Every weekday, Patricia Morán has up to a dozen children in her San José home daycare, most from low-income families, and sometimes the children are only 2 weeks old because their parents don’t. cannot afford to be away from work any longer.
Between helping the children blow bubbles, serving them meals on a large table with small chairs, and teaching them “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in English and Spanish, Morán said she gets phone calls from other parents. , sometimes up to four a day. who are desperate to look after their young children.
That’s why Morán was surprised when Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, just beginning his second term, proposed delaying funding for 20,000 additional subsidized child care spaces for low-income families to help to balance the state budget. .
The more favored classes and societies would pay more taxes.
Even more confusing was Newsom’s reasoning for the delay: Child care spaces that were already funded were still not being used.
“They need (these coupons) right away,” Morán said. “Parents, they have to go to work.”
It’s true that there’s a lot of demand for subsidized child care, and it’s also true that a lot of the funding that California already allocated have not been used, a paradox that reflects the roller coaster of state revenues and the bizarre funding decisions that follow.
For the past four years, the state has had so much money that it couldn’t spend it fast enough. With record surpluses helped by billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid, Newsom and state lawmakers paid for 146,000 new child care spaces for low-income families. There are so many new slots, more than double what was previously available, that state officials couldn’t fill them fast enough.
State-funded child care workers must be licensed by the state, a process that requires background checks and inspections to ensure child care facilities, some of which are in homes, are safe and secured. It can take up to a year to go through the whole process.
Once the administrative obstacles have been removed, the registration of families may take longer. Farooq Azhar, executive director of BJ Jordan Child Care Programs in Sacramento, said there are 4,700 families on his waiting list. When it comes time to register, some families don’t respond, some don’t comply and others “just take a long time to complete the required paperwork”, he said.
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Today, as state revenues plummet as the stock market slows, California runs an estimated deficit of $22.5 billion. Determined not to dip into reserves, Newsom combed through the state’s enormous bureaucracy to save money. Deferring funding for 20,000 new child care spaces will save $134 million.
Although this is a relatively small sum, it could have big consequences. The delay puts Newsom at odds with the state’s newly unionized child care staff just months before his first contract expires. And it has upset the Women’s Legislative Caucus, which, after winning the November election, now represents nearly half of the Legislative Assembly. Your support will be essential in advancing Newsom’s agenda in his second term.
“We want to make sure child care (remains) a priority,” said Congresswoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters and vice chairwoman of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus. “Women want to re-enter the labor market. We need it to stimulate the economy.
The California Department of Finance, the agency tasked with preparing Newsom’s budget, said the administration “remains committed to expanding access to child care services consistent with budget agreements,” according to the spokesperson. of the agency, HD Palmero.
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The Office of the Legislative Analyst, the nonpartisan agency that advises the Legislature on budget decisions, said Newsom’s plan “seems reasonable.”
“Overall, we don’t expect access to child care to be significantly impacted given the number of spaces currently vacant,” LAO said.
Child care providers say the biggest problem is that there aren’t enough workers available to fill the slots. California lost a third of its childcare jobs in the first two months of the pandemic, compared to an overall job loss of 15% in the state, according to the California Public Policy Institute.
Although many of those jobs have returned, the child care sector is still below pre-pandemic levels.
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Subsidized spaces only pay about 75% of what child care workers should earn on the open market, making it difficult to recruit new workers, advocates said. Almost all of California’s child care workers are women, and the majority are women of color, said Lea Austin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.
Many child care workers said they are often paid less than minimum wage after expenses.
“People have other options,” Austin told lawmakers during a public hearing earlier this month. “When you look at salaries…the pandemic has really been the tipping point for many.”
Morán said she sometimes brings home $3,000 a month after expenses, which includes paying for supplies, two assistants, insurance and utility bills. You need to run the heating and air conditioning longer than in a typical home for the children to be comfortable. His gas bill in January was $600, he said.
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Several times, Morán thought about closing his nursery, but he was never able to do so. She has a degree in child development and sees her job as preparing these children for life, including teaching them how to interact with others with empathy, which she says requires “all my heart, my mind”. .
But it’s the phone calls from the parents that change her mind.
“I’m thinking, ‘My God, what’s going to happen if I close mine too?'” he wonders.