 We have a chance to welcome everyone who's still with us via Zoom. Welcome back. Welcome to everyone in the room. We are now in the second part of our legislative summit. It's my pleasure to introduce the moderator for the second panel, Speaker Joe Krawinsky. And the panel's title is Universal Affordable Child Care Access, Why It Matters and Opportunities for Success. So please join me in welcoming Speaker Krawinsky. And on panel. Thank you. So welcome back everyone. I am honored and privileged to have the opportunity to moderate this conversation around universal child care access and why it matters and opportunities for success. In 2021, the legislature passed a bill that was signed in the law making it our goal that families pay no more than 10% of their income to cover child care. We are on the path of trying to figure out how can we make this happen. We know that there are families that are paying over 30% for child care costs and that's just simply unacceptable. And so I am proud to be part of bringing people together to talk about how we can, what's happening out in the field to hear stories about why this is important and the impacts it has on families in our community. So it would be great to start by having everyone here introduce themselves and share why they believe a universal affordable child care system is so important to Vermont. So Allie, let's start with you. Welcome. Hi. Thank you so much, Speaker. Hi everyone. What a pleasure to be here. Sometimes feels like a miracle when you're here because I have identical four-year-olds and I thank goodness had a minute to talk to some of their early educators a minute ago who are in the audience and I got my blood pressure down and everyone's okay. I just so appreciate this topic and being discussed today and all of you here giving your attention. So I'll just explain briefly why I think this is so important through the lens of grounding us in what is Vermont's child care crisis. I think we're all increasingly familiar with that three out of five kids even before the pandemic did not have access to the child care that they need. That's eighty seven hundred children in Vermont today today. Think about where they are. What are they doing right now? What are their families doing right now? So that is even before the pandemic this crisis and access. And then if you think about it, you know, as Speaker Quincy just said, if you found that child care, you feel so lucky, but you're paying 30 to 40% of your income to access it. And then you think about quality. Early educators are the heart and soul of a quality early child education system. They're making $14 an hour on average and without benefits. So there is your crisis, folks. This is a broken part of our business model. It is not an infrastructure. And yet, why am I so excited about this work so rarely in our history? We have an opportunity to pull a lever like this, where when it's not working, it spins us further into crisis. And when it does work, it affects all the things that we care about. So just think about the early development of a child and every kid having that access. Think about their implications for the families, for our communities, for the economy. Here's one number for you. And we can talk about data plenty throughout this panel. But here's one number for you, right, $275 million. That's the economic boost we get when we put thousands of Vermonters back to work that know we'll go back to work when they have access to high-quality purple child care. So there are so many reasons to do this. That's sort of a little bit of why, what we're trying to solve together. But I just want to round it out with the equity perspective, because at the end of the day, that's why Let's Grow Kids is facilitating a statewide movement that has come to the moment that we're in right now, facing a session like this. This movement was founded on the principles of equity, and you can see it ripples through every possible dimension of this. First of all, kids, kids, kids are not having access to the high-quality early learning experiences we know through the brain science that they absolutely need. It is not accessible for those kids, it is not accessible for those families. Through all dimensions, there's not enough of it, and it's not affordable. Those who actually get it, there's not enough funding in the system to support the true quality and wraparound services that every single one of those kids needs to support their healthy development and a lifetime of their thriving and success. From academic success to the ability to have successful relationships and anger management and critical thinking and propensity for or against chronic disease or addictive behaviors. This is happening for these kids between zero and five. This is the basis of an equity issue. Secondarily, think about the workforce. The wages of the early childhood educators, the bottom 2% of any profession. And these are mostly women. These are mostly women doing the most important job in our world who are making less than anyone else. This is an equity issue. The diversity of the workforce is important. The final element here is you know kids recognize skin tone by six months old. So think about a future when we actually have a prepared and supported workforce, a diverse workforce who is trained and supported in the work to help their kids and their families at this most crucial time in their development. The equity issue is even crept into our business conversations recently. These large employers, they see this as a crisis. They're able to maybe push a little bit here and there, not solve the systemic problems of supply and quality and access, but maybe as a child care scholarship, maybe an on-site program. Smaller employers and their employees can't do that. So a systemic solution to this is within our reach. We've never been closer. The table is set and think about what's going to happen when we get this right from all dimensions of the things that we care about. So thank you very much. I really appreciate the chance to talk about this in any possible table. So it's really a joy to be here with this panel. Great. Thank you so much, Allie. Nikki, go ahead. Great. Thank you for joining us this morning. I'm excited to be here. My name is Nikki Tatrow. I'm the director of marketing and e-commerce for a small business in South Burlington, Vermont, named Instamart. I recently got involved with the Life's Grow Kids campaign on a multiple fronts. I am a regional advocate in the Loyal County where I live in Morrisville, Vermont. And I am employer endorser of the campaign. Instamart supports this movement already for this action to be taken. And today, I'm here to speak to you behalf of a parent advocate. I am a brand new mom. My daughter turned one year old on October 25th. And I survived. Yay. So I'm here talking to you about that. I am married and I survived. So this is all great news for me. But I'm here to talk to you about what I went through, my experience over the last year, because I know it is not unique to me. I know that all of my peers, my friends, my colleagues went through the same thing. So I found out when I was pregnant that I needed to get on the child care list the next day. I was in the OBGYN parking lot calling and calling and calling, getting on wait lists. My husband didn't know I was pregnant yet. But I know I needed to do that, because I know that the lists were insurmountable. And so for me, we ended up getting child care when my daughter was seven months old. So what did I do for those seven months? I'm a full-time working parent. I have teams that need me at work, not just remote, and to be there in person so I can help my business thrive and grow as their director of marketing. And I was taking my child to work with me. And I felt so fortunate to be able to do that. My employer supported me, but so many people can't do that. My friends, my colleagues, my peers, they had to choose. Who's going to stay home? Who's going to raise my child? And again, I'm here because I'm the lucky one. My daughter now has amazing child care and has amazing early childhood educators at Next Generation in Williston. And that is 55 minutes from my home. So 55 minutes of my daughter twice, excuse me, two hours of her day are sitting in the car commuting back and forth to Williston, Vermont, because I can't find access anywhere else. Now to the affordability piece. My husband and I are very blessed. We live in a very modest, great life in Vermont. We're excited to be able to do that. My husband is a small business owner, he's a general contractor. We both need to work and we both need to work to be able to afford and live and breathe in the state comfortably and happy. And this is where we want to raise our daughter. We pay 29% of our household income to childcare. 29%. While we're paying off student loans and trying to get good, healthy foods to feed ourselves and our daughter and pay mortgage and all of the other things that we want to do to support this local economy. It's insurmountable, it's unfair, it's crippling. It's really crippling. So I appreciate this audience today. I hope that there are questions as we go through this panel. I'm really here to advocate for all of the parents in Vermont who are going through exactly the same thing that I went through and really, again, I'm the lucky one. My child does have access. Both of the parents in our household are working and this is a great outcome for us but there are so, so many people who do not get that. We know that there are 5,000 people in this state who are willing and able and wanting to go back to work. So please, please, please, let's collectively make smart decisions together. I know Vermont can't do this. I'm excited to support this campaign and thank you for listening. