was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .Ìę

Parents, you’re not imagining it: The cost of child care is rising. By a lot.

The average annual cost of care in 2024 was $13,128, a 29 percent increase since 2020 — outpacing even inflation. That’s according to an from Child Care Aware, a national child care advocacy group that calculates average prices every year.

The rapid rise of child care costs is swallowing larger portions of families’ income. On average, a married couple earning the median annual income in their state is draining about 10 percent of their earnings on child care. A single parent spends 35 percent of their income on child care.

In some states, it’s a lot worse. For a married couple with an infant in center-based care, by share of median income are Hawaii (17.9 percent), California (16.3 percent), Maryland (15.8 percent), Oregon (15.5 percent) and Nebraska (15.1 percent). In those states, single parents earning the median income are paying about half their earnings on child care.

That means child care costs are rivaling home costs as the top line item in most family budgets. In 45 states and Washington, D.C., child care for two kids costs more than a mortgage. In 49 states and D.C., child care for two surpasses what families pay in rent.

For years, the list of states where parents are likely to pay more for an infant’s care than higher education has been growing. According to Child Care Aware, the cost of center-based infant care exceeds the cost of in-state college tuition in 41 states now. The organization uses three methodologies to arrive at its average, looking at price, supply of child care providers and the number of child care spots, pooling data from 49 states and Washington, D.C., to arrive at its annual price analysis.

“Child care prices are a sizable part of family budgets — they are by no means under control for the majority of families,” said Anne Hedgepeth, chief of policy and advocacy at Child Care Aware. “If we are going to talk about family budgets, and if we want to talk about things you could solve for family budgets: Make a dent in child care prices. You would really bring down one of those highest costs or expenses for a family.”

Child care remains so expensive because of staff needs and federal investment. To preserve the safety of babies and toddlers, centers are required by law to have more teachers in the classroom. The federal is one person for every three to four infants and young toddlers, and one person for every seven when you get up to 3-year-olds, but each state sets its own ratio. That’s different from a kindergarten classroom, where classes may have one teacher for every 20 kids, for instance. The costs of employing that many people are also not offset by substantial federal, state and local investment like public education is subsidized. So parents are left footing the bill, and centers can only pay their teachers about minimum wage to keep costs as low as possible. Profit margins at centers are only

For years, the United States has toyed with the idea of investing more broadly in child care. Currently, the federal government only covers some costs for very low-income families — and even then only about are able to access subsidized care. But broader proposals that go as far as introducing a “universal” child care system have repeatedly been .

After the pandemic, when , the United States got as close as it ever has to investing more broadly in the industry. Through September 2023, states received a historic investment of $24 billion in stabilization grants that helped keep centers open and raise wages for teachers at .

But after those funds ran out, Congress did not allocate any additional resources.

Among families, there is broad support for more federal and state investment in child care, regardless of political party. In a nationally representative Child Care Aware , 82 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents and 68 percent of Republicans said they want their elected officials to increase funding for child care and early learning.

That support is also resounding among men. Another nationally representative found that 90 percent of men, including 87 percent of Republicans, are in favor of ensuring families have access to affordable care.

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Republicans have grown somewhat more vocal in their support of child care investments. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump said he supported child care but didn’t offer any policy proposals for improving affordability or access. Former President Joe Biden proposed a $400 million child care package that included universal preschool, but it .

At the moment, the closest the Trump administration could come to a child care investment is an update to the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, a tax break for families on their child care expenses that could be in the final version of Currently, most families only get an average tax break of about (the maximum parents can claim for one child is $1,050), which doesn’t do much to offset child care costs that easily run into the thousands. A bipartisan effort in the Senate to update the tax credit could get added into the package. (The House version that passed in May did not include it). The Senate’s Child Care Availability and Affordability Act would increase the maximum amount parents can get back in their taxes through the credit to .

Julie Kashen, a senior fellow and director for women’s economic justice at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said improving the tax credit is a good policy move for the families that benefit from it, but ultimately it doesn’t solve the problems facing the child care industry as a whole.

“It’s one piece of a much larger puzzle,” Kashen said. “If you can’t afford to lay out the money up front to pay for child care, then it doesn’t help you that you have a refundable tax credit.”

Advocates worry child care has so far been a footnote in this administration. In April, a leaked version of Trump’s budget called for , the federally-funded program that provides early learning and other services to half a million very low-income preschoolers ages 3 to 5. After from child care providers and parents across the country, the proposal was ultimately withdrawn.

“It tells us a little bit of what it looks like when policy makers — in particular, members of Congress and members of the administration — hear about child care from the constituents, and what they heard was how much of a non-starter it is to eliminate these core early learning services in every district across the country,” said Hedgepeth of Child Care Aware.

Still, it will likely be a battle to keep the existing child care safety net — a battle increasingly at odds with the majority of American parents who are looking for relief on child care costs.

Because the reality is simple, Hedgepeth said:  “This is not what people are looking for.”

The Trump administration has failed to send out an estimated hundreds of millions in discretionary funding to state child care agencies that should have gone out weeks ago, five sources in the federal government and advocacy organizations confirmed.

The (CCDBG), which states mostly use to to low-income families, were anticipated to arrive around April 1, the start of the federal fiscal year’s third quarter.

“The money hasn’t gone out, and that is extremely unusual,” said Ruth Friedman, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation who served as director of the Office of Child Care at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) under the Biden administration. 

Emily Adams, policy associate for child care & early childhood programs at the American Public Human Services Association, concurs. Adams works directly with state child care agency directors across the country, and one told her they were notified by their regional child care office that ACF’s Office of Grants Management said the funding has not yet been approved for awards and there was no timeframe for when the grants might be approved.

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson at the Department of Health & Human Services, said, “ACF is working to award third quarter discretionary CCDF funding as soon as possible.”

The CCDBG is part of a of federal child care funding. The largest source comes from the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), which has two components: mandatory payments made through the Child Care Entitlement to States, which states have already received, and the much larger pot of discretionary CCDBG money, which they haven’t. Congress determines the level of CCDBG spending annually and has allotted $8.75 billion to states for the 2025 fiscal year that ends in September. 

It usually takes two weeks for these block grants to flow to states after Congress passes a continuing resolution funding the government, which it on March 14. Officials in the Biden administration sent out the first and second quarter funding to state child care agencies on a normal schedule. But the third quarter installment hasn’t gone out under the Trump administration, Friedman, Adams and other sources confirmed.

