The Early Childhood Alliance advocates treating early care and education as the public good that it is. (As a refresher, please visit prior blogs on this topic here, here, here, and here). ECA recently created a childcare needs assessment for Park City as well as a summary of the developmental and workforce benefits of high-quality early care and education. These documents demonstrate in detail the clear need for, and benefits of, an affordable, accessible early care and education system in our community.
We know that we have a problem. The question is whether we are willing to invest public funds in our early care and education system to address these critical community needs. If not, as Elliot Haspel clearly outlined in his opinion piece in the Deseret News when discussing the impending federal funding childcare fiscal cliff, “the damage from inaction is difficult to overstate yet easy to predict. . . . Quality child care will become a luxury good, nearly impossible to find for all but the wealthiest.
The Early Childhood Alliance has submitted a proposal to Park City Municipal, the Park City Cares About Kids program, seeking local public funds to:
(1) stabilize the childcare industry by increasing compensation for the Summit County early childhood workforce serving families who live or work in Park City;
(2) address the affordability gap for income-eligible Park City residents with children under age six who need childcare;
(3) increase utilization of the federal childcare subsidies available through DWS by Park City resident and workforce families;
(4) increase Summit County licensed, residential certificate, or DWS-approved FFN capacity to care for Park City resident and workforce children under age two; and
(5) increase licensed family, residential certificate, and DWS-approved FFN capacity in Park City.
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”