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Very powerful. Thank you, Janet. Yes. Welcome. Thank you, Jill. And thanks, Allie, and thanks, Nikki. I usually say, like, well, it's always tough to follow Allie but this time, now I'm calling Allie and Nikki, who both really expressed a huge, I guess, the challenge and the opportunity in front of us right now. So my name is Janet McLaughlin and I've had the pleasure of learning from and working with early childhood educators for the last 10 years. So starting with those who cared for and taught my two boys at Pine Forest Children's Center in Burlington and then as serving as the volunteer treasurer at Pine Forest, where through many conversations and the late nights with spreadsheets like doing this in addition to your full-time job and your two children, I came intimately familiar with the trade-offs between affordability for families and compensation for early childhood educators. And then I was able to join Let's Grow Kids and was a senior leader there for several years. And I worked closely with veteran early childhood care to address capacity and quality and viability. People like Chris, who you'll hear from next. But today, I'm primarily here as the Executive Director of the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children. And I want to tell you a little bit more about our workforce development efforts throughout the panel. But I want to tell you first a little bit more about Vermont AUIC. So our mission is to advance equity and excellence in early childhood education with early childhood educators as our foundation, as an organization. But they truly are the foundation for the entire system that we have or that we want to create in the state. We're the state's largest membership association for early childhood educators. And we are the state affiliate of NACI, the National Association for the Education of Young Children. And we work to provide resources to early childhood educators and advocate for policies that will move us forward. And I want to point out that our work is aligned with multiple professional resources and standards. Early childhood education is not advanced babysitting. It is not like motherhood 2.0. This is a skilled profession. And the work that early childhood educators take on, we have a code of ethical conduct. NACI, there's position statements on equity, position statements on developmentally appropriate practice in the state of Vermont. There are other Vermont guiding principles for full and equitable participation of each and every child. This is a Vermont Early Childhood Action Plan. So I just want to provide a little bit of that context. That this is serious work. It is research-based work. It is skill-based work that early childhood educators are taking on. And we know that they are compensated nowhere near the value that they are bringing to the children, to their families, to our communities, and to our economy. For Vermont EYC, we are really proud to run programs with support from the state of Vermont via the legislature. We ran the Teach Early Childhood Scholarship Program. For early childhood educators, we run a registered Early Childhood Education apprenticeship program. We are in the early days of a pre-apprenticeship program for high school students. Every run, the newly established student loan, repayment assistance program. And we've also spent several years as the backbone for an initiative led by early childhood educators in the state to establish a recognized profession for early childhood educators in the state that would provide a clear and consistent basis for quality and for compensation in the field. So I'm happy to go into more detail on all of that as we continue our discussion. Great. Thank you so much. And it's true that the child care policies that we're looking at is so wide ranging. And workforce is such a huge part of that. And so I'm looking forward to talking more about different ways that we can support the workforce side of this challenge that we're trying to solve here. And Vic, so to you. My name's Chris Nelson. And I own and operate Mountain View Child Care in Troy, Vermont. I came into this field. I fell into it, kind of, because I had four children under the age of five who needed child care. And the two places I could get them were 45 minutes apart. And then I had to drop them off and drive. And everybody had different schedules. And I wanted to be picked up. It was impossible. It was way too expensive. It took too much time out of our quality time because there was no quality time that was all on the road. And it just didn't work. So I looked at it at that point. And I said, I know the problems, and now I need to find the solution. So I quit my job. And I decided to open my business. And when I opened my business, the first day, I had six two-year-olds sitting up with me. And I had a little bit of anxiety. What am I going to do with these little creatures? And they're minds that I can shape and grow. And I decided to look at it. I would give every child something new every day. And I will learn better so I can do better. And I went back to school while I was doing child care. And I got an education. In child care, I had the degrees previously so that I could focus on what it was. And I read all the research. I realized that by age three, the trajectory of that child is already being determined and impacted by the quality experiences they're having. So I can change that. And I can emphasize the best growth and the best development that they can have. And so if I invest my skills in these children, then they grow up. And they have in their heart memories of a month that will keep them here. I left the state. I came back. And the reason I came back is because I wanted to raise my children to have memories that I had here. So I came back with my kids. We built our business. Now I have children. I've been in it 30 years. I have children of my first group in my care now. And they'll still say to me, hey, do you remember when we did this? And I'll put it back into the program because if you can remember a memory in your heart 20 years later or 30 years later, then that made a minute impact. And if you can relive that memory with the child in my care, then we get to keep spinning that cycle. And then the parents can go to work and they feel comfortable. And they're not worried about it. They can focus on their job. And I can focus on the children. And they can share that at the end of the day. So my role as an early educator impacts everybody in this room regardless of where you're coming from. And we all have an opportunity when we know the problem to meet the solution. We know the solution now. Guys, thank you so much. Go ahead. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you, Allie. Thank you, Speaker, for having me. Very excited, very passionate about this topic. So my name is Adelaide George, the president of Vermont Creamery. We make delicious award-winning cheeses in central Vermont. Business has been in the States operating for 38 years. So we have a big responsibility, 130 employees. And 85% of our workforce is in manufacturing. So also to know that I'm a mother of two young boys, Matisse with 11 and Hugo, who is six. And so I'm going to think of it. I think you picked the right word. It's survival mode. And so I'm running a business. My husband is traveling two weeks out of the month. And all our families are in France. So no support, no backup. And so it's an interesting journey. We know that past three years, we have felt the impact of a global pandemic, juggling work, running businesses, child care, school. And if we have underscored the necessity of what child care is, which is a necessity for us, think of a manufacturing worker. If this person cannot show up to work because the child care is closed, or because there is no child care, we simply cannot run the line. And what I mean by that is the milk is coming. And we have nobody to turn this milk into cheese. And to put food on the table and on supermarket shelves. So the importance of child care for our employee is critical, is essential for our staff. Our business has been very fortunate to achieve incredible growth over the past couple years. And when you look at the fortune that we have, but also the challenges that we are facing for supporting this growth, it's not like of market access. People love Ramon Jesus, in general. It's not like of resources or capital. It's not like of access to milk. It's literally the number one challenge is workforce. Oh boy. And when I look at the opportunity that we have here to really change the game, to really bring people into Ramon's, because there is a supporting infrastructure, but also supports the people that wants to work. Child care solves all of this. And so we need to pay attention to that. And we need to be forceful about where we want to take this opportunity. We face the challenge that across our entire team, we have developed hiring practices. We offer great benefits, which is launch something called flexible manufacturing, where people pick their