By Katie Dukes
Gov. Josh Stein visited Kate’s Korner Learning Center in Durham on Monday to announce the creation of a new task force on child care and early education.
The executive order establishing the bipartisan task force says its purpose is to “examine opportunities, barriers, and policy solutions to expand the supply of accessible, affordable, and high-quality child care and early education options for working families with young children in North Carolina.”
“I’m honored that Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt and Sen. Jim Burgin have agreed to co-chair this task force and prioritize this emergency,” Stein said. “They will be joined by a group of care providers, legislators, business leaders, parents, community partners, and industry experts to figure out how we invest for parents and our child’s care workers.”
Stein, who is a Democrat, appointed Hunt, also a Democrat, along with Republican Sen. Burgin to co-chair the task force. Both elected officials have previously advocated for child care solutions in North Carolina.
“North Carolina’s strength lies in its families, and access to quality child care is crucial to their wellbeing,” Burgin said in a press release from the governor’s office. “I am proud to co-chair this task force alongside and Lieutenant Governor Hunt so that we can ensure North Carolina is the best state to start a family.”
The task force will release an interim report in June, Stein said, along with a more robust report by the end of the year.
Stein also said that the budget proposal he plans to release this month will include a “substantial investment to pay providers more, increase program quality, and raise child care subsidy rates, including in rural communities.”
Opportunities, barriers, and policy solutions
Stein identified several “interlocking problems” facing early care and learning in North Carolina — not enough slots to meet demand, high costs for available slots, and low wages for early childhood educators.
“Right now, we have only one child care slot for every five families that need one,” Stein said. “Moms find out they’re pregnant and immediately have to jump onto a wait list hoping that a slot will open in time for when she goes back to work.”
Stein went on to say that even when families do find child care, it’s unaffordable.
“The average cost of infant care in North Carolina is $12,000 [annually]. That is more than UNC tuition,” Stein said. “Economists say that child care should cost only 7 percent of a family’s income, but four in five families have to pay higher than that.”
Stein said that even with high tuition for high-quality care, wages for early childhood educators are too low for teachers to thrive.
“About 40 percent of child care workers are on some form of public assistance,” Stein said. “Because of the low pay, we don’t have enough people becoming child care workers, and so we don’t have enough teachers to staff the classrooms, which means we don’t have enough classrooms with slots for North Carolina’s children.”
Stein called this a “vicious cycle” that affects every North Carolinian whether or not they have children themselves, because it keeps parents who want jobs out of the workforce.
“But this should be a choice,” Stein said. “Parents should not be pushed out of the workforce because they can’t afford to work.”
He stressed the important role of both state government and the businesses community in developing policy solutions for these problems.
“When we invest in child care, our entire society benefits,” Stein said. “Parents get to keep working and keep building their careers, we don’t see as many vacancies or help wanted signs on our small business stores, and most importantly, our kids get a safe, nurturing, and supportive environment where they can learn and thrive during those formative years — one that will shape their educational trajectory.”
Accessible, affordable, and high-quality child care
In her introductory remarks welcoming the governor to Kate’s Korner Learning Center, founder Kate Goodwin said, “I want to prove that the most important factor in healing our early childhood ecosystem is focused around the healing of our workforce.”
“This is my purpose in early childhood education: To make sure that every educator who spends hours and days teaching, nurturing, inspiring our next generation has a quality of life themselves, and are seen, heard, and appreciated,” Goodwin said.
Prior to the governor’s task force announcement, Goodwin took him on a tour of the center.
He visited one classroom where 2-year-olds had just learned all about the letter “I,” and sang the alphabet song for him. In another classroom, he read a book to 4-year-olds, who were joined on the floor by Hunt. Stein’s youngest daughter, Leah, accompanied him on the visit because she works in child care while in college.
During the event, Goodwin said that teachers at Kate’s Korner are paid livable wages, receive health insurance, have four-day work weeks, and participate in mental health and wellness programs, along with ongoing professional development opportunities.
When Stein was asked by media what it would take to reproduce the Kate’s Korner model around the state, he said, “It will take investment, and you have to figure out the most effective way to gather the resources to do it.”
So far during this legislative session, three notable bills have been filed that directly relate to early care and learning.
House Bill 115, Child Care Facility Tax Exemption, would exempt all child care facilities from property taxes. Senate Bill 98, Funds for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, would appropriate $1.5 million in recurring funding for the literacy program that mails developmentally appropriate books to children whose families have signed up to participate.
House Bill 316, Child Care Act, includes $200 million in each year of the biennium to expand NC Pre-K to serve all eligible 4-year-olds, $35 million each year to expand subsidized child care, and a one-time $10 million allocation to sustain child care programs on community college campuses. The bill would also direct community colleges without existing child care programs to report on the feasibility of hosting one, and for the Department of Public Instruction to study the feasibility of a child care apprenticeship program in high schools. Finally, if passed, HB 316 would also allocate $115 million each year to provide free healthy meals to all public school students.
Additionally, Hunt has announced her “Future-Ready North Carolina” policy plan, which prioritizes community colleges, expanding K-12 career readiness programs, and child care access and affordability.
“For too many parents, the cost of child care is now higher than their rent,” Hunt said on Monday. “Our state loses over $5 billion annually in economic activity because of the challenges around child care accessibility and affordability.”
This economic impact was at the core of remarks made by Secretary of Commerce Lee Lilley.
“This is an economic issue, and one that we know with further investment and further creativity, we can only further expand North Carolina’s opportunity to be the number one state for business,” Lilley said.
Stein wrapped up his task force announcement at Kate’s Korner by saying that child care and early childhood education “is about the best investment we can make as a state.”
It works for the kids because they learn skills. We were just in there watching 2-year-olds starting to learn their alphabet; really very impressive stuff. It also works for parents, because it lets them have the peace of mind that their child’s going to be well cared for while they go to work, and it becomes affordable. And of course it works for the economy, for business, because it keeps productive folks on the job, helping to grow this economy.
So we want people, the parents of North Carolina, to know that we recognize this is an urgent issue. I’m creating this task force comprised of leaders of both parties so that we can identify solutions that we can all get behind to address this issue once and for all.
Gov. Josh Stein
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