Hi Justice thank you for your reply,
It's great to see a college student getting involved in the conversation. The premise of the original feed is that regardless of where ECE services are provided, there will need to a substantial amount of outside money put into the system in order for wages to be increased, for there to better trained staff in the classroom so that there is a high level of quality service being provided to the children, while at the same time not driving up the cost of childcare to the point that families cannot afford the care regardless if they are low income, middle income, or otherwise. Many are advocating for "free universal Pre-K" for all children. While that sounds great, Universal Pre-K would only address the needs of those 3-5 year old children from the hours of 7:30 to 2:30 which is a typical school day in the public school system. To say that Free Universal Pre-K would allow parents to go back to work, does not address what would happen with those students before and after-school. The majority of families that work need childcare from 6:30 to 6:30 which is why the early childhood care industry was created to begin with. The public school systems were never intended to function this way, and because current K-12 programs across the United States are historically underfunded both by the Federal and State Governments, its laughable to think you could put another layer of educational expectations on that system and it would be funded at an appropriate level to meet the needs of these new students ages 3-5 on their campuses. Over the last 50 years if they haven't made any substantial increases in pay for public school teachers and increased the per student funding to meet the increased financial demands on school districts, I can one reasonably expect that they will follow through on approving funding for Universal Pre-K regardless of the setting that Universal Pre-K would occur.
The other problem is that "Universal Prer-K" only addresses one aspect of what most families are facing with regards to findiing "Affordable High Quality Childcare". It does nothing to address the cost for full 12 hour per day care for children 6 wks to 3 years or after-school care for students ages 5-12. The true costs of providing high quality care for those age groups are astronomical, and there are no current government funded childcare subsidies that come even close to reimbursing families or providers for what they are actually charging for the service.
In the real world, Ideological, theoretical, or collegial discussions about what is "optimum" or "best practices" in any subject matter can only be seriously considered if there have also been deep rooted discussion about the resources that are needed and available to implement, carry out, and sustain those "best practices once they have been initiated or mandated that others will be responsible for meeting those expectations.
I will be posting a new feed later this afternoon, that concretely lays out the actual true financial costs of providing high quality care and what financially will be needed from the government to achieve everything that is being proposed by NAEYC and promised by certain politicians in the current political environment.
Good luck with your studies and please consider adding at least one or two general business studies classes to your degree plan. Whether you go into teaching after graduation or some other field, having a good understanding of basic business principles and practices, will help you tremendously as you work towards making significant and meaningful changes to our world.
Thanks again for your interest and reply.
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Tim Kaminski
Director/Owner
Gingerbread Kids Academy
Richmond TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-21-2020 05:16 PM
From: Justice Ross
Subject: You can't put High Quality & Well Paid Staff in The Same Sentence with Affordable
Hello Tim,
Edit: I'm adding another reply below, because I completely forgot to address one of the most important points regarding everything below in your post. This portion of the reply is about why I believe that the eventual answer will involve predominantly publicly funded early childhood education, which isn't the same, in my opinion, as shutting down every school that isn't currently publicly funded.
I think when most of us talk about high quality childcare for every American child, we're talking about a situation in which capitalism and class cease to be the obstacles. This doesn't mean "at the expense of preschool teachers" - to me, it means a shift in how we as a country organize education.
Every professor I can think of who's spoken to me on the subject supports, for example, both a Worthy Wage and Universal Pre-K. We're asking for government subsidies that provide not only childcare, but childcare and early childhood education provided by high-quality teachers earning a worthy wage.
This falls in line with NAEYC's principles regarding equity. Even past the pre-K stage, public school (in my state) is often funded based on property taxes within the school district, which creates an enormous disparity in education.
So these facts are true:
1. You cannot demand "High-Quality" early childhood education without demanding a worthy wage for teachers.
And
2. You cannot say "Only the wealthiest children in America deserve education."
To short cut past another political conversation: No matter what your personal beliefs on wealth and personal worth, deserving, or hard work are, the children and what they deserve has nothing to do with their parents.
So how do we reconcile those two points?