hours, whether they want to start at 10 o'clock in the morning, because they got to do the drop-off or leave at 2 o'clock in the afternoon if they got to do the pickup, to really try to think differently into how we structure our workforce to adapt to those conditions. But even with all those efforts, we know that we can't solve it as an employer alone. And that's why when Ali called 2020, I think by that time I still had the kids upstairs. I was like, oh my god, stop screaming. I'm on the conference going in. And she's like, hey, you want to talk childcare? I said, yes, please. Because at that time my husband had paused his work so he could watch the kids. So I can run a business for a pandemic for the essential workers. We still were paying our daycare because I'm like, I can't have them going out on business. So we need to keep paying even if we're not sending our kids. And so when Ali said I'm putting this group together to hold a CO2 tank, and we need to think of how we're going to put this bill together, I was like, yes, absolutely. Let's do it. So we know I won't repeat, but I want to repeat. Vermont did a strong childcare system that is a 40-volt, 29%. This is not acceptable. It's not sustainable for our state, neither our parents. For our family, that fairly compensates early childhood educator, and offers room for all our children. And so we have an opportunity. We passed this bill, 171, in 2001. And so that was a big momentum. That was a big achievement from all of us. And this is the first step. And we need to keep the pressure. We need to keep the momentum to really be the first in the nation to offer, I quote, universal childcare for all our working family. We can position ourselves as a leader in the states. And also, recrudes. We populate our state with young working families and propelled from moms in a thriving economy Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much. And you spoke about how your business has been impacted by the lack of affordable universal childcare system. Nick, you're going to look at you. You spoke so eloquently about your personal experience. And could you tell us what it's been like at your organization as well? Yeah, absolutely. So as I mentioned, I'm a director of two teams at Instrumer. And so we have been dealing with the throes of trying to get employees back to work post-COVID pandemic and getting everybody in person so we can work collaboratively together. And so like myself, they have also been bringing children to work with them. So really, I think for me and as a director of my team, I look at the workforce and think, how do I get these people to stay on the team who are proving themselves very valuable? And how do I get more? My company is very fortunate right now. We are growing and I need more team members. I need more help. And so from a recruitment and retention standpoint, this is equally important, if not even more so. So that even though Instrumer with our tremendous flexible policies of 16 weeks paid leave for the maternal parent as well as bringing your child to work with you, we have come up with creative solutions as Adeline spoke about too. And so it's still not enough. And so we want to make sure from an employer perspective we're doing just as much as we can for each individual. Thank you, thank you. And that's another thing. Recruitment and retention not only for our businesses across the state and nonprofits, but also for staff in childcare centers, right? And so we know that there are challenges with our early education providers with staffing and access to resources. So I'm going to go back to you Janet just to talk about what you are seeing on the ground. Yeah. So last spring, Vermont EYC did a survey of early childhood education programs in the state. And we heard from over half of the center-based childcare programs in the state. And of those, 83% of them were reporting that they had staff vacancies. The average number of staff vacancies was three. And each of those, and even if you, that translates to, it was translating to 10 slots in each of those programs that are currently not available because programs cannot find early childhood educators to fill those roles. And programs are being incredibly diligent and creative about working with people who, anybody who wants to enter the field to support them in starting on this career path and support them in developing the skills that they would need to continue to grow in the profession. But right now, we're in this very tricky place where we're saying this work is important, it's rewarding. Like you will have a smile on your face at different moments of your day that like you cannot get that experience through almost any other job. And yet it's also a job where the wages are incredibly low. You're expected to be there in person, having like a pretty close, very close connection with young children and you don't have health. Your employers are not able to offer you health benefits. They're not able to offer you disability insurance. When if you hurt yourself and you need to, you have to get up and down off the floor a gazillion times. And so they don't have disability insurance for you. So the lack of benefits combined with the low wages is just it's not sustainable for so many people within the field. The people that are doing it right now are carrying the system and the leaders of these programs are kind of, they're kind of being superheroes. And that's not an answer, right? For us, for us as a state, given what we know how important this is, the supports for early childhood, I would say early childhood educators are really interested in pursuing their professional growth and development in the field. And so some of the, right now at CCB, early childhood education is their largest like concentration and area of study in terms of the number of students that they have. So people are excited about this and the reason that that's happening right now though is because there's supports that are in place, right? Through all the investments in higher education and resources that have been, we've been able to dedicate sort of thanks to COVID, but like thanks to Relief Dollars. But in terms of the scholarship dollars, apprenticeship programs, critical occupation scholarships, I think I just wanna say like early childhood educators are excited because they do recognize that when they have the expertise and knowledge that they can see how that allows them to serve the needs of their kids, of the kids that they're seeing more family. And Chris can probably speak really well to the fact that like the needs that early childhood educators are seeing in programs amongst children are growing and getting a little bit more complex and the skills that you need to address them are elevating, but I think ultimately a lot of it comes down to again like a lack of respect and understanding for early childhood educators and for the work that they're doing. And that's something that we've been together with Letzger Kids and with so many people working to build awareness. And I have heard from early childhood educators who say that they are feeling seen for the first time in their entire careers. But Chris, I wonder what you would add to that. Chris is one of our board members. I'm on the UIC, so we should have probably let her go. No, no, no, go ahead. Okay, so to go on what Janet said, I've been in this field for 30 years. My primary position and my passion is in my childcare business itself, but it's never been sustainable. In all the years I've worked, I've never worked only that position. I've had to work two or three jobs to bring it in. And what I try to do is work with other people in my field to make sure they know what's out there, what they can attach and how we can piece and scale different things together. That's not a way to build a workforce. It's a way to help a workforce, but it's not a way to build it because I can't go in one of my roles to the high school and convince parents to allow their children to follow their dream and go into early education if I can't explain to the parent how they're ever gonna pay that back, how they're ever gonna make a living, how they're not gonna have to work the three jobs that I work. And on the flip side, and so the benefits that we have during the day, my benefits on my job that I love so much, I can go barefoot. I'm outside most of the time. I hear giggles every day. I get the aha moments. I get to see the first in a lot of things that parents miss. So those are my benefits, but that doesn't feed my family. It doesn't pay my bills and it doesn't help me retire. So we need to invest in that so we can build the people up because our workforce is aging out. And if they can't put into an IRA or help put into Social Security, then we're also gonna have to take care of them later. So again, we can either be, we know what the problem is and now's the time to solve the solution. We want people to come. We want them to stay. We want them to thrive. And we want them to believe in this state and believe in what they bring in so that they can get back. Thank you, Chris. I will say that you mentioned this, Janet, that it's a really important that our early childhood educators feel seen and are seen and are part of this conversation and our work. And it's always challenging and super important work, but during the pandemic we were tested. So tested. And it was, I mean, early childhood educators were