I retain my staff right.

So this has resulted in a massive staff shortage across all of our child care programs, all of our communities in the state, not just here but across the nation.

So until we get to a point where we actually prioritize investing in the people who do this work and make sure that they can make a career, receive a living wage, receive basic benefits so that they can stay in the industry long term, then we're going to continue to see this churn that just results in negative outcomes for everybody.

So, yeah, I mean, I would just to put a fine point on, the average income for a child care worker is $32,000 a year, which is just over the federal poverty line for a family of four.

So these are folks who are really dedicated and have to leave the field.

You talk about parents making hard choices.

Educators make choices.

Yeah, it's better to work at Starbucks or, you know, retail in your neighborhood.

Get the benefits at least.

And yeah, and they want to be educators there.

They have received training.

They're dedicated to young children and families, but they cannot afford to work in this industry.

And as a state, we really need to make this a space that invites the best and most highly qualified educators and keeps them there.

Last 90 seconds here.

And, you know, we can't solve the world's problems, but if people want to get involved, what what can the average person who watches this and goes, oh, wow, that really is a problem, what can they do?

Well, we were excited this last legislative session to get a proviso passed and in partnership with solar and a lot of our other partners, that is really asking the state to work directly with child care providers and parents to develop a plan for how we can finance a system that caps expenses for all families at 7% of their annual income caps, child care expenses, and extends living wages to child care educators across the state.

It's a very bold and ambitious plan, and we are going to be launching a multi-year campaign in support of the plan after we're done working through it.

So I would just encourage everyone to go to our website, Child Care Aware dot org.

And if you go to our advocacy page, you'll see some more information on the work that we're doing in addition to opportunities to sign up for our email lists and our action alerts so that people are made aware of when they can share their story about what their experience has been in child care to inform their elected officials and move the conversation forward.

Well, I'd like to say great conversation about a very important topic.

Thank you both so much for coming to Northwest now.

Thank you With an exploding state budget and vast new investments into the public schools.

Taxpayers are understandably skeptical about stepping in even further to raise the state's children.

The bottom line tax revenues rely on workers, and without child care, workers are scarce and expensive, like education.

However, more broadly available, affordable child care might ultimately prove to be more of an investment rather than just a pure expense.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web at KB Etsy dot org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest.

Now a streamable podcast of this program is available under the northwest now tab at cbc-tv dot org and on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

That is going to do it for this edition of Northwest.

Now until next Time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.