Unlike Head Start programs, which if their funding is delayed, states typically have more cushion for child care, so they may not yet have to make hard choices. That’s in part due to the fact that they have a longer time to spend the money, so some may have past funding to keep using. Also, some states put more of their own money into the mix than is required by federal rules, creating even more runway in those places.

“Most states have about a month of funds that they can use before they’re in big trouble,” Adams notes.

But if the money doesn’t arrive soon, “It is eventually going to cause a problem for states,” Friedman explains. The vast majority of the funding covers subsidies that help low-income families pay for child care; if that money dries up, states will have to stop paying for those subsidies.

If that happens across all states, the parents of the children who receive them could be left to either cover the full cost themselves or pull their children out of child care. Providers, in turn, could face a wave of unpaid bills and disenrollments. “It would be extraordinarily destabilizing,” Friedman said. 

It’s unclear if the funding is delayed due to personnel challenges or is being held back for more substantive reasons. By April, the Trump administration had fired the workforce at ACF. Trump has threatened to eliminate Head Start (although officials recently walked that back) and the so-called “skinny” budget he released on May 2 eliminate that help states improve early childhood education and the , which helps low-income parents afford child care while going to college.

The Trump administration has withheld other federal funding that Congress appropriated and he legally has to disburse. In April, Congressional Democrats released that found at least $430 billion had yet to go out the door to a wide variety of programs, from Head Start to USAID. But the CCDBG funding wasn’t included in that sum.

On top of the delayed block grants, state child care agencies have also been subjected to Elon Musk’s DOGE effort dubbed “Defend the Spend” without any warning and little explanation. Now, when an agency wants to draw down federal funds from the payment system — normally a “routine and regular process,” Friedman said, and one in which they’re typically reimbursed for dollars they already spent — they receive an email directing them to take a new step in which they have to justify why they need the money. 

In an email received by a state agency director on April 17 and shared with Adams, the sender wrote, “We are requesting additional clarification regarding this payment. An ideal payment justification includes a description of the award and what you plan to do with the funds.” It then directs the recipient to click on a long URL to do so. The email ends with simply, “God Bless America.” Adams noted that agency directors told her the emails “looked spammy and they don’t come from a known email address.”

Some states have had to justify their spending as many as three times before getting it. The process has now led to delays. “What they typically would get in two to four business days is taking five to 10 business days,” Adams said.

An ACF spokesperson said in a response to a request for comment, “While some states have been asked for additional clarification prior to their CCDF drawdowns being approved, no states have been denied the ability to draw down CCDF funds as the result of the Defend the Spend review. In addition, the CCDF program is being phased out of the Defend the Spend review, so CCDF grant recipients will no longer be asked for a justification to draw down CCDF funds.”

In Ohio, the delay caused a scary hiccup in April, said Tamara Lunan, director of care economy organizing at the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. The week of April 14, providers who typically receive subsidy payments from the state on Tuesdays didn’t receive anything. Then those with Saturday payments didn’t get them either. Although the state technically has a 10-day window to send payments out, “usually the only thing that throws it off is if there was some type of error in the billing or a holiday,” Lunan explained. 

When Lunan, who was hearing directly from providers about the missing payments, asked the Ohio Department of Children and Youth (DCY) what happened, she said she was told “that they got DOGE’d,” and were made to give an extra explanation for the money. But in a later meeting, the state changed its tune slightly: According to meeting notes, the department said it was due to a “system glitch at the federal level.”

The payments went out on April 22, which falls within the 10-day window, but some providers had to wait a week longer than usual to get paid. It took a quick toll: Some had to lay off staff because they couldn’t make payroll, while others paid staff late, Lunan said.

Jodi Norton, DCY’s chief communications officer, noted that the department hasn’t strayed outside the allotted time frame, including the week of April 14. “DCY continues to work with federal partners when additional justification is needed and thus far has been successful in maintaining the 10-day window for payments,” she said.

Lunan said the payments have now resumed as normal, but if more delays crop up in the future it could leave some providers to not just lose staff but go out of business entirely. “Providers are really scared about this,” she added.

States already go through a rigorous process to justify their spending long before they draw down money. Every three years they have to submit a lengthy state plan to the federal government, as required by law, that describes their child care programs and how they will follow relevant rules. Those plans, which are publicly available, are then carefully reviewed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; it’s only after they’re approved that states can get any money. 

After that, states are monitored to make sure they are following federal rules, and they must track their spending and report it back to the agency to make sure they follow all the requirements. They also undergo annual financial audits. “There are many pieces put in place by Congress to ensure that federal funds are being spent as intended and as required,” Friedman said. It is “already quite extensive.”

The new “Defend the Spend” approach “is not an efficient process for ensuring good stewardship of federal funds,” she added. “This new process does not create new information, but it does create burden and uncertainty for state agencies.” 

The partnership, initiated by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and The Kresge Foundation, and now funded by seven other philanthropic organizations, has raised $9.6 million to date. The group was spurred by a clause in the  of 2022, which is intended to expand manufacturing in the U.S. (CHIPS stands for “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors.”)  

The bill requires manufacturers applying for over $150 million in CHIPS funding to submit plans to provide child care for both facility and construction workers. Jonathan Hui, a senior program officer at The Kresge Foundation, credits designers of the package for “capturing the link between infrastructure and child care that is often underlooked.” 

Katie Beckmann, the national policy director at the Packard Foundation, agrees that this intersection is key. “This isn’t only about expansion and creation of manufacturing in parts of the country that have often been left behind,” Beckmann says. “Business begets business, which further drives the need for quality, affordable child care in these communities. Ultimately, we hope this work will strengthen our argument for additional public dollars to be put into child care. It also has the potential to enlist small and big businesses as allies.”

The philanthropic partnership was announced in June 2024 at the inaugural National Child Care Innovation Summit, an event centered on the critical role of child care for working parents. During the summit, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said, “Child care is not only a social issue or a ‘women’s issue.’ It is also an economic issue. In fact, I’d argue it’s one of the most critical economic issues affecting families, businesses and communities today. The lack of investment in our care infrastructure is costing us dearly. There’s a generation of Americans in their prime working years caught between their jobs and caring for children or elderly relatives.”

