Rev. Rob Stephens of NC Repairers of the Breach discusses the child care cliff at a Wednesday press conference. (Photo by Greg Childress)
Emma Biggs, a Charlotte daycare advocate and provider, reminded a crowd gathered at Freedom Park in Raleigh on Wednesday, that there are only 18 days left before the federal pandemic-era subsidy runs out for daycare providers.
When that happens on June 30, Biggs said, the state could lose three in 10 childcare programs, which would impact more than 90,000 children.
“What is happening in our state is not just injustice to our children and our families and our economy and our businesses, it is actually criminal what they’re trying to do to our children, especially our Black and Brown children,” Biggs said.
Biggs was one of several speakers who gathered at the park in downtown Raleigh to demand that the General Assembly step in to stop the state’s child care industry from toppling over a “funding cliff.” She called on lawmakers to make an emergency appropriation of $300 million to keep preschools open and teachers in classrooms. Anticipating the funding cliff, Biggs said some teachers see the “handwriting on the wall” and are leaving the profession.
“We’re here because we can’t wait,” Biggs said. “We need an emergency appropriation issued immediately.”
Biggs is part of a coalition of advocacy groups, faith communities and child care facilities that are coordinating a week-long phone blitz targeting House speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland and Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, with calls every three minutes to demand they take immediate action to avoid the jobs cuts and closures that will happen at the end of this month.
Leaders of the NC Poor People’s Campaign and their partners say Berger and Moore have refused to meet with them to discuss the child care crisis.
“There needs to be a moral outcry,” said Rev. Rob Stephens, NC Repairers of the Breach Organizing Committee coordinator. “The fact that they’re [the state’s Republican leadership] willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on vouchers for private schools that discriminate and are hesitating on passing funds for 100,000 zero to 5 year-olds is evidence of a radical misalignment of values.”
Stephens said the state GOP ought to be ashamed to brag about having a budget surplus. Lawmakers project a budget surplus of just under $1 billion.
Without emergency funds, many child care centers will be forced to close their doors, cut teaching staff or raise the fees on working parents. (Photo: Clayton Henkel)
“Their so-called surplus is a direct result of not actually funding what the people of this state need most, and instead using the budget as their personal bank account to score political points,” Stephens said. “After billions of dollars in tax cuts for corporations and millionaires, they now want to fill the gap with gambling and casino money, interests that have donated huge sums to their campaigns. We will not let them gamble with our children’s future.”
As Newsline has previously reported, the state will soon spend the last of $1.3 billion in federal grant money that helped child care providers make it through the pandemic. Some of the money was used to increase worker pay.
NC Newsline’s Lynn Bonner reported in April that a North Carolina Child Care Resource and Referral Council survey found that 88% of childcare providers will need to increase parent fees when the federal money runs out. Forty percent said they would have to raise parent fees immediately. About half said they would lose administrative and teaching staff and about two-thirds said they would have trouble hiring new employees with comparable experience and education.
Nearly one-third of the programs surveyed said they would have to close within a year. That’s equivalent to more than 1,500 programs and close to 92,000 childcare and early education slots.
Rev. Wayne Wilhelm, tri-chair of the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign and Durham pastor said working families are being left without options.
Eshawney Gaston (Photo: Greg Childress)
“Instead of rushing to fund kids and schools, they [GOP lawmakers] are campaigning on spending hundreds of millions of dollars on private school vouchers for wealthy families that can already afford private schools,” Wilhelm said.
During the 2023 legislative long session, lawmakers took no action on legislation asking for $300 million this fiscal year to extend the compensation grant portion of the federal Childcare Stabilization Grant. Supporters said the money would reduce teacher turnover, improve the quality of child care and keep rates affordable for parents.
Eshawney Gaston, a mother of two from Durham who is expecting her third child in November, said families like hers need help.
“We have to fight for the kids,” Gaston said. “I’m not going to have any maternity leave. I’m working and trying to figure out after school and child care for my son and daughter while I’m working and trying to find babysitters. It’s a struggle out here.”.
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