Programs will have wide discretion over how to use the money — everything from rent to mental health support for staff and families. But providers and early childhood advocates say most of the money will likely go to one place: workers.
Champlain Valley Head Start’s center on Barlow Street includes two new classrooms for children ages 1 to 3 and an existing preschool program for those ages 3 to 5.
Key issues include housing, child care, mental health, telehealth and broadband.
The recommendations are limited and nonbinding, leaving much of the decision-making and pressure on facilities.
Understanding that child care is foundational to our economy — like housing, roads, broadband and other infrastructure — is key. Increased investment is needed to boost wages, decrease tuition costs on families, and support education and professional development for those working in the field.
The societal and economic costs of not dealing with the existing lack of high-quality child care are not something we can ignore any longer.
We have been expanding so-called “high quality” government-funded and -regulated pre-K programs in terms of cost and scope since 2007 and student test results downstream from that point have consistently declined.
A group of Alburgh residents has raised about $1 million in federal, state and private funding to build a child care center in town.
If we don’t join together to reimagine public education as a cost-efficient institution that fulfills our constitutional obligation to provide a free and effective education to our citizens — one that embraces change — we’re flunking this test.
The child was kicked out of a St. Albans child care center over a disagreement about the center’s dress code.
The legislation would immediately invest an additional $12.7 million in Vermont’s child care system, including an extra $5.5 million in child care subsidies for low-income Vermonters.
This past year has shown us just how important child care is — as a critical part of the fabric that supports a stable workforce — and it has also shown us just how fragile the child care system is in its current form.
What were once “women’s issues” are now essential economic issues that have gained wide support. Access to child care can make the difference for a family, whether it slips into poverty, or holds on to the middle class.
For millennial families, two working-parent families predominate, often of financial necessity rather than by choice. They depend on child care for their families to flourish.