By Tim Vo / For The Herald
I’m a full-time provider at a licensed child care center. I love my child care career, and I work two jobs to help make ends meet. Each day, I get to nurture and teach kids as they develop, and support families who want to know their child is in a safe, caring, enriching place while they are at work.
But the job doesn’t cover my bills, and providers all over the state are in the same situation. I hate having to see quality providers leave the field because the job doesn’t pay enough. Some will return, because their heart is in it, however, they struggle with the wage that they earn.
We’re in a bind; parents can’t afford to pay more, so providers can’t afford to raise wages and provide benefits, which leads to a child care workforce shortage, which then means parents can’t find care, so they can’t go to work. It’s a problem for all of us: providers, child care businesses, parents and employers.
Child care workers are stretching their own dollars thin, working extra jobs like me, or relying on state support themselves because they care about the career and the children. This stress could affect delivering quality care, because the provider may feel drained, and not paid enough for the work that they do.
Yet cuts to early learning are being proposed in both the Washington State House and Senate that are larger than what other sectors are facing. Washington state shouldn’t go backward on child care and should maintain current funding and access to high-quality learning. Cuts will make the shortage of available high quality child care even worse.
In Washington, Working Connections Child Care subsidy provider reimbursement rates aren’t enough to cover what it really costs to provide safe, high-quality care. Child care centers are already running on razor-thin margins.
The Legislature should safeguard Working Connections Child Care provider rates, maintaining rates at the 85th percentile of market rates. Our essential workforce relies on these rates so they can continue to offer the Working Connections Child Care subsidy program and keep their businesses sustainable.
Washington should also maintain current funding and access to existing early learning programs, including Early ECEAP (Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program) and a critical mental health program, Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation.
Recent polling shows that Washingtonians overwhelmingly want the Legislature to invest in child care. But Washington is considering addressing the budget shortfall by asking families who already struggle with accessing and affording care and working child care providers to shoulder the burden.
People who are in a high-quality early learning environment as children learn how to support themselves and their families, which leads to better education outcomes, higher earnings as an adult, and even lower rates of incarceration. Early learning sustains a visible future with lower crime rate, where the economy is thriving.
My job is incredibly fulfilling, and I can manage the extra work for now, but eventually it may not be sustainable and like many, I’ll leave the field unless we can better support a thriving child care workforce. I do believe that by maintaining funding and taking the next steps toward modernizing our system, child care businesses may thrive, giving more opportunities to expand learning and growing more people into wanting to work in child care.
Tim Vo is a full-time child care provider in Everett and a member of Washington’s Early Educator Design Team, a statewide group of child care providers who develop policy plans that work for both families and for the workforce.
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