Feel free to borrow and send letters to Washington today.
Jon_Cardinal@schumer.senate.gov (Schumer)
angelica_annino@gillibrand.senate.gov (Gillibrand)
I am a director of a NY state licensed campus child care center in the Hudson River Valley, and I have been working in child care for 25 years. In the past few years the child care industry has been struggling in what we have described as a "care crisis" with a shortage of high quality programs, with working families unable to pay the high cost of care, and with child care providers working at poverty wages in our neighborhoods. We have been a blind spot for far too long. Now with the COVID-19 pandemic, our already strained industry is crumbling.
The National Association of Young Children reported today that without immediate relief, it is estimated that more than 50 % of child care centers in our nation will close in April. I am writing this letter to request stimulus funding to keep the child care industry from collapsing.
Childcare centers need your strong leadership immediately. I respectfully request that you work with Speaker Pelosi to significantly INCREASE the ask for childcare to $50B. Without this funding, our child care infrastructure will disintegrate.
Never in my long career have I experienced such confusion, neglect, and dangerous lack of protection and disrespect for children and their child care teachers. While schools close and the public is told to stay at home, child care centers are asked to increase their capacity and suspend their standards and loosen their regulated safety measures. Caring for children in the best of times is an honorable profession which demands profound knowledge and expertise. An infectious disease pandemic is not the time to lower standards and loosen regulations. More than ever, child care centers need professionals, increased materials and resources, and strengthened health and safety standards to operate in emergency conditions and to survive during and beyond this pandemic.
Emergency relief is urgently needed to protect our children and our care grid. Without supporting the infrastructure of care givers that allows nurses, doctors, grocery store workers, and all essential personnel to be of service, we will leave our entire workforce stranded and weaken our society. The cost of damaging the care-force that sustains our economy and is the heart of our community will have long lasting consequences on our national strength. The way we respond to children, families and their caregivers in this crisis will reveal our values for decades to come.
Carol Garboden Murray
cmurray@bard.edu
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Carol Murray
Bard Nursery School
Red Hook NY
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-19-2020 10:08 PM
From: Carol Murray
Subject: Advocacy during Coronavirus
and a letter to our governor sent a few days ago
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Carol Murray
Bard Nursery School
Red Hook NY
Original Message:
Sent: 03-14-2020 01:04 AM
From: Carol Murray
Subject: Advocacy during Coronavirus
Dear Colleagues,
The current health crisis is an important time for advocacy for early education and care. Although we often feel invisible, unappreciated and poorly compensated, we are the indispensable back bone of our community. Here is a letter I recently wrote - please feel free to use any part of it that might help you in your local advocacy efforts and please share your advocacy stories and struggles during this difficult time.
Dear Editor,
The recent executive order made it clear that schools will be closed for the next 14 days and we have heard lengthy conversations about college and university response plans to COVID-19, but it is frustrating and shocking that NOTHING has been mentioned about babies, toddlers and preschoolers in child care centers across our county.
As many political leaders have mentioned in recent days - all of us know someone who knows someone who knows someone - and that's how this virus spreads. Childcare teachers not only "know" someone - we are holding, rocking, changing diapers and wiping noses of the very special children of "someone". In our child care centers we are caring for siblings and family members who are directly involved in the colleges and schools, and we are the infrastructure that supports parents in the workforce throughout our communities, yet in the critical plan to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus we are a blind spot.
Child care teachers are the lowest paid professionals in our communities. Many (99 % women) are working at poverty wages with no benefits. Many childcare centers are small businesses and they will remain OPEN for service because they are in fear of losing their livelihood. What emergency funding can be made available to ensure that child care teachers are supported during the coronavirus crisis? What can we do as a community to support the already strained and vulnerable workforce that supports families and cares for our most precious resources - the babies, toddlers in our neighborhoods? Lets ask executive Molinaro and Ryan what child care centers in Ulster and Dutchess County should do in response to the executive order to close schools for the next 14 days.
Please don't forget our youngest citizens and their caregivers during this world crisis that is at our front door.
Thank you,
Carol Garboden Murray
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Carol Murray
Bard Nursery School
Red Hook NY
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