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Tag: child care

Child Care Advocates to Elected Officials: Protect Us All

Posted on

For Immediate Release

January 27, 2026

WASHINGTON – Following the tragic killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by a U.S. Border Patrol agent, child care organizers and advocates with 9to5 Georgia, the Alabama Institute for Social Justice, Alliance for Quality Education NY, the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, SPACEs in Action/Community Change, and the Raising Child Care Fund today issued the following statement:

“As child care organizers and parents, we grieve the perilous conditions unleashed by federal agents on children and families in Minnesota and beyond,” said Mary Ignatius, executive director of Parent Voices. “From threats to freeze child care funding, to dangerous immigration raids, to the calculated racial profiling of people of color, many communities feel unfairly targeted. This should matter to us all.”

“We know firsthand that children cannot learn when they are in survival mode,” said Lenice Emanuel, executive director of the Alabama Institute for Social Justice. “Child care educators cannot teach when they, and the children and families they serve, are under attack. Moreover, communities cannot know safety when they, and the public officials charged with serving them, are terrorized by federal agents.”

“Indeed, the federal government appears to have turned on her citizens,” said Lorena Garcia, CEO, Colorado Statewide Parents Coalition. “Law enforcement has been deputized to hunt persons suspected of being undocumented, with a new memo suggesting Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) could go door to door in search of undocumented immigrants. The practice of “detain first, ask questions later,” is immoral and dangerous. It isn’t in service of keeping the nation safe; it is designed to instill terror and fear in the American people.

“In the space of a few weeks, we’ve seen a pregnant woman pulled from her car, a disabled woman who was on her way to a medical appointment detained, a toddler and preschooler detained and flown out of the state, police officers of color detained, and multiple people shot, some fatally, by ICE or Border Patrol. The killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been well publicized, but they are not anomalies. In 2025, 32 people died in Immigration Customs and Enforcement custody, including 7 people who died in December 2025 alone,” Ignatius said.

“In a developed nation, no one should fear extra-judicial killings,” said LaDon Love, executive director, SPACEs in Action. It is imperative that each of us contact our respective federal officials and ask them to immediately pull ICE and DHS from Minnesota, and to prevent their entry in other American cities. As Jamelle Bouie from the New York Times has said, “mass deportation is inherently cruel.””

Child care advocates urge parents and others to:

  • Ask elected leaders to fund child care, not ICE.
  • Contact your elected leaders via email or phone, and share your thoughts about ICE.
  • Ask elected leaders for a thorough investigation into ICE killings.

“As an entity dedicate to children, families and child care providers, the RCCF joins our grantee partners in supporting the health, safety, and well-being of children, families, and early educators facing heightened stress and uncertainty in their communities,” said Rachel Schumacher, Director, the Raising Child Care Fund.

 

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Child Care Providers, Parents and Advocates Share Concerns and Hope the Senate Study Committee on Access to Affordable Childcare Hear Them

Posted on

For Immediate Release

October 30, 2024

ATLANTA – The child care affordability crisis has taken center stage during the 2024 presidential election. Both presidential campaigns have acknowledged – to varying degrees of eloquence – the pressure families and communities face when seeking accessible, affordable early childhood education and care. Now, one week before the election, several parents and advocates affiliated with 9to5 Georgia shared their thoughts on funding for early childhood education and care. To watch their comments and concerns, visit this link and use this passcode: qp6.834V.

Parents, advocates and child care providers discussed:

  • The importance of child care solutions being as diverse as the families in need of care, and as innovative as the needs demand. For instance, child care solutions that center around the first shift, will not address the needs of those who work nights and weekends.
  • The need for flexible child care options that empower parents to balance work and family on their own terms.
  • The importance of sustainable funding to ensure child care providers can offer competitive wages which will enable them to retain their best educators.
  • The need for dialogue around “work life balance” to include child care in its fundamental elements. Dignified workplaces must recognize and adapt to the realities of working parents, understanding that supporting families benefits everyone. 

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What Early Child Care Providers Are Saying Ahead of the Looming End of Pandemic-Era ARPA Funding

Posted on

For Immediate Release

Sept. 15, 2023

WASHINGTON – On a Sept. 14 national media call, early childhood education providers and advocates raised alarms on the escalating child care crisis given that pandemic-era funding for early childhood education will expire on September 30. The Raising Child Care Fund – which includes grassroots groups in Alabama (Alabama Institute for Social Justice); California (Parent Voices); Louisiana (Power Coalition for Equity and Justice); Washington, D.C. (SPACEs in Action); Georgia (9 to 5); Ohio (the Ohio Organizing Collaborative); West Virginia (Rattle the Windows); Minnesota (Kids Count on Us/ISAIAH); New Mexico (OLE); and Pennsylvania (First Up) – organized the call.