My answer points toward a rearrangement of equitably government-funded, high quality, well-paying early childhood education programs across the board.
I deserve a worthy wage, but I don't believe that poor parents shouldn't have access to my work, and the answer to that conundrum lies in advocacy.
When we put "high quality" and "affordable" education in the same sentence, what many of us mean is "affordable to families," not "no one should foot a reasonable bill." We can all do our best individually, but eventually it would feel like the impossible being demanded. I can understand the frustration of hearing it over and over if it is framed as your program's entirely independent problem to solve.
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Justice Ross
Child Development Undergraduate Student
Los Angeles Valley College
North Hollywood, CA
Original Message:
Sent: 01-15-2020 03:49 PM
From: Tim Kaminski
Subject: You can't put High Quality & Well Paid Staff in The Same Sentence with Affordable
I'm sure many of you are going to disagree with me, but I am so tired of political people, who have no experience what so ever in operating an early childhood center, saying that they want High Quality Childcare for every American child, with a well paid teachers and that it should be Affordable. They say that childcare is too expensive for families and that it shouldn't cost so much.
When you put the words "High Quality" and "Well Paid" in the same sentence with "Affordable" you obviously have no idea what it takes in terms of the associated cost in today's environment to own and operate an early childhood education center and then try to be high quality and provide your staff a good living wage.
And now all of the candidates on the stage last night said that they want to get all of the 3-5 year olds into public schools for a free education and yet in the states where this is already happening, the school districts are not being required to follow the same rigorous standards from childcare licensing that those of us in the private sector are required to follow. How is that safe or better for those students?
I say that childcare today is not expensive enough if you truly want High Quality and well paid staff. Most business owners in childcare will tell that the biggest expense of providing the childcare service is the labor cost and that is with many areas paying only between $8.00-$10.00 an hour without benefits. The profit margins in childcare for a small or medium sized privately owned center are either break even or around 10%. And in most cases, centers are limited on what they can charge for their services based on what families in their area can afford to pay. Yes, some states already offer childcare subsidies to parents, but in many cases the subsidy is not paid at the same rate as what the childcare center actually charges and they are not allowed to collect the difference from the family, so they end up taking a loss on that particular child.
In my area, the cost of childcare for an infant ranges from $95.00 per week up to $260.00 per week depending on what side of town you live on. You can only imagine what type of program and services are provided by the center that charges $95.00 per week. At that rate there is no way that they could pay their staff $11.00 - $15.00 per hour with benefits, pay for all of the required training, and all other associated costs of operating the center. Now the place that charges $260.00 per week for an infant has a newer looking building, is able to send their staff for training which leads to higher quality care and they can probably afford to pay their staff a higher rate between $11.00-$13.00 per hour with limited benefits. But again when you factor in the cost of a new building, liability insurance and other operating costs, their profit margins end up being low as well. They too are limited to as to how much they can charge, because many people say they are too expensive although the quality of the care they are providing is Higher than the one that is charging $95.00 per week which considered affordable but in no way can be high quality.
In order to get childcare teacher pay rates up to the $11-$15.00 an hour range with benefits, provide a high quality program by paying for more skilled training sessions for the staff or require the teaching staff to have bachelor degrees in early ed, every childcare center would have to significantly increase their weekly rates to cover the increased cost to them as a business. It is unrealistic to think that you can get to a point of High Quality Affordable Child Care and better paid staff, by the childcare center charging less for their services.
So my point is where will the money come from to cover the gap between a business actually needs to charge for their childcare service and what a family can afford to pay. Will government funding simply be funneled to the school districts and then 3-5 year old's will no longer be found in private childcare centers, which would ultimately destroy those businesses? Or will the government funding come directly to the childcare providers but at a rate that actually matches what they charge, with maybe the family paying a small portion?
Who is ultimately going to determine what is the true actual cost per child to provide High Quality Childcare and what is the actual number that is considered "affordable" for a family to pay.
I'm interested to hear other Director/Owners perspectives on this and from some of the leadership at NAEYC.
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Tim Kaminski
Director/Owner
Gingerbread Kids Academy
Richmond TX
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