How to Fix Crumbling Child Care Infrastructure [bloomberg.com]

^{Child care programs rarely generate enough revenue to cover the steep cost of securing and maintaining facilities.Photographer: Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post via Getty Images}

By Kendra Hurley, Bloomberg City Lab + Equality, April 25, 2023

President Joe Biden last week signed an executive order meant to chip away at two major problems with US child care: unaffordability for parents and low wages for care workers. Largely missing was a meaningful bid to address a third challenge, one that has gotten far less attention but is quite literally at the sector’s foundation: a lack of decent infrastructure.

Child care programs rarely generate enough revenue to cover the steep cost of securing and maintaining facilities. This drives down the low wages of workers while driving up the cost of tuition. It also means that to stay financially afloat, many programs do facility upkeep on a strictly as-needed basis, said Linda Smith, director of the early childhood initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank.

Smith, who curates a harrowing gallery of photographs featuring early education programs with exposed wires and other hazards, said that neglected infrastructure, in turn, leads to its own host of problems: unhealthy environments for kids and caregivers, work disruptions for parents when programs close for emergency repairs, and even staff turnover. “If you were working in an old, leaky, smelly facility, how long would you want to stay there?” Smith asked.

[Please click here to read more.]