superheroes and the glue that kept the families together during incredibly difficult time and continue to work through that. And so I feel like I can speak for all the educators, the legislators in the room, to thank you for your incredible work. And I just, let's give them a round of applause for their incredible work. So I'm gonna turn back to you, Allie. Let's Grow Kids has been working hard on organizing this effort and making sure that all Vermonters are heard through this process. What are the key messages that you and your team have been hearing across the state? I love that question. Okay. So you just heard them all. I just talked to them. But let me just start by saying, I don't, I love you all are getting the leg, the goosebumps and the shivers and the holding back tears a little bit, like I am over here in the corner, but it is just really humbling to be here with you all. I mean, every single one of you sharing your personal stories, talking about what brings you here, it just reminds me of what an amazing privilege and joy it is for us to be in Vermont together. We have identified a problem. We are coming together from all different perspectives to solve it. That is what we see every single day. And it really is an honor of a lifetime to be in this sort of position in this movement. And let's grow kids and see this and be a part of it. And so we are hearing things like, the time is now. The time is now. And if we do not do this, then what? It's sort of this like staring into the precipice when everything has come together, the table is set. You know, there's good news here. We're hearing the crisis that we're solving, but the good news is we have a plan. We have a question ahead of us in this legislative session and it's kind of a yes or no question. Yes, the details matter, but folks have been working on the details in this building and on the campaign trail and in the field for so long. I've never seen effort where there's been so much thought put into the policy detail, best practices from around the world, from other states, where we've all coalesced around the policy sort of principles and what best practices for transforming childcare. At the same time, the implementation on the ground, the infrastructure is ready for this policy so it can be successful. Implementation and the third is the people power. The people power coming together to say yes, we need this, raise our voices, especially from marginalized communities to make sure they have an outsized impact on the detail of the policy and sharing their stories and making sure this is really a true, successful transformation. And so the messages we hear along that path, the time is now, we can't afford not to do this. Why haven't we done it? We haven't done it because we're talking about money. I think we have to be clear about that. We're talking about money. It will take a public investment to build a public infrastructure but the messages we hear are from all sorts of folks, small business, big business, parents, grandparents, early educators, healthcare providers. We are paying in the same size and scope of what the cost will be to fund this infrastructure and be the first in the country to have high quality, affordable, accessible, equitable care. We're already paying right now in these heartbreaking and very expensive expenditures in pretty much every sector, workforce, recruitment, retention, healthcare, workforce crisis, workarounds. And the heartbreaking work of taking care of these kids in every single stage of their life because they did not have access to the opportunities they need zero to five. So that's what we hear is we can't afford not to do this. We know it's a tough conversation. It has to work for Vermonters and the time is now, can't afford not to. It pays for itself immediately and over a lifetime. So that's what we're hearing beyond, it's the right thing to do and it's the smart thing to do. When do we get a chance to take care of our kids, go upstream and do that? Knowing the data is there, the solution is there, the consensus is there. Oh, and it's a great investment, from everything from the human cost to the dollars and cents. So that's what we're hearing, you're hearing it here today. I mean, this is, these are the stories. And I was thinking, oh, we talked about data. You get all the data you need from Nikki. 29% of income, 55 minute commute, seven months until you found childcare. I mean, they're in a nutshell, it's pretty much all the data you need. And the other thing I would just say is this word survival. That is really not what I think we all want when we talk about the joy of becoming a first-time parent and having young children. It should be joy, not survival. And so we have an opportunity as a state to do that. And when you talk to folks, you can feel that. And the last thing I'll say is, not only is the time now because of the movement and where we've come and the unity, even the political unity of this, but 117 childcare champs just got elected. And they're not just smiling and saying, yeah, I like kids. They are sophisticated champions that understand these details. I know every single piece of this has been sort of vetted and researched and worked on by the field. Like Janet's great work with the workforce and each piece is historic. But we've gotten them all ready and it's sort of served up in this moment, starting with H171 and the work that this building did. This great, these great legislators did for that. So the table's set and now it is on us to sort of bring it home. Thank you, Allie. Strong messages from all across the state, from all corners. So there are a lot of ways that people envision a childcare program that is available to all Vermonters. And so what does success look like? What does that look like to you? And I know it's a very broad question, it's broad on purpose. So I want to have, Janet, would you start with that? What does success look like? What does this successful program look like? I mean, a successful program looks like a joyful, inclusive learning community, right? Where early childhood educators are truly able to do what they know supports the healthy development of our youngest children. And they're able to do that with confidence that they are being, that they can afford to feed their family, right? That they would be able to take time off if they got sick. That they can pay for care for their own children, right? So that is a real, at the highest level, in terms of a more specific recommendation from early childhood educators in Vermont, is that they would like to create a recognized profession. You can think of it as sort of a similar to nursing, right? Where you have sort of an entry-level credential, you have a, and then you're moving from an LPN to an RN to a nurse practitioner, right? Because we know that we need people at all these different levels, and there is a framework for this. They're on the national level, 20 of the largest organizations dedicated to the well-being of young children that have come together, created a unifying framework for the early childhood education profession. Here in Vermont, we've spent the last, there's a group of early childhood educators in the state who have spent the last four years really diving into that. Starting with the question of like, should we even explore this, right? They're not just assuming, right? And then moving through each element of this framework piece by piece to say, what would this look like? What would it mean for Vermont? What excites you about this? What concerns you about this? And we, and there is now a consensus and a recommendation to establish early childhood education as a profession, move to individual professional licensure. The over 2,500 early childhood educators in the state were engaged in this process in a really deep way, right? Like in terms of providing feedback, not just like you got handed a flyer, but like an actual engagement. And so we're feeling excited about moving towards the next step and looking at what the legislation would be for that. And ultimately it's what will create the system to allow people to enter the profession and to move up. It allows us to, and it provides a framework for us to hang compensation onto in a way that's meaningful. It allows our higher education institutions to know what their skills they're supposed to be training against. It allows our employers to know what they're supposed to be hiring against or what potential applicants actually have as their skills. And so I think it will really allow us to unwind some of the complexity and the sort of top-down approach that we have right now to overseeing early childhood education and really allow early childhood educators to step forward as leaders of their own field. Thank you so much, Janet. How about you, Nikki, what does success look like? Success from my perspective as a parent here today is a lot simpler than that, fortunately simpler in layman's terms, but harder to achieve, right? For me it's accessibility, number one, first and foremost. There's so much stressors that are going on. And like I mentioned, I'm a first-time parent and my first thought was, oh no, what am I gonna do for my work? We don't want that. We want people to celebrate this moment, this changing moment in their lives. So accessibility is number one. We'd like to support more childhood, childcare opportunities and resources in Vermont and hopefully close to LaMoyle County