Any parent of young children knows that the childcare sector is struggling. The search for care is beset by long waitlists, staffing shortages, and high fees. Amid this dark landscape, Washington, D.C., has stood out as a beacon, investing tens of millions of dollars into building up a childcare system that works. All of that progress is threatened by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s draconian proposed cuts. If childcare is truly essential to child and family flourishing, community vibrancy, and economic productivity, D.C. must protect and enshrine these investments rather than cut them at the first sign of budgetary trouble—and risk setting a terrible national precedent.
Gutting the Pay Equity Fund
Bowser’s would-be cuts zero out the Pay Equity Fund (PEF), a $75 million pool that allows early-childhood educators to be paid on par with elementary school teachers of similar experience and credentials, and also offers access to low-cost health insurance. The cuts also slice $10 million off a childcare subsidy program that defrays the costs of care for lower-income families.
The PEF in particular is an innovative, impactful, and nation-leading initiative. The childcare sector writ large is dealing with major staffing shortages. Because childcare programs are rightly required to maintain low child-to-adult ratios, a lack of staff means empty classrooms and longer waitlists—and can, at times, send programs into a financial death spiral.
Solving for staffing shortages and low pay
Staffing struggles are a consequence of the fact childcare workers—who are disproportionately women of color—are endemically underpaid across the country. Childcare center workers earn a median wage of around $30,000 a year. The share of women living in poverty is twice the rate for childcare workers as for all workers; 23% of childcare workers struggle with hunger, and about 15% rely on government assistance to meet basic needs, such as cash assistance for disabilities, housing assistance, free or reduced-price lunch for their children, or food stamps.
The Pay Equity Fund tackles this problem head-on by boosting pay for early childhood educators—some 4,000 of whom have seen paycheck increases due to the program. A study by the research consultancy Mathematica found the PEF has been successful in increasing D.C.’s early childhood education workforce and suggested that it was a “useful strategy for increasing workforce retention and stability”—exactly what the childcare workforce needs.
Further, PEF builds on the District’s investments in universal preschool, which have been shown to raise the maternal labor force participation rate by 10%, proving there are many women who want to work but cannot, due to childcare challenges—with all the positive knock-on effects for the local economy. Why treat childcare differently? Recent polling from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research underscores how real this concern is for women and families: a majority of current caregivers are worried that their care responsibilities will impact their financial prosperity, earning potential, and career goals.
Solutions for long-term funding
We need programs like PEF that address the childcare crisis head-on, and we also need serious conversations about how to sustainably fund them. We can’t pretend these programs don’t cost money—but they are investments, just like paying for fire service or libraries or public schools. Such services are good for our families, but also good for our economy and communities writ large. So let’s not just talk about innovative programs but also innovative ways to pay for them: ways that protect childcare solutions from the whims of shifting political and economic winds.
Whether it’s multiyear funding, dedicated and protected revenue streams, or forms of mandatory funding, policymakers have options to avoid what’s happening right now in D.C. Consider public education: it is a constitutional right in all 50 states and D.C. Thus, policymakers can fight over exact funding amounts, but they cannot eliminate school funding altogether.
Long-term impacts on the economy
It’s hard to overstate how short-sighted these cuts are for D.C. Mayor Bowser is solving for a budget shortfall created by a lack of workers through policy means that will make it harder for a huge segment of the population to go to work. A recent survey by Under 3 DC, a local nonprofit, found that 57% of parents felt that early-childhood costs and shortages would affect their ability to continue to live in the District. If D.C. depopulates, that will surely hammer the local economy for years to come. It also provides a precedent for other state lawmakers to look to in lean budget years. The cure could be orders of magnitude worse than the disease.
We appreciate that tough decisions are required in tough budget years (although there is an active debate about how dire the situation in D.C. truly is). But balancing a budget on the backs of hard-working families and childcare educators is as wrongheaded as it is short-sighted. In Washington policy circles, we frequently hear the phrase, “budgets are moral documents.” At the very least, they’re a statement of priorities and policy vision. Mayor Bowser’s childcare proposals fail on both counts; to execute these cuts would be, quite frankly, public policy malpractice.
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