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Saving Child Care: The newly formed California union, Child Care Providers United, held rallies throughout the state this week calling on elected officials to provide more funding to keep the industry afloat, reports KPBS. Most child care centers and family home providers operate on razor thin margins in “normal” times, and the pandemic has forced more than 5,000 childcare providers to close, reports CBS Los Angeles. But rather than increasing funding, state funding may expire for some providers, reports Mariana Dale, early childhood reporter for KPCC/LAist. Today, October 1st, California stops “filling in the gaps” for child care providers reliant on an out-of-pocket fee called a family fee. “If kids aren’t coming to child care in person, the state will no longer reimburse the family fee for providers unless there’s additional federal funding,” reports Dale.
Vox reporter Anna North drew attention to how the state of Vermont approached the crisis, in her piece, “The future of the economy hinges on child care.” “Vermont understood something the US has long ignored but the pandemic has thrown into high relief: Without child care workers, the American economy simply cannot function,” reports North, highlighting how Vermont gave a full bail out to the child care industry in the state. North was also interviewed on the Axios Re:Cap podcast about the crisis. The Alliance for Early Success, a national nonprofit focused on state-level early childhood policy, recently released a report also proposing radical solutions to the crisis, including treating child care as a public good, and focusing on family child care and family, friend, and neighbor providers, reports New America.
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Where Are the Kids?: Nationwide, parents of kindergarten-aged children are choosing to hold off on enrolling their children in school, reports Linda Jacobson, early childhood reporter for The 74. Overall, as many as 600,000 kinder-aged children did not enroll in school this year, with parents citing a variety of reasons, including being unable to support Zoom-based learning due to out-of-home jobs, wanting their child to remain in an in-person setting which they can receive in preschool, and still some who have formed “learning pods” with private teachers. Most states do not require students to enroll in kindergarten, and many school districts have seen a steady declines in enrollment in recent years corresponding to the population-level baby bust; still this year that drop has been drastic, reports The Washington Post. For example, the Long Beach Unified School District reported a 11% drop in kinder-enrollment and a 12% drop in transitional kindergarten enrollment, reports the Long Beach News Post.
USA Today calls them “America's missing kids” and explains how some families are spending thousands to keep their children in in-person settings, which widens an already wide achievement gap. Some leaders are looking to remedy the situation, however, with New York City public schools opening to Pre-K students last week, and the Los Angeles County Board of supervisors unanimously voting to allow a limited number of schools to apply for in-person learning waivers for transitional kindergarten through second-graders, reports The Los Angeles Times.
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Families in Need: Sixty percent of households with children across the United States have lost jobs, businesses or had wages reduced during the pandemic, according to a new poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and as reported by NPR. The poll also found 74% of households with children that made less than $100,000 are facing serious financial problems, illustrating that the majority of parents are struggling to juggle financial stress and caregiving during the pandemic –– a reality which inevitably impacts children. This stress is especially felt by working moms, who are coming to heightened realization around the lack of accessible child care and parental leave policies, as well as the status quo that often leaves mothers solely to manage family and work commitments, as reported by NPR. Even parents who are entitled to family leave policies face fear around utilizing them, as 39% of parents reported in a new poll from Catalyst that they fear they could be let go if they take time off to care for their children particularly in the present uncertain economic climate, as reported by CNBC.
Related article: The Hechinger Report: Nonprofits step in to help working parents making “impossible choices”
Food and Shelter: On September 2, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued a nationwide ban on evictions for non-payment until the end of the year, arguing that “housing stability protects public health,” as reported by Slate. While this provides a few months relief, come January 1st, a potential eviction crisis looms, as tens of millions of Americans remain unemployed and insufficient data means that no one, including the policymakers who determine rental relief assistance, knows just how bad the crisis may be. Millions of school children may also be left without pandemic food aid, as states scrambled to meet the eligibility deadline of September 30, but struggled determining how many kids need assistance as schools reopened with a mix of virtual and in-person learning, as reported by POLITICO. Research has shown that the pandemic food aid delivered automatically on a EBT card to families with children that were eligible for free school lunches reduced food hardship by 30% for children the week it was delivered, according to an op-ed published in Brookings. Citing this fact, the op-ed contributors argue that pandemic food aid needs to be extended past the September 30 deadline to reduce childhood hunger, particularly as families face uncertainty around if and when their child's school will reopen. The pandemic has exacerbated inequities that already existed, and The New York Times has put together a list of ways people can join forces with organizations working to reduce them.
Related report: California Budget and Policy Center: Not Enough to Eat: California Black and Latinx Children Need Policymakers to Act
Space to Play: Playgrounds can reopen in California with some COVID-19 restrictions, according to new guidance from the California Department of Public Health and as reported by The Los Angeles Times. The choice to move forward with the guidelines is up to local jurisdictions, however, and in L.A County, the Board of Supervisors is still determining the timing for reopening playgrounds. The new guidelines require that everyone over 2 years of age wear face masks and that children be under adult supervision at all times to ensure that masks stay on, as reported by The Sacramento Bee. Playgrounds must also post updated maximum capacity signs, and playground goers must maintain social distancing and abstain from eating and drinking while on the premises. The public playground guidelines came after KPBS found that government officials had no plan for reopening them, which prompted state Assemblywoman Lena Gonzalez to write a letter alongside other legislators to Gov. Newsom requesting guidance on reopening, as reported by KPBS.
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Politics and Current Events
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Census Scramble: Last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ordered a preliminary injunction to keep the U.S. Census Bureau counting through October 31st, giving census enumerators and advocates more time to capture an accurate count, reports LAist. Last spring, as a result of the pandemic, the census deadline was extended to October 31st, with apportionment numbers due in April 2021, as reported by CNN. But last month, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross abruptly changed the deadline to September 30, with apportionment numbers due December 31st. In her decision, Judge Koh sided with civil rights groups and local governments that had sued the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the statistical agency, arguing that people of color and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the counting ended at the end of September instead of the end of October. Monday of this week, however, Secretary Ross announced in a tweet that the end date would now be October 5th. He based that date off a timeline that called for turning in the apportionment numbers by December 31st. Judge Koh, however, says that ending the 2020 census on October 5 may violate the federal order she issued last week, as reported by NBC.
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Help Me Grow Los Angeles: Today, First 5 LA has announced a new, $2,250,000 investment across five community partners to better connect families who have developmental concerns, to needed services and supports. The investment is part of Help Me Grow Los Angeles (HMG LA), an effort of First 5 LA and Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, to improve connections between providers so that every child receives support for developmental concerns. We encourage you to share the announcement on social media, by retweeting or reposting.
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The Flowchart: Detecting and treating developmental delays early on can greatly improve outcomes for children, but many slip through the cracks when it comes to screening as well as receiving care. Our friends at the First 5 Center for Children's Policy recently published, "Navigating the Early Identification and Intervention Maze: A Flowchart," to help decision makers understand where the gaps are and how to help close them. Additionally, the California Health Report wrote a piece on how complicated systems can work against children's well being, referencing the flowchart.
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Parent Survey: The California Child Care Resource and Referral Network recently released the results of their parent survey, representing the experiences of more than 12,000 California parents, and how they are adapting during the pandemic. “I might have to quit my job because I won’t have day care for kids since schools are not opening up in my area,” said one survey respondent. Click here to download the report. They will also be hosting a webinar introducing the report, on October 6, 10-11am, and you can register here.
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ICYMI: In Case You Missed It, More Great Reads
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