California

“We are deeply concerned for families across the nation who benefitted from federal American Rescue Plan Act co-payment waivers that expire on September 30, 2023,” said Mary Ignatius, executive director of Parent Voices in California. “These co-payment waivers allowed families to divert those funds to cover inflation rising costs such as gas, food, and other basic needs to keep their families stable. When these fees return, families will have to make difficult budget choices of what to cut in order to keep their child care assistance.  In California we are grateful that the combination of grassroots parent organizing, labor, and champions in the Legislature and our Governor agreed to extend that relief by permanently eliminating fees for families earning below 75% of the State Median Income and capping co-payments at 1% of income for those earning up to 85% of State Median Income.  This is why we need federal solutions so families across the country can benefit from this necessary relief.”  

Georgia

“ARPA funding helped me to pay the rent for my building, provide a pay increase, keep the lights on and the water bill paid,” Felicia Shuman, an early childhood education provider in Savannah, and a leader with 9to5 in Georgia. “If I didn’t have the extra funding, I would have had to close my doors.”

“I’ve been a provider for over thirty years,” said Sandra Shepherd, owner of the Little Shepherd Learning Academy, and a leader with 9to5 in Georgia. “The ARPA funding was the first time in a decade that my center was able to receive funding to help us meet the needs of parents as well as educators.”

Louisiana

“There is no economy without early care and education,” said Rochelle Wilcox, owner of four early childhood learning centers in the New Orleans area. “People cannot go to work and businesses cannot run without early childhood education and care. These small businesses are the backbone of the economy. We need the local, state, and federal government to realize that if we cannot open our doors, people cannot go to work, and the economy will fail. The first 1000 days are the most important days that we have with young children. We are not valuing the teachers, providers and small business owners that open their doors to these little people every day. We know that 158,000 children need to be served and we’re only serving 19,000. We are already at the cliff.”

Minnesota

“ARPA funds were lifesaving to our child care program in Minnesota,” said Karin Swenson, executive director of Meadow Park Preschool and Childcare Center, and a leader with Kids Count on Us. “If the federal government allows ARPA funding to expire without a plan in place, we will indeed endure a worsening child care cliff. This is not a new problem, but we have been slowly losing more and more child care programs. The pandemic shed light on how precarious our system is.”

“I opened my center to address the needs of families in rural Minnesota,” said Courtney Greiner, owner and director of ESCO Mini’s and a leader with Kids Count on Us. “We operate on the thinnest margins due to the lack of funding. The money we have to pay staff comes directly from tuition. If we charge too much, families will leave the workforce to care for their children, meaning they’ll leave the workforce. There is no situation where the amount parents can reasonably pay is enough to pay our teachers. That’s why we need the ARPA funding.”

 

Ohio

“As the child care stabilization grant reaches its culmination, Ohio stands poised with an $8 billion surplus fund,” said Trina Averette, early childhood educator with the CEO Project of in Ohio. “Our next steps are pivotal: equitable funding across the delivery system is not just essential—it’s critical. The promise of our future rests on how we choose to support our dedicated workforce today.” 

“The child care system disproportionately relies on Black, brown, and immigrant women to care for Ohio’s kids,” said Tarezz Thompson, an early childhood educator and leader with the CEO Project in Ohio. “They are underpaid, under-resourced, and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of physical and emotional labor they’re performing for our families. The end of pandemic era funding will only make things worse.” 

Pennsylvania

“Our Latino community has grown 45% and if there is a child care crisis for our English speaking providers, who were born in the U.S. and understand the language, this is a bigger crisis for our English second language educators,” said Rosanna Matos. “When new funds are made available, they’re not always disclosed in a language that providers can understand and avail themselves of. ARPA was accessible and we must continue to fight to show that it is needed.”

“Without ARPA funding most of our providers would not have been able to stay in business,” said Tyrone Scott, from First Up. “Even with those dollars, we still saw almost 2200 child care providers shut down permanently. If the federal government does not step in, childcare providers will shut down and that means families will not be able to work. We raised our reimbursement rate to 60% of market rate. We are in a place of such extreme staffing shortages that some of our best providers are having to turn families away. This is not anecdotal. In a survey conducted this summer, we found that there are 3600 open child care positions, meaning that 35,000 children are not being served.”