would be preferable to me. So accessibility is number one and then the second for me is affordability. My husband and I both love our careers. He loves what he does. I love what I do. I love being a mom. I love all of those things. Now, how can I make all of those things work for me successfully together? And affordability is number one. It's kind of like this circle where I'm going to my boss and saying, hey, I always need to make more money because all the other things are getting more expensive. I just want to enjoy my work. I just want to not fight for every dollar. I don't want my husband and I to have very exhausting, as we all do, conversations of what's the sacrifice this month? What are we going to do? What are we cut out? And so, and now we're getting to this holiday season too. So there's lots of conversations around that in my household as of late, but really affordability. We need to make it affordable for Vermont families to be able to have both working parents and their households go to work and be involved in our workforce to grow our local economies because we want to see the state thrive. Thank you, Nikki. Welcome, so. Powerful. How about you, Adam? Well, Janet and Nikki said it well. It's those three pillar and it started with a childhood educator. We pay there more, then more. We recognize them, we empower them. That's going to bring more people into the industry. That's going to then, the report effect is going to increase capacity, which is going to tackle the second pillar which is accessibility. So more people come in. We lift the experience and the service. We increase capacity. Now we have this other pillar. The third pillar is affordability. And, you know, I mean, we make cheese. We're in the agriculture business. And so, you know, when I think of our starting wage and I think of that starting wage, you cannot afford 30% of your income going to childcare. And so, you know, that 10% threshold is very, very meaningful. And so by focusing on that, using those resources to help to fund this part, then that means more people can come back to the workforce. More women specifically can come back to the workforce. And again, solve this workforce shortages that we have. Not only for today, but I really see this is an investment into the future with a very short-term payback, which is usually you don't see that very often. It's either we're gonna invest for the three to five year out and then we get to be patient. With this proposal, it's literally thousands of people coming back into the workforce. And yeah, I'm thinking of the woman that I would love to hire full-time, not on a flexible manufacturing part-time job. And yeah, so it's those affordability, accessibility that are important. Thank you. Definitely hearing some things here. How about you? And I agree with what everyone said. I think that we need to invest in early educators and we need to invest in them so they can invest in the children. So the families can invest in the workforce and be present at their job. It's just such a cycle and it does. It starts with us and my fear is that I continue to get calls, which I get all the time to go on wait lists in my program and I'm honest with the people that call. You got three years at least out. I'd like to be able to say in six months or I'd like to be able to refer to somebody else. I would like to be able to know that there's a place for every single child regardless of the amount in their bank account and regardless of their zip code, the state of a minus cared for from top to bottom, from birth all the way through. And that's what we need. We need to make strong individuals and strong families and it's all ties together. So the investment's there. We don't have time to get this wrong anymore. Because if we wait another five years or 10 years the workforce is gonna be gone. And you aren't gonna make up skilled people with confidence and competence in a short amount of period of time. We've got to invest now. We've got to get this right. Thank you Chris. Probably anything to add on to that? I know that's a challenge. Normally you're thinking of your response too but I'm hanging on your every word folks. You nailed it. I would just say make no small plans, right? My success for me would be raising the quality of life for Vermonters from every corner of the state from every walk of life. And that sounds big. But if you think about how do you do that? You go upstream to the thing that is blocking that from happening. And this is that thing. This is one of those things. Everything you just said, the idea of you allow us to move in the right road on this crossroads for a month. We either let our demographics crush us, let our costs go out of control, don't allow employers to create opportunity in jobs, don't allow them to hire, don't allow them to grow, don't allow families to thrive. Or you find a nugget like this that is so systemic and so upstream that when you open it up we all take this breath, wages go up. Jobs come to Vermont. They expand. The whole sector of early child educators get livable wages and can have one job and focus on that job. Think about continuous improvement and focusing on that kids. That's not an immediate benefit. We have young people moving to the state. All of our taxes go down. You know what I mean? You create the virtuous cycle of prosperity and opportunity and you look at these little nuggets upstream to be able to do that. It sounds huge, but what we've seen in the many years of creating this to the point that it is together is that this holds that potential. I think that's why we're standing here today thinking about a massive investment that has so far fell out of our reach. It's not out of our reach anymore because we understand that impact and it's a choice we make about the future of Vermont and whether we're gonna be economically viable and young people can be here like we've all enjoyed or come back here. And so that's how big it is, right? That's how big it is. Thank you, thank you. So we've just heard so much incredible thoughts and feedback around this table. I think it would be great to now open it up for questions. And I'm looking out there. Let's start with Representative Schaaf. Thanks. Thank you all. I'm Representative Rocky Schaaf from Middlebury and I really appreciate all the work that you're doing in your comments and how important it is and you're bringing me back to the time when I had my first children and I have grandchildren and so I've seen a couple generations dealing with childcare so I appreciate the work you do and the challenge that you have to find it in the first place. So you've talked a lot about not just the business of childcare and all the challenges there but also it feels like as we talk, the burden's on the parents to figure this out. So they can go back to work when we talk about workforce and how this is gonna benefit the workforce and benefit businesses. So what I'd like to hear is what you think the role and the responsibility of businesses are who are the beneficiaries of getting a workforce back as a result of us doing this. So what's the role for businesses in all this? What's their responsibility? Yeah. Do you want to stay? I can take that. It was a really good question. I appreciate that because when Annie pulled us together, I started to learn how government works and how we could get funding and this and that and I remember at some point we were getting further down the road with a conversation and we're talking return on investment, we're talking retention, we're talking about operating capacity of the potential of our businesses and so I'm like, I ask the same questions. Who's responsibility that is? And Annie was like, stepping by the ball, I wanna see what's the answer among those CEOs and we agree the people in that CEO thing that we have a responsibility too. I can put a number on the amount of opportunity we had to pass down for our business because we don't have the workforce. I can track that down. I can also track down that how much it would cost for us to solve that alone to have an onsite daycare. We're a cheese maker. We don't do what you do. And I don't wanna do that but we're like, what are we gonna do? Are we gonna just put that money towards solving it ourselves which is not our job or do we leverage a very talented, incredible, well-operated organization that I have a plan. Do you wanna come in? And so long story short, businesses have an opportunity to participate in solving this. I'd love to just follow up with that too and thank you for the question. Most businesses, as you can see and I'm curious if Nikki has a response to, will say, got it. Pretty fast, very concrete thinkers. This is how I do my bottom line. Oh yes, you got me on the ROI. You got me on the necessity. You got me on my own interest in this plus a public interest. How do I fix it? Unfortunately, the only solution to this is public investment, full stop, because you do not create a profession. You do not solve the access for all folks. You don't make an equitable system that is sustainable, that actually can be affordable, high quality and accessible and really abide by certain standards. Businesses could piecemeal all do their own onsite job care and it won't be affordable for families and it won't be quality and you won't create a pipeline of early educators and a profession. So there is just no one-off solution which is why the business community has started