In mid-March, Congress passed the American Recovery Act (ARA). The legislation was the latest in a string of COVID relief bills intended to assist families, businesses, and communities through the pandemic. The Act set aside $39 billion to help the child care system which has struggled to remain afloat for the past year. The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) recently released its estimates for how much child care funding will come to each state to help the damaged child care system. Arizona’s share is expected to be just under $1 billion. The full estimates are included HERE.

This funding comes just in time to address a growing crisis in the child care workforce as 1 in 6 jobs in the child care sector have been lost during the pandemic. Despite increased signs of returning to a new normal, the staff who previously filled those jobs are not coming back. Child care providers must meet expanded health and safety requirements including strict student/teacher ratios. Even if they have the physical space to serve more children in their programs, they often do not have the staff to provide the care. Desperate parents returning to their previous work settings do not have the same options for child care that they had before. There was an existing shortage of child care workers prior to the pandemic. Child care workers are largely underpaid and undervalued. In 2018, typical annual wages for a woman working full time, year-round in the child care industry were $29,900 per year as 1 in 10 child care workers had incomes below the federal poverty line and twice the poverty rate for workers overall. As programs begin to reopen, many former workers are choosing to return to jobs with higher wages, fewer requirements, and with less risk for contracting COVID.

Ronnie Armstrong, executive director for Children's Campus and Premier Children's Center has provided child care in the Valley for nearly 35 years says, “The pandemic has accentuated the problems in an already broken child care system. Families are returning to work and our enrollments are growing every day. We do not have the quality, committed staff to meet the needs of families. The child care industry is in a hiring crisis which seems absurd considering the rate of unemployment in our country. We desperately need quality, committed staff to meet the needs of the children and families in our community.”

The Arizona Early Childhood Alliance (AZECA) is working collaboratively with DES to bring together stakeholders to make recommendations on how the state should spend the new federal ARA funds. Those recommendations will undoubtedly include ways to incentivize workers to return and remain in the child care workforce. We encourage the Governor and the Department to take these recommendations to heart and release the funds as soon as possible to avert this looming crisis.

While the state of Arizona is making strides toward increasing teacher pay, one group has been noticeably left behind, early childhood educators. A new report out by the Berkeley Center for the Study of Child Care Employment highlights that early childhood educators in Arizona are still lagging far behind. The field is largely made up of women and often women of color, and despite the fact that we ask them to provide care to our most vulnerable citizens, they often make poverty wages. During the COVID pandemic, it has become clear that child care is an essential service, yet the policy response at the state and federal level has largely ignored the educators themselves. Unfortunately, this was an existing problem that has only been made worse in the last 12 months. According to the report “The burden of school closures and parents continuing to work falls on child care providers. We need to be properly recognized through appropriate funding, PPE, and support systems. The government is largely ignoring the particularly unique burden that is put on child care during this pandemic.”

The Arizona data shows that the median wage for child care workers is $11.97 and even those with a bachelor’s degree make 21% less than their counterparts in the K-8 education system. And worse, the POVERTY rate for early educators is over 20%, double that for other Arizona workers. The gap in pay is an issue of parity in the education field, but it is also an equity and access issue. We cannot continue to expect the ECE workforce to bear the burden of care during this education crisis in America without compensating them adequately for the important work that they do.

Read the full report here.

Read the Arizona profile data here.

Recent national surveys have shown, in contrast to many other issues for which voters are divided, support remains overwhelming for state investment in high-quality early childhood education. Seventy-six percent of likely Arizona voters said they support the state investing in high-quality, early childhood education opportunities for children from birth to five years old, according to a newly released survey completed by Moore Information Group.

The second annual survey was commissioned by the Arizona Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, a key partner of the Arizona Early Childhood Alliance (AZECA). This survey confirms Arizona voters, regardless of political party, understand the connection between high-quality, affordable early childhood education and future educational performance.

This data comes at a key crossroad. The COVID pandemic has put the state’s early childhood programs in a very difficult position with many struggling to stay afloat.  As we move into the next state legislative session, it will be more important than ever for our policymakers to prioritize state funding to keep the system intact, and to assure that early childhood programs will be available as the state recovers from the pandemic.