West Virginia

“In West Virginia, we’ve put a lot of energy and work into child care policy changes,” said Amy Hutchison of Rattle the Windows in West Virginia. “We have over 6,000 working parents in West Virginia who have been forced to work or stay at home. At least 64 percent of West Virginians live in a child care desert. Our biggest fear is that once that funding stops, people will fall off that cliff and have to close their doors. This is a workforce participation issue. Childcare is a starting point for jumpstarting and sustaining the economy and workforce.”

“In West Virginia, we have low workforce participation and battles with poverty. But ARPA funding helped a lot of families go back to work, which helped some come out of poverty,” said Melissa Colagrosso, owner and provider of A Place to Grow Childcare in Fayette County, West Virginia. “We saw a lot of families going back to the workforce. I saw families who were able to buy their first home because they could both work. As eligibility is cut back and funding decreases, centers are closing down. Child care is not a viable business, but the economy doesn’t work without it. This is an economic decision that you can’t get people to work if you don’t have children in a safe healthy environment.”

“We were there when the schools closed, we were there when families needed somewhere to go so families could work during the pandemic,” said Tiffany Gale, an early childhood education provider in West Virginia. 

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Clock is Ticking: Advocates Raise Alarms About the 3.2 Million Children Likely to Lose Child Care with End of Federal Funds

Posted on

For Immediate Release

WASHINGTON – Advocates with the Raising Child Care Fund continue to sound the alarm on the impact of the end of pandemic era investments in early child care funding. They released the following statement:

“It is troublesome to be forced to choose between work and caring for one’s child,” said LaDon Love of SPACEs in Action. “And it is disheartening to care for other people’s kids, knowing you are not earning enough to care for yourself or your children. Yet this is the position of countless families in communities across the country. And things are about to get worse.”

On September 30, pandemic-era investments for child care will cease. When this happens, more than three million children will lose access to child care nationwide. Many early childhood education and care programs will close their doors or decrease availability when they run out of federal funds (The Century Foundation Fund estimates 70,000 child care programs nationwide could end). This will adversely impact countless parents and caregivers who will be unable to work without the federal subsidies for child care.

We know that all parents deserve quality, affordable, and reliable child care, and all children deserve a safe place to be nurtured, educated and stimulated. We know what is possible with investment.

“In Minnesota, advocates won historic funding for childcare, including $600 million to keep and retain childcare teachers with Great Start Workforce Compensation Supports,” said Kelly Martinson with Kids Count On Us, a project of ISAIAH.

“This funding has the deepest meaning for us because we’ve seen it work,” said Karin Swenson of Meadow Park Preschool and Child Care Center and member of Kids Count on Us. “We’ve been able to encourage people to enter the early childhood field and retain them because we can pay them closer to the wages they deserve. We managed to take a pandemic-era grant program from COVID relief funds and turn it into permanent ongoing funding for hiring and retaining childcare teachers.”

“It took extensive organizing, and we made it happen,” Swenson said. “With this funding, we’re setting a foundation. Now we can start building upon that foundation to transform our childcare system into one that is affordable for every family, high quality for every Minnesota child, and a career path for childcare teachers. We won a new Department of Children, Youth, and Families that we’ve been working toward for several years. We also got the Childcare Assistance program reimbursement rates raised to the national standard after being cut 20 years ago.”

Minnesota doesn’t have to be an anomaly, but funding is required. Without an extension of pandemic funding for childcare, many families will be left out in the cold.

“Throughout the Ohio budget process, we have been advocating for adequate funding for early childhood education and care,” said Tami Lunan of the The CEO Project, an initiative of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative. “Unfortunately, the Ohio Senate passed a cruel version of the budget that removes hundreds of millions of dollars in childcare funding from the Ohio budget.  If passed, it would make Ohio one of the worst states in the nation to raise a family. We desperately need federal funding, and for Ohio legislators to do the right thing for kids.”

Advocates also say the pain of cuts will not be evenly felt. “The child care system disproportionately relies on Black, brown, and immigrant women to care for children,” Lunan added. “They are underpaid, under-resourced, and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of physical and emotional inherent in their jobs. It will also harm employers who can only keep their businesses going with child care for their workers.”

“Those with means will get the care that they need and everyone else will suffer,” said Amy Hutchison, Rattle the Windows.

For more information or to speak to a parent, provider or advocate in Alabama, California, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota, West Virginia, or another state please let us know.

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The Raising Child Care Fund is an initiative of the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative (ECFC) that pools private foundation dollars to give grants to groups that amplify the voices of families, early educators, and allies.