The partnership aims to increase child care supply and improve the quality of care and is beginning with pilots in Arizona, Ohio, Michigan and New Hampshire. Child care is especially hard to find in these four states, and employees showing up to build or operate the new facilities will need help locating and paying for safe and supportive child care settings so that their children can thrive while they work.

The foundations are developing their plans in collaboration with leaders and advocates in each state. “We’re coming together and co-creating child care solutions that expand child care supply and enhance quality,” says Beckmann, who adds that designing solutions that meet the needs of the whole community takes time and patience.

“We need a national strategy for early childhood,” Hui argues, “in the sense that there needs to be a national commitment to investing in early childhood, but how that shows up in community is deeply contextual.” 

Existing infrastructure and relationships in each state will help the partnership to identify opportunities and connect the dots among: 

• Businesses: This includes the manufacturer, child care providers and other community businesses that play a role in the local economy. 
• Governments: This includes state and local departments and elected officials who can provide guidance on the regulatory environment in which new child care programs will arise. 
• Advocates: This includes groups representing the interests of families and child care providers who can share insights that can inform investments and decisions.
• Funding Leaders: This includes, most notably, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), which are uniquely suited to blend and grade federal and state funding streams to get the maximum benefit out of each public and private investment.

Learning from Past Partnerships

The Investing in America Child Care Partnership intends to draw lessons from existing and emerging solutions that are already underway. For example, while not part of the partnership, a new facility on Detroit’s east side embodies the type of project that CDFIs can help usher into existence. The 15,000-square-foot McClellan Early Childhood Center features eight classrooms providing 96 new seats for early learners. This project, which took five years to implement and cost $8.75 million, offers the stakeholders involved in the partnership a road map for realizing plans in partnership with community.

“The lessons learned from building McClellan are going to be critical to how we think about blending and braiding facilities funding,” says Hui.

Kirby Burkholder, president of core business solutions at , the CDFI that facilitated the , explains that CDFIs have a unique value for the ecosystem: “Manufacturers use language like ‘employee attraction, employee retention, employee satisfaction.’ We use language like ‘transformational community development, aligning programmatic and facilities quality.’ But we’re talking about the same thing. We’re the translators.” 

Burkholder says CDFIs like IFF (which just wrapped up  $59 million of American Rescue Plan money through the state of Michigan that went out to 1,005 providers),   and the  organize and activate capital. “That’s how government money reaches Main Street,” he explains. “We’re CDFIs that have evolved a whole infrastructure, with a community and data insights team that does the needs analysis that informs decision making.” 

Taking time to listen and collaborate does not detract from the urgency of the crisis that the partnership is tackling. “Across the country,” Hui notes, “working families are worrying every day about the trade off between providing high-quality care for their children and being able to enter or reenter the workforce or stay in the workforce.” 

Successful partnerships, he maintains, will generate not just an increased supply of quality child care in the communities they are targeting but also “longstanding systems solutions that really change how our country thinks about child care.”

At a time when government funding of all kinds —  â€” could be under scrutiny, philanthropic support can make a difference in making sure investments work on the local level. 

Beckmann notes an additional benefit of success: “Demonstrating that government can work for its people. This is an important moment to learn about what works and doesn’t work in creating a child care ecosystem that helps children and families thrive.” 

One of the philanthropic organizations that helps fund the Investing in America Child Care Partnership is Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. That foundation also provides financial support to Âé¶čŸ«Æ·.

As someone who has been  of large, investor-backed, for-profit child care chains, KinderCare’s move has me pondering a few questions: why did they go public, what can we learn from their IPO-related business disclosures, and what does this all mean for the future of large, for-profit child care chains and the child care system writ large? 

Why An IPO?

While uncovering the ins and outs of business decisions always requires a degree of speculation, going public wasn’t a smooth path for KinderCare or its former owner, the Swiss private equity firm Partners Group, which still maintains a controlling share in KinderCare (more on that in a minute). In 2021, KinderCare first considered, , an IPO for undisclosed reasons. Then, in the summer of 2023, it  that Partners Group was seeking bids to sell 50% of KinderCare to another investment firm. Clearly, they were unsuccessful.

It’s not just the IPO that’s important to look at, there’s another factor at play: debt. As Brooke DiPalma  in Yahoo Finance, “The company plans to use the [IPO] proceeds to pay back debt. As of June 29, the company had $1.5 billion in outstanding debt, plus $104.2 million available for borrowing under its credit facilities and outstanding letters of credit of $55.8 million.” DiPalma added that KinderCare CEO Paul Thompson said, “Most of [the IPO proceeds are] going to paying down debt,” and that was a key interest in going public. 

Even after the IPO, S&P Global’s bond ratings  KinderCare a B+, which is considered below “investment grade,” although thanks to the debt paydown, it represents an improvement over . This suggests that the company was overstretching itself financially, and arguably introducing undue risk into the nation’s child care system.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen high debt crop up in child care. Although the U.S. has been spared to date, there have been multiple instances of large, debt-riddled child care chains collapsing, such as Australia’s  and the Netherlands’ , before wiggling their way out of trouble with support from government or financial institutions. KinderCare itself became so indebted in the late 1980s and early ‘90s that . According to DiPalma’s coverage in Yahoo Finance, David Trainer, CEO of the investment research firm New Constructs, expressed skepticism about KinderCare, calling it “unprofitable and very expensive stock,” and adding that, “It looks like a private equity bailout.” 

What Can We Learn From IPO-related Business Disclosures?

This is where the fact that Partners Group retains a controlling interest comes in. KinderCare’s owners appear less dedicated to creating a sustainable business model as they are to maximizing profit. In a post-IPO analysis, S&P Global notes: “We believe the company’s highly leveraged financial risk profile points to corporate decision-making that prioritizes the interests of controlling owners. This also reflects private equity sponsors’ generally finite holding periods and focus on maximizing shareholder returns.”

