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Month: April 2024

Parents and Providers Gear Up for National Day Without Child Care; Activities Planned in Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, D.C., Georgia

Posted on

For Immediate Release

April 23, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Parents, child care providers, and child care advocates affiliated with the Raising Child Care Fund today announced coast-to-coast events coinciding with the Day Without Child Care (DWOCC). The DWOCC will be held on May 13, and is designed to build support for fully funded, quality early childhood education and care. The advocates released the following statement:

“In the spirit of the labor movement, which hosted the Walk A Day in My Shoes, child care professionals, advocates and parents will participate in the Day Without Child Care on May 13. Our intention is to demonstrate the fundamental need for quality, accessible child care,” said Danielle Atkinson, executive director of Mothering Justice (Michigan). “We need child care policies that ensure affordable care for families, competitive wages for workers, and stabilization in the industry.”

“California wouldn’t need a Day Without Child Care if the state didn’t give away $70 billion in tax breaks,” said Mary Ignatius of Parent Voices. “Our elected leaders are attempting to balance the budget on the backs of Black and Brown parents. We want to highlight the true cost of care and encourage our leaders to do better for children, families and providers.”

Parent Voices will host a Stand for Children event on May 8 that will see 500 parents and providers assembled at the state capitol.

“The childcare industry, which I am so passionate about, is unsustainable, which is why I am leading a shutdown of childcare centers on May 13 and traveling with a busload of providers and teachers to the MN State Capitol,” said Shawntel Gruba, CEO of Iron Range Tykes Learning Center in Mountain Iron and member of Kids Count on Us, Minnesota. “Childcare is a broken business model. We need a universal childcare system in which early educators can make thriving wages and families can afford care. Thriving wages for teachers would make childcare a sought-after job and bring dignity and respect to the workforce. This industry should be viewed as a career, not a stepping stone. Our state and federal elected leaders need to recognize that childcare is the workforce behind the workforce, which is why we’re shutting down childcare centers and heading to the Capitol. We want to highlight the need for substantial and sustained public funding for childcare.”

Kids Count on Us will take busloads of parents and providers on a 4-hour trek to the state capitol.

“We are calling on the mayor and the DC Council to invest in our babies the same way they invest in millionaires,” said LaDon Love, executive director of SPACEs in Action.

On May 13, SPACEs in Action will bring child care providers and parents to the Wilson Building for site visits and meetings with DC Council members. They will also meet with child care champions such as Councilmembers Phil Mendelson, Jeneese Lewis George, Kenyan McDuffee, Christina Henderson and others who support restoring the pay equity fund. SPACEs will also host car brigades and do a banner drop urging D.C. Council to keep their promise to child care providers.

“I’ve been in this work for 24 years and I care deeply about children, families and providers,” said Ellicia Lanier, founding executive director of Urban Sprouts Child Development Center. “Our intention with the Day Without Child Care is to signal to legislators that more must be done to ensure that our babies are free. From birth, our children deserve to live in a world full of possibilities. They deserve a world in which the community values them enough to ensure that their parents aren’t burdened by unaffordable, inaccessible care.”

On May 13, Urban Sprouts members will participate in a Strolling the Capitol event in Washington, D.C.

“For the DWOCC, 9to5 Georgia will highlight the crisis in the state’s reimbursement system,” said Erin Clark, 9to5 Georgia. “We will highlight the consequences of inadequate funding; every inadequate payment threatens the ability of our providers to stay open and offer the care that our families rely on.”

The organization will shuttle providers and parents to a May 16 Board Meeting of the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning. The mobilization is designed to enable providers and parents to communicate directly with bureaucrats and policymakers around childcare. 9to5 Georgia will also host a provider appreciate event and press conference in Atlanta on May 10.

“We want to connect the dots for legislators, and demonstrate the urgency of adequate funding for child care for families, communities and providers,” said Tamara Lunan, project director for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s CEO Project. “Unfortunately, the state is stealing wages from its workers. Ohio will not do right by child care providers without federal oversight.”

On May 13, The CEO Project will bring 5250 early childhood educators to the state capitol in Columbus to drop off a petition and urge legislators to invest in child care.

 

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Black Southern Women’s Collaborative Condemns Supreme Court Decision Limiting Mass Protests

Posted on

For Immediate Release

April 22, 2024

BATON ROUGE – The Supreme Court recently announced it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. This decision leaves in place a lower court order that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The Black Southern Women’s Collaborative (BSWC) has previously spoken on the dangers of limiting constitutional rights to protest in opinion pieces from Ashley Shelton who leads the Power Coalition for Equity & Justice in Louisiana and Tameka Greer who leads Memphis Artists for Change in Tennessee. You can read those pieces here and here. If you report on this issue, Shelton and Greer, and other members of the BSWC are available for comment.