The full survey can be found HERE.

A new poll released last week by the First Five Years Fund, confirms that now more than ever Americans view child care as an essential service on par with health care and education. The early childhood community was hit hard by the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic created. Many programs closed, some permanently, due to decreased attendance, higher costs, and worry over health and safety. These closures only exacerbated an existing lack of quality child care in underserved communities across Arizona. Now, as the country begins to re-open, there are fears that many more people will not have a safe, reliable place for their children to go for care.

The nation’s child care crisis has impacted the views of voters of every ideological background, signaling to lawmakers that supporting early learning and care still is a rare unifying issue that comes with little political downside. In battleground states with tight Senate races, including Arizona, 83 percent of voters say that candidates for office at all levels should have plans and policies to help working parents afford high-quality child care.

Key findings from the poll include:

• 84% of voters say high-quality, affordable child care for families with young children is an essential service – just like health care and education.
• 79% of voters say the COVID-19 crisis has shown us how essential it is that we build a child care system that makes child care available and affordable to all families who need it.
• Two-thirds of all voters say that access to high-quality affordable child care is essential or very important to our ability to get the economy going.
• A majority of American voters (53%) think that federal funding for quality early education from birth to age five, including child care and preschool, should be increased.

As we approach this year's election, we strongly encourage voters to ask candidates at the state and federal level where they stand on child care and other early childhood issues that affect our community. We must treat child care as an essential service and prioritize it accordingly.

Great news for Arizona’s child care system and the children and families they serve. After a collaborative effort with early childhood stakeholders and advocates, the Governor's Office and the Department of Economic Security announced the Child Care COVID-19 Grant Program on Thursday, August 13. Using funding from the federal CARES Act, the program helps child care providers cover costs during the COVID-19 state of emergency.  The goal of the program is to help child care providers with operational costs to safely remain open or reopen in order to provide child care to Arizona’s families.

The Child Care COVID-19 grant can be used to help child care providers cover a variety of expenses during the COVID-19 crisis including:

• Tuition and registration relief for families
• Lease and mortgage payments

• DHS licensing fees
• Salaries and benefits for employees
• Liability insurance
• Utilities
• Cleaning supplies

• Classroom materials and supplies
• Additional supplies required by CDC and DHS guidelines

This program is another key step on the road to help #saveazchildcare.  Thanks to the Governor and the Department of Economic Security, as well as all the partners and stakeholders who worked together to make this happen!

For additional information on the program and to learn how to apply click here.

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis is threatening to put the majority of Arizona’s child care providers out of business. Approximately 50 percent of programs across the state are at least temporarily closed. Centers that are open serve considerably less children than before the crisis. A recent survey of Arizona providers showed that the number of children attending most programs has been cut in half. These programs may be serving less children, due to the health and safety guidelines put forth by state and local health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Child care provider costs have significantly increased. Another recent survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) showed that only 18 percent of child care programs expect that they will survive longer than a year if they continue to have reduced enrollment.

Some financial supports have been put in place for certain providers, including continued DES Child Care Assistance and Quality First scholarship payments, but these resources only replace a small percentage of most providers’ income. Additionally, these payments haven’t benefitted providers who operate private-pay only business models. Everyone agrees that Arizona’s economy cannot recover from the devastating impacts of COVID-19 without affordable child care. Parents cannot go back to work, attend school, or participate in job training programs if their children are not safe and cared for.

Arizona received $88 million in CARES Act funding from the federal government to address just this issue. We believe it is imperative for the Governor and DES to not only continue the Enrichment Centers and the DES Child Care Assistance payment program until the crisis has passed, but to also immediately implement a grant program to assist all licensed and regulated child care providers to cover some of their operational costs until the state can fully and safely return to business as usual. These grants should allow providers the flexibility to use funds to cover the costs of increased staffing, teacher salaries, sanitation and personal protective equipment, and other needs related to safely caring for children during the pandemic. We must take steps to help ensure that the child care infrastructure remains intact so that it is there when parents need it.