I am frequently asked how a child care company could possibly make enough money, given the sectors’ difficult economics, to justify interest from investors seeking high returns. One helpful facet of a company IPO is that they are required to submit numerous legal documents, including a comprehensive detailing of company dealings known as a prospectus. The following three revelations from KinderCare’s  stood out to me:

1. KinderCare is willing to close centers because they are financially underperforming. In the prospectus, under a heading called “Competitive Strengths,” the document states: “We believe the quality of our portfolio is also differentiated from our peers due to prior center optimization efforts, a successful acquisition track record, consistent processes and investments, and a suburban-focused center network. From 2012 to 2017, we strategically closed 380 underperforming centers.” These closures, the prospectus explains, allowed KinderCare to increase revenue and enrollment at their remaining centers. 
2. KinderCare is increasingly focused on affluent families rather than serving families with a broad range of income levels.KinderCare has long stood out as one of the few large chains that  on child care subsidy. Yet in the prospectus, the company writes of, â€œStrong tailwinds supporting demand for premium ECE offerings,” due to the growing number of U.S. households with income of at least $140,000. The prospectus also notes that targeted acquisitions of other chains in recent years have given KinderCare “access to the premium ECE market — resulting in a quality portfolio with density in suburban communities.” Given KinderCare’s size and growth trajectory, this suggests a future in which there are more child care haves and have-nots.
3. KinderCare benefits when the broader child care system fails. According to the prospectus, the company seeks to “Increase same-center revenues through improved occupancy and consistent price increases across our portfolio offerings.” It says: “We employ a multipronged strategy to increase same-center revenues through enrollment and tuition rate increases 
 As a scaled provider, we believe we are well positioned to benefit from the combined impacts of growing ECE demand and potential supply reductions driven by center closures as stimulus funding sunsets.” In essence, KinderCare is saying that they have an interest in a child care system characterized by scarcity and the ability to charge high fees. 

What Does This Mean for the Future of Large, For-Profit Child Care Companies and the Child Care System Writ Large?

As I and  of investor involvement in child care have pointed out, the question here isn’t whether it’s inherently a problem for a company to try to make money or to try to identify customers who can pay a premium. Families making over $140,000 need and deserve good child care options, too. The question is whether profit-maximizing investment is , and what a growing investor trend means for efforts to create a universally affordable, accessible and high-quality system with well-compensated educators. 

Consider again that KinderCare closed nearly 400 centers(!) due to the fact they were not bringing in enough revenue. While we are not privy to the specifics of those decisions, that degree of closures, at a time when licensed  were spreading, should raise eyebrows if not hackles. Did the company — which, according to its prospectus, compensates its executives with millions of dollars in salary and stock options, and is backed by a  with over $200 billion of assets — do everything possible to keep those centers open and continue serving families?

It is crucially important to distinguish between large for-profit chains backed by investors seeking high levels of financial returns (be they , shareholders, venture capitalists or other forms of institutional finance) and smaller for-profit child care programs. Nearly all family child care programs are organized as for-profits, as are independent small businesses with one or two centers, and these typically do not have institutional investors. The two types of for-profit providers — small businesses and large chains — are qualitatively different, with massively divergent levels of profit-maximizing pressure. Public policy should treat them as such.

That’s why Massachusetts has set such an important precedent by becoming the first state to . For the Bay State, any for-profit provider with 10 or more licenses in the state is considered its own category for the purposes of accessing state child care grants. Other states may choose to set the bar at a different level, but either way, a distinction should be made. Since these large for-profit chains are a separate class of provider, they require specialized oversight to hold them accountable for treating parents, children and staff well; to ensure that public funds are used for the public good; and to safeguard against risky financial maneuvers that could put the larger child care system at risk.

KinderCare’s IPO proves, yet again, that these chains aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. We’re overdue in reckoning with their role in our child care system.

In word and action, the 2024 election cycle has shown that child care may be closer to an open window than our bitterly divided politics would suggest possible — if the parties are willing to accept that they now broadly agree on child care more than they disagree.

This convergence has been brewing for some time, and it represents a meaningful shift. For decades following President Richard Nixon’s of the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would have established a nationally-funded, locally-run network of child care programs, most Republicans wanted little to do with broad-based child care reform. In his 2009 book “The Tragedy of Child Care in America,” eminent child care expert Edward Zigler that since Nixon’s veto, “a powerful social conservative movement has thwarted efforts by child advocates to create a [federally-supported] system of child care.” Instead, child care has been lumped into welfare policy, an area with low levels of government support where benefits are typically limited to low-income families.

Yet child care has been a growing pain point, even in red states, with increasingly obvious impacts on families and economies making it more difficult for Republican legislators to ignore. And , according to Moriah Balingit, early education reporter at The Associated Press, who reported in February that, “In 2021, Congress passed $24 billion of pandemic aid for child care businesses, an unprecedented federal investment. Now, as that aid dries up, Republican state lawmakers across the country are embracing plans to support child care — and even making it central to their policy agendas.”

This shift reached a new zenith during the , when Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said that when it comes to child care shortages, “look, we’re going to have to spend more money.” (In fact, JD Vance and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz agreed several times during the debate’s child care section.)

At the congressional level, we have seen Republican leaders accept certain premises that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago. In 2022, Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Richard Burr to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act that would have made child care free for all families making less than 75% of their State Median Income (SMI) and cost no more than 7% of income for families making under 150% of SMI. The legislation drew Republican co-sponsors. Similarly, this August, Republican Senator Deb Fischer of a reauthorization bill that allows states to apply to expand eligibility to serve more working families using subsidy funds, while boosting per-child reimbursement rates up to the true cost of quality. 

On the Democratic side, there has been substantial movement to better include family, friends & neighbor caregivers (FFNs) — who collectively — and even stay-at-home parents. For instance, Rep. Ro Khanna recently that would, among other things, create a robust payment system for FFNs and offer stay-at-home parents a $300 per month stipend until their child turns 3 years old. (Full disclosure: I advised Khanna’s office during the bill’s development).

It is important not to oversell the case. There are still enormous unresolved policy questions 

related to the streams in Kingdon’s framework, particularly around funding levels. The bills introduced by Sens. Scott, Burr and Fischer contain no mandatory appropriations, making them essentially unfunded mandates that would go through a torturous appropriations process every year. For example, expanding eligibility to serve more families across a broader range of income levels does little good if child care subsidy applications are frozen due to underfunding, as they are in . 

Some Republicans, such as Wisconsin and South Dakota , continue to question whether there is any role for the government in child care funding. And there remains as well as drastically different visions for an ideal system (and the price tag that comes along with each one). It’s important to be clear-eyed: A divided government is highly unlikely to bring massive transformation.