“The Constitution’s first amendment protects our rights to freedom of speech and to peaceably assemble; despite this, we see efforts to criminalize protests rather than address the reason people are protesting in the first place,” Greer said. “This is deflection. Policymakers shouldn’t be punishing those who exercise their right to demand answers for their grievances.”

“This ruling undermines the heart of the U.S. Constitution,” Shelton said. “Anti-protest laws are not about safety. If they were about safety, my First Amendment rights would enjoy the same protection as my Second Amendment rights. Instead, these policies are specifically designed to silence Black people, persons in poverty, and persons from marginalized communities. If we do not resist such measures, we will see escalating campaigns to silence Black people, people of color, religious minorities, and others. Once that happens, we will have no way to challenge laws that relegate many to second-class status.”

“All people deserve to live in a society that sees and responds to their needs,” said Nsombi Lambright Haynes, executive director of One Voice and a member of the BSWC. “Preventing the right to gather sends the message that our communities have no right to remedy injustice. The courts are telling the American people that we must accept injustice today, tomorrow and forever. Such messages eliminate confidence in our democracy and in our judiciary.”

“This latest play demonstrates extreme white supremacist governing,” said Phyllis Hill, founder of the BSWC. “It is in line with other efforts to strip away our rights, such as Roe vs Wade. They are stripping away our rights and eliminating our right to voice dissent through voting.”

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Raising Child Care Fund Releases Report Showing Impact of Parent Organizing in Increasing Public Support of Child Care Access as Federal Funding Ends

Posted on

For Immediate Release

April 17, 2024

WASHINGTON – Today, the Raising Child Care Fund (RCCF) released a report on grassroots groups’ remarkable work to secure adequate funding for child care and early education. The country is in dire need of stable funding for early childhood education, and the report notes how the RCCF raised more than $17 million in five years to support grassroots groups in their advocacy for accessible, affordable child care and education. The report is available here.

“We know that educating young children is non-negotiable,” said Rachel Schumacher, director of the Raising Child Care Fund. But we can’t give our children the education and care they need without advocacy. The Raising Child Care Fund is proud to have invested in grassroots groups who wake up every day determined to build public will for adequate funding for early childhood educators, providers, parents and communities.”

RCCF grantees are having an impact, and their recent victories are noted in the aforementioned report. Grantees include Parent Voices in California, Louisiana Power Coalition for Equity and Justice, Kids Count on Us in Minnesota, OLÉ in New Mexico, The Ohio Organizing Collaborative/CEO Project in Ohio, and the Coalition for Social Justice in Massachusetts, and more.

“Through years of deep organizing of parents, educators and child care providers, we built strong relationships with elected officials, and held them accountable for how their policies impacted children and families,” said Karin Swenson, child care provider and organizer with Kids Count on Us.

“When parents, providers and grassroots groups fight for our children’s future, they win,” Schumacher said. “This is essential given cuts in pandemic-era funding for child care.”

During the pandemic, the federal government released over $50 billion in child care funding including $24 billion in the American Rescue Plan Act which states used to stabilize 200,000 child care providers. This benefitted as many as 9.6 million children. Advocates have been urging Congress to extend this support and create a stronger system for children, families and providers. In the meantime, a small number of states took action after hearing from RCCF grantees and other advocates:

  • The California state budget included $2.9 billion for child care for the next two years. These funds include $100 million a year to eliminate family fees for most families receiving child care assistance.
  • Minnesota’s state legislature allocated $366 million in 2023 and over $1 billion in continued funding to sustain programs like the Great Start Compensation payment program for early educators.
  • A coalition for children, families and child care providers, advocated for and won $475 million in Massachusetts to continue initiatives to support providers and boost compensation.
  • New Mexico used $100 million of the permanent fund to support early childhood programs for children aged zero to five. This win was the result of a ballot initiative in 2022.
  • Louisiana’s budget included $52 million for child care. This was the largest investment in child care in the state in almost a decade.

While these efforts are noteworthy, more must be done to support children, families and providers. Child care workers are the workforce behind the workforce, and it is imperative they receive the support they need to remain on the job.

“We have come so far in five years and are committed to continuing to push for just and equitable outcomes for kids, families, and the workforce,” said Rebecca Gomez of the Heising-Simons Foundation.

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