to coalesce over the last couple of years. I think, again, another piece of the puzzle of why we're here today. We have to pay in. We know we have a responsibility. We know we have a major outsize benefit. We probably spend more on recruitment and retention in these other efforts than we would if we paid into an efficient, effective system, a systemic, equitable fix that can only be routed through a public investment and the government. This is a public-private marketplace still. It's a beautiful, elegant example of efficient and effective and targeted and public-private. There are market forces that still come to bear but the way the business community can continue to participate is to pay in. As businesses in some way, for a systemic fix and if they try to go it alone, it will be piecemeal, not quality and just not sustainable. And just one more little moment on it. One of my favorite stories and one of the most incredible champions for this is TwinCraft Skincare, another manufacturer in Essex Manuski. They said, well, that's it. We just have to put something on site. But as Adelaine said, we're soap makers. We're not early educators and we would subsidize this to the tune of sort of all, you know, millions, millions of dollars. It wouldn't be high quality. We wouldn't have the workforce, you know, and it would only be for a small fraction of just our employees. And what about all those other community members that would need that access? So that she's like, sign me up for something else. Let me pay in in other ways. And I just, to me, that illustrates, right? Absolutely, how about you, Nikki? I'd have to just echo both of what Adelaine and Ally said. Instamart is ready and we looked at from an executive leadership standpoint, what do we do? How do we solve this? And I was bringing him the president of the company, my problems every day, with my daughter in my lap saying, okay, you hold the baby, let's talk about this. How are we gonna fix this? And so we did talk about opening up a childcare system around Instamart and Instamart for our employees, but it's not the solve. It's a very small temporary solution and not to mention it would cost millions of dollars upfront, which is not sustainable, right? So when we got looking at and thinking about more creative solutions, so lucky to be fortunate and introduced to Ally and this movement and this campaign and said, wait a second, we also have a solution. This is our solution, this is what we propose. We are so much more happy to support a movement that is causing and representing systemic change rather than solving a small business issue just within our four walls. That's not the solution from a business perspective and we're ready to support financially this campaign to be able to cross this finish line. Thank you, Nikki. Janet and Chris, anything to add to that before we move on to the next question? I think all I would add is each time a business creates a center on their site to offset the challenges of their employees, when they open the position up, it takes somebody from, somebody experienced from another place and creates a whole over there. So what you're doing is you're shifting a workforce. You're not creating or building or strengthening a workforce. You're just moving them from one place to another and that doesn't create any lasting change or any benefit for the rest of the communities. It just, it's a game of shells. Got it. And I would just to continue the theme, right? This is a resource issue in the time that I have been doing this work, right? The conversation was like, well, what if we just organized it, right? Couldn't like, well, let's get some businessmen to come in here and look at the numbers and figure it out and we're gonna figure out a way to actuate the sustainable. Cause maybe these small business women or these nonprofit leaders, they don't know what they're doing. And then they came in and looked at it and we're like, oh, nope, we can't solve this either. We had to like go through several years of a learning process around that. And now I think everybody's sort of through it to say, you know, the issue truly is a resource issue. This truly is a public good and we need to make the investment because, you know, we've said it a million times, right? Parents can't afford to pay more. Early educators can't afford to make less. So we need to figure out where we're getting the resources. Thank you, Janet. All right, I think we have a question on Zoom, Connor. Could you? We have two questions and I think they're sort of tied in together. It might be best for Allie to start, but Jim would like to know, as a person with several organizations who will be positively impacted by universal childcare, please provide info or a way businesses and individuals may support and endorse this effort. And then we have the second question. Can someone on the panel discuss how long the rollout will be for this type of proposed plan and how the creation of new centers fall in that timeline? Yeah, Allie. I think this is right. Allie. Jim. Yes, thank you, you know, and I'm, we're available all the time at Let's Her Kids and, you know, my email is alyatletsherkids.org and, you know, be in touch anytime. So let'sherkids.org. You can thank you for the question, my goodness. It is a movement. It is, you know, a continual conversation. Our hardest work is ahead. This session is going to be, you know, all of us really putting our shoulders to it and doing that work together. You can endorse the campaign as an organization. It says, I believe in this effort, 10% of, you know, household income is a max affordability, early education comp and a public investment is the key, you know, ingredient. As a human, as a citizen, you can also join the campaign, you know, and both of those things are available on our website. So thank you for the opportunity and I really appreciate the support and continuing that phase of the work. Let's see. How long will this take to phase out? I'll just quickly start that in anyone else. Like, dad, what we haven't summarized, and I will just huge shout out to the early childhood champions in the room who are legislators. I mean, you are so well-served for any Vermontra out there who is watching this by your childcare champs that you've elected. And we have so many in the room today from the Speaker, Lieutenant Governor to Representative Brumson. What do I see here today? Representative Garifano and so many more who are here today and beyond, you know, in the House and the Senate and your state-wides. These are incredible folks who are focused on this and doing the work right now and sharpening their pencils. The five buckets of the bill that is sort of being, again, within the legislative process pushed forward by the legislative leaders right now are affordability. You've heard about that, the details behind the sliding fee scale, the 10% cap, support for the early childhood educators through wages, benefits, and overall support for that workforce, get that pipeline continued. And we haven't talked that much about the pipeline, but I will say there are humans, they're ready to go in the hundreds and hundreds. So this is not a wishful thinking, this is a real, this is a real pipeline, not a pipe dream. So we've got 500 folks in CCV, subscribe to the early ed training pathways. We have hundreds of folks coming in from AA to VA programs like you've never seen before. So all these things have to meet in the middle. They're not gonna stay in Ramon or stay in this field if we don't come through on the wages sustainably. So these pieces are all being worked on sort of simultaneously. The governance, we absolutely need to have accountable data-driven streamlined regulatory system for this, starting with state government accessibility. That's that supply and demand, continue to build that infrastructure, bricks and mortar out, although mostly that's the workforces you've heard, and then equity, ensuring that there are, every kid in care has the rapid services they need and we've really understood accidental things that we do not wanna do, accidental consequences to make sure we do not fake those into the bill so that we're making this inaccessible in some way to historically marginalized population. So those are the core five buckets of the bill, all being worked on in this session and beyond. It will likely, I mean, should we be able to pass this bill this session, right, or even this biennium? It's probably a three to four year phase in, which is not unheard of to think about this level of sectoral transformation where you're getting those 8,700 kids access, equitably spread out across the state, and that no parent pays more than 10% of their income and these early educators make a wage that is in this minimum compensation scale imagined by the workforce. So that's in a nutshell. Some of the detail behind the bill that we hadn't talked about, the sort of philosophical points that are underlying that work and that phase in of about, I would say, three to four years upon passage of this bill, which is why we're so urgent about this work, where you might see Vermont be the first place in the country to fully have the all in functional quality system. Right. I'm just curious to know, true, any big policy work that we do here, we need everyone around the table and it always takes several years to make sure that we're rolling it out to get it right and to ensure success. Part of Jim's question