Observer-Reporter: LTE: Pa’s child care providers must be saved
April 6, 2020
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, many groups cautioned about the lack of affordable, high-quality child care for Pennsylvania’s working families and the impact on our economy. When families can’t find child care or afford it, that serves as a barrier to employment. Groups like the Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission and ReadyNation estimated that the economic impact of insufficient infant / toddler child-care cost our commonwealth $2.5 billion annually. In short, the economy depends on working families and working families depend on child care.
Today, that child-care system is largely shut down like most sectors of our economy, causing real problems for essential workers across the state. This economic shutdown is also exposing the fragility of the child-care system. According to a new survey, nearly one-third of child-care providers indicated that they would go out of business if this economic shutdown lasts for more than a month. This begs an important question, “How will Pennsylvania families go back to work when businesses reopen if child-care providers do not?”
As leaders consider immediate economic stimulus options for the commonwealth, efforts to stabilize child-care providers must be a priority. Stimulus funding must be prioritized to strategically position our commonwealth for a speedy and robust economic recovery. As such, Pennsylvania’s child-care system must be saved.
State representative, 48th District
The Fred Rogers Co.
Read the LTE here.
PennLive: OpEd: Frontline workers in the coronavirus need dependable child care
By Stephanie Doliviera April 6, 2020
The current COVID-19 crisis is requiring unprecedented action by both the public and private sectors to not only support our front line workers leading the public health response, but also to support those employees that continue to provide essential, often behind the scenes, services to our communities.
We at Sheetz are pleased to be doing our part by offering additional compensation as an effort to further support our more than 17,000 frontline employees who are working tirelessly through the COVID-19 crisis. We know that our employees, and their families, are the heart and soul of our business.
with essential workers. Today, according to a new survey, roughly 80 percent of all childcare providers in Pennsylvania are closed – impacting an estimated 305,000 children. This leaves essential workers in a pinch.
Finding and affording quality child care was a problem prior to this current crisis – often serving as a barrier to employment for many potential workers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation recently estimated the economic cost of insufficient child care in Pennsylvania to be $3.5 billion annually.
Stephanie Doliveira is vice president of Human Resources, Sheetz, Inc. and co-chair, Pennsylvania Early Learning Investment Commission.
Click here to read the full oped.
Morning Call: Lehigh Valley child care centers could collapse under coronavirus. Will federal aid rescue the industry?
April 4, 2020 By: Anthony Salamone
Jennifer Butz-Smith marked her business’ 15th anniversary last month quietly.
“It came on March 18,” Smith, the owner of Horizon of Learning day care in Emmaus, said recently, “So it came with all the other stuff. We didn’t even get a chance to celebrate.”
“It’s 15 years of my heart and soul, of keeping this going,” she said. “Then it comes down to, ‘Oh my goodness, all this is happening.’”
Smith is like hundreds of child care providers and workers in the region. Their future is uncertain as they hang on in fear that their centers — like so many smaller businesses — might be unable to manage through the health crisis.
The state last week approved waivers that allowed some 700 child care facilities to operate to serve children of essential workers. Smith’s facility is among some 70 in and around the Lehigh Valley, according to the Department of Human Services.
For her center, it meant reopening for 10 children among her working families who needed child care; she said she has not taken on new clients.
But like many operators, she’s had to curtail operations and cut staff; Smith said she laid off eight of her nine employees, leaving one teacher and herself for the children’s facility that normally handles 60 children from early childhood to fifth grade.
Has she been experiencing sleepless nights, or nightmares? No, the upbeat Smith said, but, “It’s always on my mind. You are responsible, not only for people’s children, but the livelihoods of my staff. They depend on me that they can pay their bills. That’s the added stressor.”
Lehigh Valley Children’s Centers closed for a week for cleaning and then reopened three of its 30 sites, two in Lehigh County and one in Northampton County, for children whose parents work in essential businesses.
Remington White, a support staffer at the center, said he decided to come back to work, where he’d receive extra pay.
“Our essential employees, they need to do their jobs to keep us up and running as a country, as a community,” he said. “It’s my way of contributing through these hard times.”
White said there are fewer children per staff member, and they’ve been doing activities that call for more sitting down than running around to keep children apart in this era of social distancing.
Read the full article here.
Express-Times: LTE: Closed child-care services need support to get through COVID-19 crisis
By: Gail Reaser April 2, 2020
My business partner and I have owned and operated The Children’s Garden for 16 years. Since this time we’ve achieved and maintained a Star 3 rating, which designates high-quality child care in Pennsylvania. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, like so many of my colleagues in early learning who are also small business owners, we’ve had to close our child care center.
We want nothing more than to be able to reopen when this health crisis has passed, and provide child care and early learning in a caring and high-quality environment for the 75 families counting on us and our staff of teachers to return to work.
I’m worried about how our economy will recover if child care centers close for good. The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the fragility of the system. We’ve always operated on the slimmest of margins, but this will force so many to shut their doors for good.
Child care is an industry upon which all other industries rely. We are all doing our best to keep people safe by closing down our businesses. The likelihood of these valuable community assets reopening without some support is very low.
Once we are past this health crisis and businesses reopen, early care will be needed more than ever in order to restore our workforce and economy. Without some sort of stimulus the threat of child care centers closing for too long is that they may never reopen.
Gail Reaser
Northampton
Read the Letter to the Editor here.
CBS 21: PA childcare providers call for economic stimulus
March 24, 2020
The statewide shutdown has put an economic strain on an important industry: childcare.
Childcare leaders in Pennsylvania are calling for an economic stimulus to prevent collapse of the industry in PA.
“Childcare centers … are on a very thin margin,” said Donna Cooper, Executive Director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth. “And when they were ordered closed… providers were no longer capturing co-pays.”
An extended shutdown puts nearly one-third of PA childcare providers at risk of closing permanently.
Find the article and video here.
