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Let’s change child care in West Virginia

Families can’t work without child care. Child care providers can’t continue to operate in the red financially. Early educators can’t continue to survive on poverty wages. Something's gotta give.

When over 60% of families in West Virginia live in a child care desert (areas with little or no access to quality child care) already, it’s critical that we lock arms with child care providers and make sure they have the funds to keep providing high-quality child care for our kids and still be able to keep their business open and provide for their own families.

Tell your West Virginia House members to vote YES on funding for child care to change the reimbursement from attendance to enrollment!

Dear House Member:

I'm writing to urge you to vote YES on funding for child care to ensure child care providers have the critical supports they need to keep their businesses open and ensure families have access to child care.

When you think about your average K-12 public school, when students are forced to stay home sick or because there is a family emergency, a teacher's pay or the overall budget of the school isn't impacted just because your kid wasn’t there that day. Because school funding is based on enrollment, not day-to-day attendance, school officials can keep the lights on in the building, pay their teachers and staff, and keep running schools smoothly even if some students aren’t there.

But for early educators in child care programs, it’s the opposite.

Right now, child care centers are paid for families who receive child care assistance based on attendance - i.e. only when and if a child shows up for care. If a child care program has families who receive publicly funded child care, and they are absent for one reason or another (like they get sick…which any parent knows happens ALL the time), they don’t get the reimbursement funding for those kids.

This can make for an unstable budget. Meaning it can hurt their business. And if it happens enough, like in the pandemic, they can be forced to close. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

Families can’t work without child care. Child care providers can’t continue to operate in the red financially. Early educators can’t continue to survive on poverty wages.

Please vote YES on funding for child care to change the reimbursement from attendance to enrollment.

Sincerely,

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