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COVID-19 Impacts on Latinx Families: The COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on the economic well-being of Latinx families, and a new survey conducted by Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors in partnership with Latino Decisions sheds light on the issue, as reported by Brookings Institute. Latinx communities were already experiencing a disproportionate number of deaths from the virus, and the new survey confirms that those inequities extend beyond health. According to the results, 33% of Latinx parents/caretakers had either their business shutdown or have experienced significant drops in revenue, and 41% of Latinx parents/caretakers reported having trouble paying their rent or mortgage. Additionally, 53% of Latinx parents/caregivers are considering not sending their child back to school this fall due to fears around the virus, despite half of the parents reporting that they do not have adequate resources for online learning, as reported by Latino Decisions. Amid pressure from the Trump administration to reopen schools, the survey also asked Latinx parents: what would make your family willing to send your child back to school?, according to The Washington Post. Based on responses, almost all caretakers/parents said having the classroom deep cleaned everyday with teachers and students both wearing masks would make them more likely to send their children back. A majority of parents/caretakers also support a hybrid model of in-person and online learning, as well as extending the school year or having longer days to help kids make up for lost learning during closures.
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Child Care Unionizes: Child care providers have overwhelmingly voted to unionize, which will allow them to have collective bargaining power with the state over better pay and other benefits, as reported by LAist. About 10,000 family child care providers sent in ballots, with 97% of those voting to unionize. Child Care Providers United, which already existed as a membership organization, will represent about 45,000 family child care providers who received at least one state subsidy in the last year, as reported by EdSource. In addition to advocating for higher pay per subsidized child, child care providers say they will also advocate for more funding for training and more subsidies for children. After a 17-year fight to unionize and a law passed last year that gave providers the right to vote to unionize, the vote is a historic moment for the child care industry and marks the end of one of the longest labor campaigns in the past two decades, as reported by The Sacramento Bee. “Today we will begin the formal fight for the dignity and the respect we deserve,” said one long-time day care provider.
A World With Less Child Care: A new study from U.C. Berkeley found that 62% of Southern California child care centers experienced a loss of income due to low attendance or families not paying fees during the pandemic, as reported by KPBS. This pattern of less enrollment and more overhead due to increased safety precautions could sink the amount of overall child care providers significantly, as reported by KQED. The impact on the economy of having less child care providers won’t just last through the remainder of the pandemic or until we have a vaccine, but could distort the economy for generations to come, according to economist Betsey Stevenson and as reported by POLITICO. According to Stevenson, the impact of a child care crisis will be felt most by working mothers who will most likely shoulder the burden of child care responsibilities (which could set back a generation of progress for women, as reported by The Washington Post). Without two parents reaching their full earning potential, this trend could also lead the estimated two-thirds of families where both parents work on a trajectory of less economic mobility. The loss of child care during the pandemic is already taking a toll on parents’ mental health as well as their children's behavioral health, according to a new study and as reported by Romper. In almost half the cases where parents reported that their mental health worsened during the pandemic while their children’s behavioral health worsened, they had lost their usual child care. The researchers involved in the study say that federal and state lawmakers should keep in mind the unique stressors and mental health impacts the loss of child care can have on a family when considering ways to mitigate the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and the economy.
School Reopening Questions: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention published a statement last Thursday, along with tools and resources, calling for schools to reopen, as reported by The New York Times. This announcement comes two weeks after Trump condemned their initial recommendations, which has led some to criticize the agency of downplaying the health risks to appease the Trump administration’s pressure to reopen schools. While the CDC’s statement said that the virus is low-risk to children, much is still unknown, which led CNBC to ask 20 health experts whether they're sending their own kids back to school. The answers they received were mixed and dependent on location, precautions taken by individual schools and age of children. School officials seeking answers about whether to reopen may want to look at other countries where schools have reopened and WIRED has published an article that includes studies from around the world. According to WIRED, success in our countries was largely dependent on class size, distancing, age of students and how prevalent the virus is locally. A veteran teacher who taught at an in-person camp this summer outlines the reality of what it’s like to teach in-person during the pandemic in an op-ed for The Washington Post. She states the teaching is now a juggling of thinking about kids’ safety while considering their education. An op-ed for The Brookings Institute reminds us that reopening schools is more than just a matter of keeping kids and teachers safe, but that other school workers such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers need to be considered just as closely. Another veteran teacher writes an op-ed for The Washington Post, arguing that as long as schools are funded by property taxes, schools in lower-income neighborhoods won’t have the resources to feasibly follow safety recommendations, which will only lead to more devastating racial death disparities if schools are to reopen.
Related: The Washington Post: Here’s what it could look like if schools reopened today
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Unlikely Transmission: New mothers infected with COVID-19 are unlikely to pass the virus to newborns when using proper safety precautions, according to a new study published in The Lancet and as reported by CNN. Researchers reported no cases of viral transmission after examining 120 babies and 116 mothers, even after the majority of babies shared rooms and were breastfed by their infected mothers. Still, certain precautions were taken by the mothers, such as remaining 6 feet apart when not breastfeeding, wearing surgical masks and following proper hand- and breast-washing techniques. Larger studies are needed to draw firm conclusions, but these latest results should provide “some reassurance” to new mothers, according to the study’s authors and as reported by Bloomberg. This finding overrides the early pandemic practice where mothers and their newborns were sometimes separated to prevent transmission of the virus, as reported by HealthLine.
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Politics and Current Events
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Child Care Bailout Bills: The House of Representatives passed two bipartisan bills on Wednesday that provide over $60 billion in bailout relief funds for the child care industry, as reported by CNBC. The first bill, the Child Care is Essential Act, will be administered under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and will create $50 billion in funding for personnel, sanitation, training and other costs associated with reopening child care amid the pandemic. Providers will be allowed to apply for the funds regardless of whether or not they previously received funding through CCDBG (which is typically used to funnel federal funding into child care subsidies for low-income children). The second bill, the Child Care Economic Recovery Act, allocates $10 billion to the Child Care Development Fund to distribute funds to renovate and improve facilities, $7.1 billion to increase funds for Child Care Entitlement for States and $850 million for the Social Services Block Grant to fund child care for essential workers. These bills are separate from the HEALS act which was rolled out by Republicans on Monday and allocated only $15 billion for the child care industry –– a number which advocates claimed wasn’t enough to save the industry, as reported by CNBC. According to the results of a national poll, 80 percent of voters are in favor of a child care bailout and a $50 billion price tag has no bearing on their support, as reported by the First Five Years Fund. “The COVID-19 recession has brought child care providers to the brink of financial collapse and left working moms and dads in every state without access to care for their children and unable to work,” said U.S. Representative Katherine Clark, as quoted in The Boston Globe. “This historic moment requires funding of an historic proportion.” The bills will now head to the Senate for approval.
Related: Forbes: Senate CARES Act 2.0 Includes More Stimulus Checks, Unemployment Benefits
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ICYMI: In Case You Missed It, More Great Reads
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