about getting businesses involved and how do you get involved with the movement? I'm just curious for Nikki and Adeline, how did those conversations start perking up in your organization and do you have any advice for businesses out there and how to engage their employees in this really important conversation? You know, sometimes it takes to have a, I don't know, a working parent that is trying to survive at the top and say, okay, how do I fix that? Fix that. My leadership team, five out of seven of my leaders are parents with children over the age of 10. So when I wrote to my team, it's like, hey, we've been donating to Let's Roll Kids, we've been working together for years when I'm like, hey, we need to be champion and we're gonna use our business voice a lot more. Are you in? It was like, well, yeah. I mean, somebody was on Zoom with kids screaming in the back and I was like, what are you asking for? Yes, of course. So for us, it was a no-brainer to a point where every year we have an event called Better Maker Day, we set up radar employees and this specific summer I asked Ali to be our keynote speaker to talk about the work she's doing and it's like standing ovation from everybody, including grandparents that are working in our companies. It's not just the parents that are in the daycare stage. It's really across the board and it really has, yeah, it's been a great culture, a great, especially people working really hard for the past three years, especially when you're a central worker. All of a sudden you hear pandemic and you have to show up the next day with your fear because you have to make food and you had no, I mean, you had choices but you want to keep working and having a sari. So it was just, everybody who has been writing around our support of Let's Grow Kids from Montgomery. And every single day since I've been drinking this amazing tango, talk about symbiotic. I love that, I love that. How about you, Nikki? Yeah, I think I would echo a lot of what you said and also just add that it's really education and awareness. Internally and instrument, I use my voice, the president of the company uses his voice and we just talk to our employees about this issue. I mean, most of them are facing it currently so we just talk about awareness and what are the resources out there for them that they can use now and also get them involved with Let's Grow Kids because there are so many things that from an individual perspective you can do as well and including the action teams in your local county. So that piece is really important. And then externally, it's really just about education for other business leaders like ourselves. A lot of these people are our friends, we meet with them personally and professionally and it's all about, again, raising awareness and getting them involved with the issue. When we were really facing this, we didn't know what the solution was and we were thinking about investing millions of dollars for a childcare system within our facility until we met Let's Grow Kids and we got engaged with the campaign. So we just really have to get the message out there and get people educated about what it actually is and what it's going to take. Thank you. So helpful. Other questions out here? Representative Campbell? Sure. So I'm Scott Campbell from St. John's Church. We decided as a society, a long time ago, that education was a public good that we ought to pay for. And I guess I'm just, it strikes me that this ought to be public education. Why should we expect parents to pay 10% and why should we expect them to pay anything? We're raising the next generation. It's the most important thing that we as a society do. So I guess I'm just wondering what you see, the connection that anybody here sees with the public education system with using public schools, we have right now a trough and a number of kids in our schools. I don't know if anybody can hear about that. I think I would. Sure, I'm happy to do that. So right now our current setting is the current structure, right? Is that early childhood education is run through at 1,000 separate businesses right now. And what we're trying to do here is a little bit of the art of the possible, right? We want to, we need a solution now. And so I mean, I could not agree with you more that early childhood education should be a public good. It is different in terms of the structure of it when you're dealing with younger children. And so we do really believe that the mixed delivery system that we have right now with people that people can choose a family child care center, they can choose an early childhood education program that is close to their home or not, or close to their work, right? That they can choose a public pre-K program. If that works, that some of those, that those choices, especially for families of young children are really important, right? Like you can't put an infant on a bus, right? You can, you know, depending on the number of children you have, do you have, is your child, do you have an infant in a toddler, or do you have a preschooler and an elementary school, late children? Like it's just a little bit, it's much more complicated when you have young children. And so it's not like a one size fits all. So we do feel like some of the flexibility that's associated with the mixed delivery system that we have right now is, has a lot of benefits for families. And that that's the structure that will serve us well in making this big change right now, of making the big investment that we need right now. So that's sort of how I think about it. I was curious, I wouldn't suggest that all the kids go to school, I was just thinking that as an option. I was thinking really more on the funding side that we don't think of it as public education. I'd be happy to chime in a bit too. You know, first of all, we do have to think about it as a public good. And that's what it is, and that's why the public investment and this benefit that again, it's not even just for families with young kids, we all get this benefit so greatly and nothing magical happens when you're five. There are some differences. Well, first of all, as Janet said, the art of the possible. We don't fun child care all as infrastructure as a subject. We did it for a minute in World War II. We know exactly how to do it. We showed that. And then, you know, moms came home and we said, oh no, dismantle, right? So I mean, really, this is the thing that is a little bit wild is that we actually have a blueprint. We've done it before, we know how to do it. And we just haven't act on it because of the money. So if you say it's just free for all, it's a billion dollar program, right? And we've not even had the courage to fund an affordable program. But the beauty of the affordable is it's not building something that you wouldn't have built otherwise. To Janet's point about best practice and mixed delivery system. There are some key differences about development. There's huge variation in development at this young age. The smaller setting, the close to home, you know, just the ratio of staff to students, the other thing is it's voluntary, not compulsory. So it sort of lends itself to a public, private, affordable mixture, as opposed to this sort of like block of public ed, compulsory at a certain age. So I think this is an evolution in our society. I think this step is a really beautiful step of that evolution. It actually meets the need and it doesn't build an infrastructure that you then want to dismantle and rebuild if you took the full step because that mixed delivery system has been proven to really be best practice to meet the needs of parents to sort of fit into the cracks, especially in a rural community, when actually a home-based provider is a huge piece of that puzzle too. So there are some real elegant reasons why this works and actually is a really important impactful step towards a public good starting at birth. Thank you. So we have time for one more question before we go to closing remarks for on the table, Representative Blumen. Hi, I'm Representative Blumen from Burlington and married to an early child educator and have had a lot of discussions because I toured Pine Forest this fall and I've had a lot of talks with faculty members of different or the early childhood educators of different centers. And one of the things that they raised with me is the concern that money will be invested as it relates to improving the conditions for early childhood educators that the emphasis will be on scholarships and kind of deferring the cost of education and professionalization and not on the bottom line in terms of what they actually earn. And there are a lot of places that are hemorrhaging staff because people can't make ends meet now and we are losing some experience at the childhood. So I'm just wondering, can you tell me us more about what is envisioned in terms of addressing the paycheck issue? Do you want me to do a quickie? Sure. Basically I would just say, great question. This is why, back to the message question, we can't nibble around the edges anymore, we have to do the whole thing because if you nibble around the edges, you're not funding an infrastructure and Adeline actually laid it out perfectly. It's a three-legged school stool. I've heard reps and centers talk about this and that's exactly right. Affordability, access and quality, they are one thing. You push funding into this field and it goes to pay the true cost of care. So