Yet all that being true, 2024 has brought an opportunity to move the goalposts and spike the football. It would be a sign of enormous progress if both sides can agree upon certain principles — that governmental child care supports should no longer be considered only properly targeted toward low-income families, but instead seen as a need for families across a wide income range; that programs should be reimbursed at the true cost of quality so they can pay their staff well and run a strong operation; that parents should have access to inclusive child care options including FFNs.

There has been forward movement recently. In January, a bipartisan group of family policy experts convened by the Convergence Collaborative on Supports for Working Families, a project run by , released a echoing many of these principles. Such agreement, of course, still leaves important unresolved arguments about funding levels and technical policy design, and the contours of those discussions will naturally be shaped by the election outcomes. But in any upcoming political configuration, child care as an issue isn’t going anywhere. The real question will be, can the parties stop sniping at each other long enough to realize the first steps toward a bipartisan solution may be closer than anyone realizes?

But there was little to no empirical data on why this might be the case. So, Enchautegui, the chief knowledge officer for the Instituto del Desarrollo de la Juventud (translated to Youth Development Institute of Puerto Rico), set out to change that. “A lot of U.S. data sets do not include Puerto Rico,” she said. “For general U.S. sampling, such as the Current Population Survey, pulse surveys conducted during COVID or government-sponsored longitudinal surveys, Puerto Rico is not part of the sampling framework.”

Enchautegui and her team set out to create the “Socieconomic Survey of Families with Children,” which was conducted between December 2022 and February 2023, carried out through home visits in collaboration with the polling firm Ipsos. The sample represents the population of families with children ages 0-17, with incomes at or below $35,000 a year and with a head of household under age 60.

The report found that the most common characteristics of low-income families with children in Puerto Rico were headed by women who work and participate in social protection programs, and still have difficulties meeting basic household needs. Having a quality job was key to a family’s economic security and lifting the family out of poverty, and yet for 75% of families, not having child care was a major obstacle to employment. The child care obstacles were greater for mothers of preschool age children than those in elementary school or older.

“When we look specifically at people living in poverty, it is an overwhelmingly female-headed population, led by single women,” said Enchautegui. “When we talked to them in this report, we asked different questions about barriers to employment,” she said. “Most of it came down to access to child care.”

, published in September 2023, is the first empirical data on child care and employment in Puerto Rico. It feeds into both research and policy involving the overall quality of employment and how to promote an agenda for creating employment opportunities for families. And it shows how more women can and want to provide for their families, but need reliable child care to be able to do so.

The lack of reliable child care is the main reason that Kimberlyz Alvárez, a single mom of three kids in San Juan, is no longer able to work. For a while she was able to work, and had an aunt look after her kids. But after a time that situation became untenable and Alvárez had to quit to watch over her children. “It’s my responsibility and not my aunt’s to do that,” Alvárez said in an interview, translated from Spanish by Caridad Arroyo-Quijano, a research analyst with Instituto Del Desarrollo de la Juventud.

Alvárez, who is 27, previously worked at fast food restaurants like Burger King and Subway, either as a cashier or the drive through. She is no longer in a relationship with the father of her children, so she feels pressure to earn an income to support her family. She would like to go back to work, but she could only do so on a specific schedule that could accommodate her 5-year-old at school and her 3- and 1-year-old at Head Start, which ends at 2 p.m. “I trust the kids are secure in Head Start, but I don’t see that as a child care provider, it’s a school provider. Child care would be after that schedule, and I don’t know anyone in a child care center that I actually trust to leave my kids with so I can’t work full time.”

Women like Alvárez could benefit from additional child care offerings that would allow them to go back to work and earn a salary to support their families. But Puerto Rico faces additional barriers to providing child care support because of lack of local investment and limitations on federal funding. “Our funding is 100% federal dollars,” said Arroyo-Quijano. Unlike other states in the U.S., Puerto Rico does not contribute its own funding.

Arroyo-Quijano explained that there are both mandatory and discretionary funds for child care, but historically Puerto Rico has only received discretionary funds, which are allocated through the Child Care Development Block Grant. Mandatory child care funds are authorized through section 418 of the Social Security Administration and certain funds require state funding for the federal government to match. As a territory rather than a state, Puerto Rico has not had the same safety net programs or funding as other U.S. States.ÌęUnder the American Rescue Plan Act, Puerto Rico started receiving some mandatory funds permanently, but it still cannot access the funds that require state matching.

For Alvárez, even the availability of more funds may not change her situation. She wasn’t familiar with the American Rescue Plan Act funds and how they were impacting child care on Puerto Rico, but she felt that employers weren’t always aware of the needs of mothers. “Many of us are the main ones in our family in Puerto Rico,” Alvarez said. “Employers need to be more flexible in their work schedule so mothers can have more access to take care of their kids.”

South Dakota doesn’t invest much state money in child care — unlike — and existing subsidies for child care are underutilized.

Unless that changes, South Dakota will fall behind in its workforce and economic development, according to legislators, child care providers, and economic leaders who participated in a recent .

The state matches around $800,000 a year (the minimum requirement) to receive federal dollars for low-income child care subsidies, and the state used millions of dollars in federal COVID relief for child care provider grants over the last few years. The latest state effort, using more COVID relief money, is another to find “innovative solutions” to address child care’s accessibility and affordability issues in the state.

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But that federal money is running out, and the state doesn’t have a plan to replace it. Even then, providers say the money didn’t fix underlying problems.

While the urgency and the need for collaboration between the public and private sector was front and center at the SDPB panel, the need for more state involvement was also loud and clear.

Something needs to change, said President of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry David Owen.

“Inflation coming out of COVID is a threat and that’s a domino this economy can’t afford,” Owen said. “If we don’t figure something out, we’re going to go from child care being marginal and on the edges to ceasing to exist. This needs to be addressed.”

SD’s current subsidy program is ‘perpetuating the problem’

Of the roughly 29,000 South Dakota children who qualify for subsidized child care, only 1,800 receive assistance — about 7%.

That’s “abysmal,” Early Learner South Dakota Executive Director Kayla Klein told South Dakota Searchlight.

Klein says there are two main reasons for the poor subsidy participation rate: paperwork and reimbursement rates.

The first step to increasing the low participation rate of children in the child care subsidy program is to address regulations that disqualify otherwise low-income families from the program. Current regulations often disqualify people who need subsidized child care the most, Klein said, such as single parents, teen parents and homeless families.

