From Thomas Becker

Monroe

To the Editor: 

On Friday, at 2:30 a.m. the Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee voted to eliminate the successful Child Care Counts program that was piloted using federal American Rescue Plan funds. 

This program was created with the family and group child care professionals input and a requirement to use the funds to raise wages. Because, you see, as the business owners, we understand that we need to have competitive wages to recruit and retain high quality teachers to care for and educate our youngest and most vulnerable members of our society; children. However, parents can’t pay the true cost of that care before being forced to stay home and, until now, child care professionals have subsidized parent’s child care by sacrificing our own wages and benefits. 

Child Care Counts changed that by increasing revenue by 25% (about $50 a week) increasing wages to $12.66 an hour. Now that revenue loss must be made up by other business owners increasing their wages for ALL employees by at least $2 an hour to offset that price increase so their employees don’t quit to stay home with their child(ren). Otherwise, indeed 25% will close, that is 1,000 child care businesses shuttered across the state. That is 10s of 1,000s of children whose parents will have to stay home and whose employers won’t have employees anymore. 

This will drive up prices and shutter other businesses. Our state already loses between $2-4 billion annually due to the lack of child care. $340 million is a wise investment in our economy and the state elected representatives need to vote for an amendment to the budget to continue fully funding Child Care Counts.