parents pay no more than they can afford and the program actually gets the funding to do the true cost of care which is the majority, the wages for their workforce. So it's one funding mechanism. It's one chunk of change and it does all the quality access and affordability pieces that is primarily that paycheck. So that is the vision. If you nibble around the edges, it's almost like you're throwing money away at this point because you're not getting all three and you're not building that infrastructure. So I think that's just the mechanism behind what you're asking. Yeah, I think that's right. I think some of the investments we're making right now are just to make it slightly more palatable, slightly more affordable to be in early childhood. I think that's the idea of the educator. And in many states, there's been efforts, a lot of what the investment is, is to make up for the fact that we don't have a well compensated workforce. And we try all the different places. You try all these pilots to improve quality, pay for coaches, pay for all this sort of stuff. And instead you get, and it's like, how about we pilot actually paying people what a fair wage is for this work. There are states that are doing this already and the improvement in terms of the retention of staff, especially important for these little children, right, who are like having close interactions with their caregivers, it's absolutely dramatic. So absolutely, we have the mechanism to make sure that that investment goes to compensation for early childhood educators is critically important. And then there do need to be the wrap around resources and supports for program leaders and mentors and all that sort of stuff. But yes, that is, that will only be effective if we get the compensation to early childhood educators who deserve it. Great, thank you for the fantastic questions everyone. And at this time, like to wrap up with any closing remarks or thoughts from the panelists. Edelene, do you want to start? I would say that, you know, I think we will hear that it's just, it's a win, win, win, win, win, win, win. For not only today, for, but we're talking generation of impacted. So it's just, you know, the fact that you have, you know, parents that used to come to your daycare. I mean, it's just, it's a very long term opportunity for us. The other thing I can call out is we have less real kids. I remember when I first joined, you know, we were like, okay, you want us to invest? Like, what's the plan? What's the program? Are you solid with this thing? Or is it just a big ambitious goal? And we're very lucky to have an organization that's been at it for years, decade. That has a very solid plan on how we can fix that, that we can trust, that we believe we can invest in. And we won't have less growth kids forever. So not only the environment is ready for it, but we also get to seize the moment while we have an organization so powerful that is so educated around the plan that it's gonna work. And I just want to call that out. Fantastic, thank you. Kristen. I think the public already invests in its citizens. Unfortunately, a lot of the investment that this plan would fix is right now being put on the correction. We just need to shift our thought and make a stronger foundation. And then we won't be putting all the money into correction and losing all that time. Every time we go through a lifespan, you'll lose in a generation. You know, and we've known for a long time how to fix it. We don't have another 10 years and another generation to lose because we can't implement it. We need to act now. Thank you, Chris. How about you, Janet? And I would just add, I think that early childhood educators are very, like they're working their tails off right now. They are having their moments of feeling overwhelmed but also are seeing that there is a potential for a solution in a way that they've never experienced in their lifetime. And I'm so hopeful that we can do that but I just would flag that the reason that we're talking about early childhood educators and compensation and things like that but the whole reason that matters is because we were talking about our babies, right? Our infants, our toddlers, our preschoolers. These are some of the youngest and they're some of the most vulnerable citizens in our state and their well-being and their healthy development is what motivates early childhood educators every day and we just need to make that it possible for every child to have that place like Chris was talking about. Thank you. Thank you. I really just want to thank you all for the time and this platform today. It's really compelling to be able to share stories and see you guys engaged in the conversation. My encouragement and closing remarks would just be a moment to get involved. So let's figure this out together. The time is now. We have let's grow kids. We have a plan. We have action. So ask questions and get involved. I'd hate to see this become continually a transient issue where everybody just grows out of this because then their kids are five and they're in public education. I don't want to see that. I want to see real systemic change. I want to see Vermont take action for this and be a leader in the nation in this. And so really just get involved and ask questions and let's figure out how to do it together. Just thank you to every single one of you. I think we're about to show we still can come together and solve big problems. So here we go. Great. I love this momentum. Everyone please join me in thanking this wonderful panel. So inspiring. Now I'd love to turn it back over to Lieutenant Governor Mollie Gray. Hey, well I have some unfortunate news. This is the conclusion of our first, I think this is the first ever legislative summit on childcare and Paisley. I want to again give a huge round of applause to Jill and the childcare panel. I think this is super, super inspiring. So thank you to legislators, newly elected as well for joining us both in person and online. I also want to recognize Conrad Kennedy, Jill's Chief of Staff for helping to organize my Chief of Staff, Andrew Gillespie. This has been a project that's been in the works for the last couple of months. And I guess just to reflect on some of the things that we've heard just over the last three hours and I just wrote down a couple of themes. This regular theme around a public good that we know that paid family and medical leave can't be voluntary, that we know that childcare can't be voluntary, that we can't put it on businesses to figure it out on their own. That we know that paid family and medical leave is really good for retaining workers. We know it's essential, childcare is essential for retaining and recruiting workers and that workers need paid leave, including our incredible childcare workers, that we have to keep up the pressure and the momentum and that we have a lot of lessons learned from the pandemic and we can't let those slip by because we're not out of the pandemic but certainly the needs continue. We know that it's not happening in Washington, it's happening right here in Vermont. And I think to quote this panel at the time is now, the time is now on both and it's time to raise the quality of life for every Vermonter to quote Ali. So thank you all for coming. The recording will be available. I wanna thank Orca for offering to record the legislative summit. So we'll get that out to all of you. Please share it with colleagues who aren't here. We need more champions. And I just wanna thank you all again and hand the floor back to Jill for some closing thoughts. Thank you so much. So wow, right? Wow. I just wanna thank all of you for joining us today for your commitment and advocacy for these clearly important policies that we need to take on. The data and the information that we heard today clearly highlights the need for a universal paid family leave program for all Vermonters and high quality affordable childcare. We know Vermonters are struggling and it is imperative that we pass legislation that allows us to take care of our family, our kids and our communities. We need policies that are flexible and that meets the needs of Vermonters from all walks of life. So we all heard the strong arguments today about why this is so important and why we need to take this on and I'm fired up to do this work. And I just wanna take a moment again. We, this isn't possible without our early childhood educators. It's just not possible. And like I said, they were superheroes during this pandemic and I've told this story before and I have to repeat it. My close friend has a little one at Robin's Nest and I can't tell you the best moment of our day was when we got the little note home about what he did and what he accomplished that day and that kept us going. That little note meant the world to our families and other families and it was the commitment to be there during this incredible tough time and it's now our job to be there for them and to make sure that we're taking care of all of our families. And so we have some big goals of having of us but I am fired up and I know that we can do it together. So thank you, Molly, for your leadership in this work. We will miss you. Thank you so much. Again, thank you to all of our incredible panelists today. This is not the end of the conversation. This is a continuation and we need all of your voices at the State House in Montpelier. So thank you again for being here and now let's get to work.