Nicole Weiss, early learning director for the YMCA in Rapid City, explained that of the roughly 50 people in the organization’s child care programs for homeless families and children with teen parents, only three receive subsidized child care.

That’s because regulations require that single parents pursue child support payments before they qualify for assistance — though some mothers might not want to because they don’t know who the child’s father is to collect payment, they may not want to push for child support because of an abusive relationship, or other factors. Teen parents especially are less likely to pursue child support, .

The child care subsidy program also requires parents work or attend school a certain amount of hours, Klein said. In the case of a homeless parent searching for work, that can be difficult. Homeless parents sometimes do not have the necessary documents needed for the program application, either.

If homeless parents can’t put their children in care so they can search for work, they can’t afford housing or escape poverty, Klein said.

“It’s like the system is perpetuating the problem,” Klein said.

Those fixes can be made administratively, Klein said, but they won’t fix everything.

Child care providers lose money when accepting state subsidies

The second reason participation rates are so low in the state is because child care providers lose money when they accept state subsidies, Klein said.

About 60% of child care providers in South Dakota are unregulated by the state, which means those providers don’t have access to subsidy dollars. Even then, state-licensed providers can opt out of the subsidy program.

Providers can choose to be unregulated for a variety of reasons — facility requirements that are difficult to achieve in an in-home setting, they don’t want state involvement, or there’s no financial incentive. The latter is what Klein hopes to change.

“People tend to want paying parents and don’t want to deal with subsidies because there are so many flaws in the system,” she said.

State subsidies typically do not cover a child’s entire tuition. Providers can either accept that they’ll lose money by taking on the child, or they can require the family to pay the remaining balance after the subsidy is paid.

If providers try to have the family pay a co-pay, they risk not getting fully paid — causing a headache for the provider, a fight with the family, and eventually leading to the child being kicked out of the facility.

“Because we know that the parent is on child care assistance because they can’t afford it, why would I anticipate they’re able to afford anything more than the state is subsidizing?” Klein added.

A lag time in being paid by the state also contributes to providers being hesitant to accept subsidies, she said.

Additionally, the state reimburses providers on an hourly basis, but most families don’t keep their children in day care for the entire time the provider is open. If parents who are eligible for a subsidy pick up their child early, the provider doesn’t get the full day’s amount, even though the spot is reserved for a full day.

Basing child care subsidy rates on true cost, not market rates

Sen. Tim Reed, R-Brookings, is spearheading the child care discussion in the supermajority Republican Legislature. He says there is a drive within his caucus to address the issue in the coming session, which begins in January.

Reed’s concern, as the CEO of the Brookings Economic Development Corporation, is that South Dakota isn’t investing in its own workforce, he told South Dakota Searchlight. Research shows that early learning is essential to a person’s development.

“I’m afraid other states will get ahead of us and have a better educated workforce,” Reed said of other states’ support for child care.

New Mexico approved a constitutional amendment devoting a portion of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund — fees the state collects from oil and gas development on public land — to early education and child care, generating an estimated $150 million a year for early childhood programs. Since August, the state has made for all families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or $120,000 for a family of four.

The Washington Supreme Court upheld a (passed in 2021) that will pay for early education, child care and public school construction projects. The state from the tax in its first year.

And Minnesota dealing with child care improvements, including a continuation of previous grant programs for child care workforce programs funded through federal COVID relief money and creating the new Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Vermont for child care providers and expanded low income child care assistance subsidies to 575% of the federal poverty level ($172,500 for a family of four). New York similarly expanded its low income child care subsidies to 300% of the federal poverty level ($90,000 for a family of four).

Reed’s focus is to increase provider reimbursement rates for child care subsidies.

Child care subsidies for low income families at or below 209% of the federal poverty level ($62,700 for a family of four) are reimbursed to providers through a regional market rate. The issue with that, Reed said, is that the public already recognizes that child care providers aren’t charging enough to properly pay their employees and keep their businesses afloat.

Instead, he said the state should base its subsidy reimbursements on the “true cost” of doing business, thereby increasing the state funds to providers to more accurately reflect how providers should be paid. He likened the reimbursement model to how nursing homes are currently reimbursed at 100% for Medicaid residents — a decision the Legislature made last session.

“We at least have to get to the true cost,” Reed told South Dakota Searchlight. “Even at that point we’re not necessarily giving enough money to pay the employees enough.”

Klein hopes increasing subsidy rates will incentivize more providers to register with the state — which would then hopefully lead to a higher subsidy participation rate in the state — but it won’t immediately address the issue since subsidies only account for a fraction of the need.

Mike Bockorny, CEO of the Aberdeen Development Corporation, said during the panel discussion that he hopes something is done in the next year.

“The answer can’t be at the end of this legislative session, ‘We don’t have the money,’” Bockorny said. “We can’t not do anything. That’s not going to work. I think the people who are saying ‘Oh, this is going to cost a lot of money’ are looking at it wrong. It’s not a cost. This is an investment.”

Finding more data and evaluating funding options

Reed was one of six legislators who traveled to Nashville this summer for the Hunt Institute’s Early Childhood Leadership Summit. It was there he realized how much other states contribute to child care.

The takeaway from the event for Rep. Linda Duba, D-Sioux Falls, is that South Dakota needs an evaluation of what the state is already doing.

“What are the sources of funding? Where are they coming from? Who administers them? Are they strictly federal pass-through dollars? What are they and how many families are we leaving behind?” Duba said about the state involvement.

The group plans to present a proposal to Gov. Kristi Noem this year on how to partner with the Hunt Institute to analyze South Dakota. Noem campaigned on child care accessibility and affordability last year.

Legislators are determined to use grants or business donations to pay for the analysis, so it won’t be taxpayer-funded.

“A lot of this hinges on getting a thumbs-up from the governor,” Duba said, “but I think what we’ve proposed is a good starting point. We don’t know what we don’t know. Emotions are fine, but data is what drives good policy decisions.”

Beyond subsidies: What about the 60%?

Duba is doubtful increasing subsidy reimbursement rates will increase the number of state licensed providers.

“With licensing and regulation comes other things an in-home provider needs to do,” Duba said, referencing facility requirements, such as square footage and bathroom requirements. “I understand encouraging providers to become licensed and I’m not pooh-poohing that, but is that an immediate fix? Not necessarily.”

