We have a great panel assembled to talk about child care, workforce issues.

And joining us in our Lexington studios are Mike Hammonds, vice president of Advocacy and Learning Grove and Northern Kentucky.

Sarah Vanover policy and research director at the Kentucky Youth Advocates.

And Kate Shanks, senior vice president of public affairs with the Kentucky Chamber.

Good to have you all.

Thank you for being here.

Mr. Hammonds, what are we not talking about that we should be when it comes to this issue?

Well, there are a couple of things.

One, you know, the states, an employer, the directly and indirectly, in fact, part of the a good part of the surplus that it has now in place are as a result of higher wages set that are being paid across the state.

I think the state is going to have to be a little quicker to adjust wages that they're responsible for, whether it be state employees or teachers or childcare workers.

You know, the state contracts with childcare providers to to provide childcare.

And if an important part of that is not working because of lack of enough revenue, enough funds, and they're going to have to increase those funds so that we can pay higher wages.

We have implemented higher wages.

And my organization Learning Growth, we have ten centers on both sides of a river in northern Kentucky, in Cincinnati, and 12 after school program.

We have implemented the higher wages and higher benefits.

We've implemented the the free childcare for employers and we were really working with the state resources to provide education for our all of our teachers.

It's still not enough.

We're still operating at about a 20% deficit and our teaching positions because the wage pressure from DHL and Amazon retail banks, they're all paying more.

So but you're doing more than most and you're still in the margins.

Yeah, we sure are.

So, you know, I'd say a couple of things that we're going to have to do.

We can't pass all these costs on to parents, although some of that's beginning to happen.

And we have raised our rates.

So just anticipation of of loss of some of these federal funds that have been so important to our being able to stay in business.

But you can't pass all those costs on.

So we're going to have to look for other resources that employer provided child care.

That's that's one option the feds are going to have to put more.

And we're calling on the General Assembly to increase the reimbursement for not only the Child Care Assistance program, reimbursement for the providers in that program, but also for the providers across the board so we can build that infrastructure back up because that's critical to our economy.

With the expiration of the ARPA funds, the American Rescue Plan Act funds that came to help subsidize child care providers and centers.

I mean, is that impacting you?

Well, it is, yes.

And I think part of it is because we're not we're not going to be able to raise our salaries again as we should, to try to try to frankly, retain the teachers that we have.

So and as I said, we've already begun to raise rates modestly for parent fees.

We we still have a number of classrooms that aren't open because we don't have the teachers and we don't have the teachers support so that a teacher can go on break.

It's challenge.

Directors are in the classroom day in and day out, so we need to infuse more dollars there.

You know, there's efforts in Congress to do that.

In Congress has typically been the largest funder for child care across the states and states put in a more modest amount.

We're calling on Kentucky's General Assembly, though, to substantially increase their state funding so that we can stabilize the program.

Again, the the return on investment will show up and the number of people that are working and filling those jobs that the state's done such a good job in drawing here.

All right.

What's the magic number?

What's the appropriation you think would be adequate?

Well, it's going to be less than 100 million in the biennium budget.

So that's to continue the child care for teachers.

That's to continue the higher eligibility rate for working families.

That's to increase the higher reimbursement and a number of other smaller ticket items that frankly are critical, critically important to childcare providers.

So we're also, frankly, asking Congress for significant increase.

And there's been bipartisan support there.

And the US Chamber has been supportive of a significant increase in funding for child care.

Again, it's finally being seen for what it is a critical work support.

And it's not a D issue, it's an r r issue, right?

It's not partizan or political in any way.

I when you look at it as a workforce and a critical part of the economy, no, if you look at it as a human resource, human service, it it doesn't have the same support, but as a workforce issue, I think it does have broad bipartisan support.

So the reframing of this in some ways could help.

Dr. Vanover Right.

Definitely.

I mean, when we look at what parents need in order to be a productive part of the workforce, child care is at the top of the list.

K went to every region of the state this summer and asked families and local leaders what are the most pressing, pressing issues in your community?

And the things that we heard over and over again were child care and housing.

Families need additional supports in order to be in the workforce.

And if if they don't have that, then they're going to leave the workforce, like the Chamber said, that it's an obstacle.

So if employers want to have the best look at employees, have the best chance to bring them in, then they're going to have to think about what those employees need to to be a part of that.

And we have some employers in the state that have been doing that a long time.

They have very family friendly policies.

But for many years, people viewed childcare as a woman's issue or as a family's issue.

But Betsy Stevenson, the economist, says it's not it's a it's an economic issue.

And when everybody has that unified opinion, then I think anybody who's interested in the state's economy, in their local economy, then they have a new perspective on it.

Well, thank you, Dr. Vanover, Mr. Hammonds and Mr. Jenks, we appreciate you.

Thank you, Renee.

Thank you.