ICYMI: In North Carolina, a Looming Child Care Crisis – and an Opportunity to Build Back Better

In yesterday's Raleigh News & Observer, a group of child care experts in North Carolina published an op-ed detailing the urgent need for more affordable, quality child care in the state. This critical need is just one of the many reasons why President Biden has been making the case for Congress to pass his Build Back Better agenda.

Build Back Better invests billions of dollars in building the supply of high-quality child care so that parents can access care in their community. In the first three years, the plan will emphasize providing startup grants to new providers, helping more providers become licensed or improve their quality of care, and investing in new or expanded child care facilities. The plan also incentivizes businesses to build on-site child care facilities through an expanded tax credit, allowing more parents to access child care at their workplace, and helps providers retain and recruit employees by paying them a higher rate per child.

As the President has said many times, middle-class families will pay no more than 7 percent of their income on child care, saving most American families more than half of their spending on child care. This means that two parents with one toddler earning $100,000 per year would save more than $5,000 per year while providing high quality care for their child.

See below for the original opinion piece:

Raleigh News & Observer: Opinion: As more families move to the Triangle, a child care crisis looms
[Marsha Basloe, Michael Palmer, and Ellen Reckhow, 10/25/21]

Before the pandemic, North Carolina invested billions into bringing business to the Research Triangle area, bolstering the state's economy and turning the Triangle into a talent pipeline, where people want to live and raise families.

Apple has announced a new $1 billion-plus campus and engineering hub that will create thousands of high-paying jobs in the Triangle over the next five years. Fidelity is adding more than 1,500 jobs. North Carolina has been named a top place for people to move during the pandemic, and RTP is now beating major cities and technology hubs for residency.

This is all excellent news for the state's economic recovery. Yet, there are fewer child care providers in North Carolina now than in years past.

In addition, there is a dire shortage in the early childhood workforce, making it difficult for child care programs to fully meet the needs of current families.

If more families move into the Triangle, where will their children go for quality child care?

In August 2019, less than 50% of children under age 6 in the Triangle were enrolled in the 879 licensed child care programs available at that time, demonstrating the Triangle did not have enough spaces for every child before the pandemic.

In August 2021, there were only 856 licensed child care programs available in the Triangle, and just 44% of children under age 6 in the Triangle enrolled.

Over the next decade, companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google plan to invest more than $1 billion into North Carolina's economy, bringing thousands of skilled, diverse workers to the Triangle. We need to make sure policies and infrastructure are in place to provide high quality early childhood education for all families in the Triangle and support the essential early childhood educators who are paid such low wages and benefits for the critically important work they do.

Child Care Services Association (CCSA) appreciates that companies see our state, specifically RTP, as a good business decision. We know many of these workers will need high quality child care. But, North Carolina has many child care deserts — areas where there are either no child care programs or so few that there are more than three times as many children under age 5 as there are spaces in those programs.

According to Census data, in 2019 67.3% of children in North Carolina under age 6 had all parents in the workforce. If children under 6 do not have a place in a child care program, parents are forced to work fewer hours and risk economic uncertainty or rely on informal and unregulated arrangements that may not meet a child's developmental needs.

The first five years of a child's life are the most crucial for brain development. It is vital that children have high quality care and education during that period.

For North Carolina to continue being in the top three states in bioscience employment and a world leader in vaccine research and manufacturing, we need to serve the families who live here. And, if businesses are to continue bringing thousands of new working families to the area, we need more child care spaces.

Are we prepared to ramp up and offer high quality child care to all those moving to North Carolina when existing families are struggling to find high quality care? Can government incentivize new spaces for child care? And, with the prospect of Build Back Better support for early childhood education, can we challenge businesses to help subsidize the cost of care for families or sponsor on-site child care the way SAS and others have?

We encourage the state and our counties to include early childhood in their economic development discussions. Investment in our schools is important. Getting our youngest children ready for school is what will prepare them for success.

Investment in high-quality early childhood education for current and future North Carolinians is our path to a strong future.

Marsha Basloe is president of Child Care Services Association in Chapel Hill. Michael Palmer is a CCSA board member. Ellen Reckhow is a former Durham County commissioner.