That’s where the state and private sector can play a role, Duba said. Businesses can make child care part of a benefits package for employees, like Black Hills Energy in Rapid City, which partnered with Rapid City YMCA to offer child care.

Faced with 21 staff openings, the YMCA has decided to temporarily close three classrooms and cut 10 positions while trying to hire the other 11. The organization has several private partnerships, and it offers benefits, substantial paid time off and retirement packages.

But it’s not enough, said YMCA Learning Director Nicole Weiss, calling for more state involvement to help boost pay.

“If you can’t buy your groceries, you’re not looking at what your benefits are,” she said.

It’s the same issue in Sioux Falls at Embe, which serves up to 400 children.

“Our starting wage is higher than average, but it’s not enough,” said Brandon Hanson, executive director of child care and school age care at Embe. “On a daily basis, we are choosing between pushing our families into poverty or pushing our employees into poverty.”

As an independent, in-home child care provider in Sioux Falls, Karen Rieck said she makes about $7 an hour after factoring in the other expenses and the hours she works off the clock. She has to work a second job.

The state has to help “take the financial burden” off of child care providers to properly support the economic ecosystem, Weiss said.

“We have to do something right now,” she said. “In a year or two years we’re not going to have employees, because we won’t have child care. The time is now.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@southdakotasearchlight.com. Follow South Dakota Searchlight on and .

“It’s not looking too good to stay in the [child care] profession right now,” said Lourdie, who requested her last name be withheld for privacy. “Do I stay in a position and go into debt, or ask my friends to help me out? Or do I start looking elsewhere?”

Lourdie’s mother moved from Haiti to live with her and help raise her children. The monthly rent they pay on their three bedroom, two-bath mobile home is $575. Lourdie said this had been affordable, but now her landlord needs the unit back and she will have to move. She fears her rent will skyrocket. “Anything else in that area is $900 and up, even for just one bedroom,” she said. Also, Lourdie graduated in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida, which saddled her with $32,000 in student loans. She has had to defer payment each month because she doesn’t take home any extra funds to pay off her debt.

Lourdie knows she is lucky to make more than the $12 an hour prevailing minimum wage in the state of Virginia, but she estimates she will never be able to make more than $17 an hour working as a child care provider without an additional funding source. The time she spends worrying about her own bills is stressful and the worry and fear take a toll on her during the day, leaving her exhausted when she comes home. Yet she feels connected to the kids she cares for and doesn’t want to leave. “Children feel even the slightest change in their classroom,” she says of her work. But she has her own kids to raise, and needs to provide a roof over their heads. “Am I doing right by my own children?” she wonders. “It’s a tough question.ÌęIt’s really especially hard when you love what you do.”

Nationally, the average child care worker , and child care ranks at the bottom of all . Many workers on public income support like food stamps or Medicaid. Increasing the pay for child care providers like Lourdie is one of the top goals in the industry right now, especially as more workers look to leave for better paying jobs in retail or the service sector. Since the onset of the pandemic, have left their jobs to go to retail or service industries (including janitorial work) to make more money. But caring for children is a job that requires specific skills, which have garnered more attention as scientists have placed a premium on the potential for a stimulating environment on a young, developing brain.

The pandemic rocked the social safety nets of many – and it created a willingness for Congress in federal funding to support industries like child care, which had previously received scant support. The March 2020 Cares Act provided $3.5 billion in child care relief – the largest enacted relief effort to date; the May 2020 HEROES Act included $7 billion in child care funding, and the March 2021 American Rescue Plan Act included $39 billion for the child care industry. All of this contributed to keeping the child care industry — and centers like Rainbow Riders — afloat during the economic crisis of the pandemic.

Such economic relief makes fiscal and logical sense: child care centers cannot stay open without staff like Lourdie, and parents can’t work without reliable child care. But those funds, particularly the ARPA funds, have a dangerously looming cliff. Blacksburg can get an influx of funds for its child care workers, but it can’t count on this past 2024.

But even with this additional allocation of funds on the way to help child care workers like Lourdie, will it be enough?

Kristi Snyder, the owner and administrator of Rainbow Riders Childcare Center, a for-profit child care center in Blacksburg, has been an early childhood educator for over 35 years, says the current staffing crisis is “the worst” she’s ever seen.

“When I started in the early ’90s, we were getting college degree teachers, people coming out of universities who had B.S. degrees. Pay wasn’t great then either, but we were getting more qualified people,” she said. Student loans, she explains, are more prevalent now so college students graduate with debt similar to Lourdie. “They cannot afford to take a job that pays so low,” Snyder said.

“Some of our community colleges have dropped early childhood programs because their students graduate into a poverty-level industry. They are going to make poverty-level wages. We have to rebuild this industry,” Snyder says. “You would think after Covid that this is the time to do it. Because really it has been our staff and teachers who have subsidized child care for communities for decades.”

Snyder is part of a coalition of early educators and the Community Foundation of the New River Valley in Blacksburg who are working to shore up more support for early educators. Using funds from the American Rescue Plan, the Town of Blacksburg is allocating $1,150,000 toward a child care workforce project, led by the Community Foundation, to work with the 13 licensed child care providers in Blacksburg on teacher retention and recruitment.

Unlike about half the country, Blacksburg isn’t considered a child care desert. “We have enough physical child care centers [to meet demand] but we don’t have enough teachers,” said Jessica Wirgau, CEO of the Community Foundation of the New River Valley. “They are operating at about 50 to 60% of their licensed capacity, [and] could have twice as many children but they don’t have the teachers or support staff. That is primarily due to pay.”

Unlike other advanced peer nations that support the high cost of child care with robust public funding, the United States doesn’t. Aside from subsidies for very low-income families, most parents bear the full cost of finding and paying for the care. Many families can only afford to do so at such low levels that child care centers are , with providers being . Yet research shows that access to high quality child care — both for kindergarten readiness and long-term educational gains. Reliable child care boosts the economy because .ÌęBut even parents who can afford to send their child to a high quality child care may not have options to do so, particularly if they live in a like some of the areas surrounding Blacksburg in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Blacksburg’s attempt to bring more funding to child care providers is one way to improve recruitment and retention for an industry that is struggling to keep employees at low wages.Ìę As outlined now, a portion of the funds will be used to provide stipends to teachers, administrators and support staff, and a portion of the funds will provide some flexibility to child care center directors to focus on other strategies in the areas of recruitment, retention and professional development.

But the funds have not yet arrived. The plan is that the first distribution will be available in October. Wirgau and her team are meeting with center directors in August and collecting data on enrollment, staff size and openings. Once that data is collected in September, they will be able to make the first financial awards.

Yet Snyder feels she can’t wait that long and maintain her existing workforce. There’s always been some attrition, she explains, especially since Blacksburg is a college town and people affiliated with Virginia Tech move in and out. But she has a 30-year employee that is getting ready to retire, and several more quality employees she says who can’t afford to stay. “They enjoy the work, they like our organization, they love working with young children and families but they cannot afford to stay in early care and education. So many other jobs that are paying better are much easier and less stressful, and they can go down the street to Chik-Fil-A and make $19 an hour, or Target at $18 an hour,” said Snyder.

And the stress and demands of jobs in early care and education are not for everyone. “It takes a special person to work with 12 2-year-olds. Not everyone can do those jobs,” Snyder said. She describes the ARPA funds the Center received to stay open during the Covid-19 pandemic as “a life buoy that kept things from sinking.” Snyder has been able to leverage those funds to compete with the rising minimum wage in Virginia, but even so, it’s still less than what many big box stores in her area pay.

“Even with the increase [from ARPA funds], the child care centers aren’t keeping up with what people are making in other jobs. More money is needed and flexible money is key,” Wirgau said. “There are restrictions on how it can be used, and that puts some additional burden on the child care centers, and it affects the rest of their workforce and business model. The more flexible it can be, the better.”

Even with the money slated to arrive this fall, it must be spent by July 2026, and then it will be up to New River Valley and the child care centers to find additional funds to keep salary levels at that same rate. Wirgau plans to work with local governments, businesses and higher education institutions to build the base of funding sources so that any program that is piloted with the ARPA funds will have the potential to be expanded or continued. “This project is proof of concept,” she said. “When you invest a million dollars focusing on child care, then you are able to serve more kids and have higher quality centers.” By trying things out locally, “we can see if we can get some traction in a way that businesses and local governments will allocate funding to that as well.”

She points to an example in 2022, when the Community Foundation and Virginia Tech formed a partnership to host both in-person and virtual summits with business and government leaders each quarter. “Through these summits, we’ve shared ways that employers have supported child care in our region already, provided data on the impact of child care access to the broader economy, and begun engaging attendees in planning for the end of the ARPA dollars. We are trying to be as proactive as possible in developing local funding sources while creating a group of leaders who can be strong advocates for continued funding at the state and federal levels.”

For Lourdie, the increase in salary for her work as a child care provider can’t come soon enough, and she is not entirely sure she will still be there in the fall when the first payments are expected, especially without the certainty of how long the payments will continue. “I believe that if I were paid more, then I would know my needs are being taken care of. Then I can be focused, be 100% there, and not have to worry when I get home. Even now, I give it my all, then I get in my car and say, ‘what’s next?’ As soon as I get home, it’s ‘how am I going to pay the next bill?’”

Did Morning Without Child Care actually change the world? It would appear so. Connecticut legislators, previously handed a budget of $0, are now proposing $124 million to support the industry, and the success of the action has inspired a national event.

Early Learning Nation and cosponsored a on April 14 exploring how the Morning Without Child Care action came together, and lessons that apply beyond Connecticut. Moderated by author and ELN columnist Elliot Haspel, the conversation featured:

• Georgia Goldburn, and
• Eva BermĂșdez Zimmerman,
• Merrill Gay,
• Marina Rodriguez,
• Karen Rainville,

Here are our takeaways:

1. Anger can be a productive emotion. Morning Without Child Care arose out of a listserv rant. Goldburn, a veteran child care professional based in New Haven, felt disappointment, even disgust, on March 1 when she saw Governor Ned Lamont’s proposed budget included $90 million to upgrade school HVAC systems but nothing to buttress a rickety child care system.

“In the early days of the pandemic,” she recalled, “We were being venerated, celebrated, called heroes,” but a budget is an expression of values, and this budget showed zero appreciation for the sacrifices made by the educators who support early learning and language development. “I felt disrespected and undervalued,” Goldburn said. Her primal scream resonated with professionals across the state, and other advocates and activists came together to harness the anger into an action plan.

2. This overnight plan was 10 years in the making. The policy team at affirmed Goldburn’s interpretation of the budget, and a series of day and evening meetings took shape, with Zimmerman, Rainville, Rodriquez, Gay and others mobilizing their networks through conference calls with 400-500 participants — and even more when Representative Rosa DeLauro got on the line.

It takes time to build those networks. Engaging providers across the state and from different types of providers (child care centers, family child care homes, group homes) means establishing relationships rooted in trust.

3. Everyone could do something. Organizers initially envisioned a day without child care, but this plan met with resistance even from providers and parents who were sympathetic to the cause. A morning demonstration proved more feasible and just as effective. Over 60 programs showed up at demonstrations across the state. Zimmerman compared her role to that of a wedding planner: delegating and making sure things are getting done.

Because members of the SEIU/CSEA union have a no-strike clause in their contracts, they brought the children along and called it a field trip. Those who couldn’t be there in person joined on social media. Recognizing that some providers couldn’t or wouldn’t actually close, Rainville said, organizers suggested that they take part in ways they felt comfortable with, such as reaching out to press, contacting parents and signing a letter of solidarity. “When they belonged to a living, breathing coalition,” she said, “They no longer felt isolated.” Rodriguez underscored, “Child care workers led this action.”

4. Media matters. Noting that merely closing the doors of child care facilities wouldn’t attract the TV cameras, Gay said, “Press needs to have something to cover.” Loud, colorful, peaceful demonstrations with children holding signs and singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” — now that’s something that comes across on TV.

, Mayor Justin Elicker, father of a young daughter, expressed support for the rally and called upon the state to provide more funding. , Telemundo and other outlets covered the story.

5. Child care work is connected to social justice. Organizers and participants alike recognized that the meaning of the Morning Without Child Care goes beyond hourly wages. If Connecticut would invest $700 million in early education, the benefits would accrue across the economy, especially for families and workers of color. Instead of fighting over crumbs, Gay said, we’d be baking a whole new cake. Returning to the theme of the anger that set off this event, Goldburn asserted that it applies beyond child care: “This goes for anything you’re passionate about.”