 Well hello good afternoon everyone and welcome to our virtual event the Better Life Lab at New America welcomes you to the future of reporting on child care. I'm Bridget Schulte I'm a writer and journalist and director of the Better Life Lab at New America. We are the work family justice and intersectional gender equity program here. So, I came to this as a longtime journalist I worked at a number of news organizations including the Washington Post for many years. And I have to say, through all that time of, you know, more than a quarter century, there was very little on child care on early care and education. There were the occasional stories of parents but bemoaning how expensive it is, or the occasional stories of low wage parents really struggling and a program and sort of some complicated program and the funding was running out. So there wasn't a whole lot of understanding of child care as a system, how all the pieces fit together. And I came to this really as a parent, I had two young children and I could not understand why child care was so expensive. I didn't understand why the teachers who are so wonderful at my children's early care and development center, why they were earning. Well, they were actually earning pretty well, because we paid a lot but there were a lot of other places where so many people were in poverty, who literally could not afford their own child care for their own children. Just the whole system didn't make sense to me, and I didn't see that reflected in, in newspapers in media coverage. There was very there's a lot of confusion and a lot of like this seemed like some mystifying system. I became, began to understand more about it when I began reporting for a book project, trying to understand why parents are why we make it so difficult for families in this country why so many are overwhelmed. And I tell you, I have a master's degree, I had worked at the Washington Post for years was the first time that I learned that in the early 1970s, there was widespread public support for a universal, high quality, equitable child care system. And even the Richard Nixon administration at the time was supportive there was all sorts of new research about how these zero to five years were critical for children's brain development. Women were entering the workforce in mass because opportunities opened up on the one hand and on the other wages started to stagnate and families needed to incomes just to be able to keep the same standard of living so you had more and more families who required childcare. But you know, and there was this understanding that something needed to shift this was happening globally these were sort of global trends and so you had many other advanced economies who began to invest in childcare, they began to create these equitable systems not like some gigantic factory, but you know neighborhood crushes in France or childcare facilities that really met parents needs and, and kept the costs low for parents, and it helped pay living wages for the caregivers. Well that we were on that same course in the early 1970s, and I found that Pat Buchanan who had been a rising star in the Nixon White House with the kind of new right at the time. He had just come back from a trip to the Soviet Union, then the then Soviet Union, and he was horrified by communism he was horrified by the young pioneers and he was terrified that childcare would send the United States on this kind of pro communist path. And so he came back and he convinced President Richard Nixon to veto this childcare this universal childcare bill that was bipartisan had bipartisan support and passed both the House and Senate by wide majorities. And so Nixon agreed to veto this childcare bill Pat Buchanan wrote the childcare veto language, where he basically said childcare would send us on the wrong course. And so when I went to interview Pat Buchanan at his house. He said that we not only wanted to kill that bill. We wanted to kill the very idea of childcare in the United States, because every child should come home after school and have their mother waiting for them with cake and pie. So, then when I asked well how did he and his wife, manage childcare, he said, oh, we never had children. So that set the United States on a very different path a very conservative path, a very much a path of kind of traditional breadwinner roles, a path of childcare and families these are private affairs and you better figure it out and if you can't figure it out, then you're to blame, you have, you can't, you are the one that is struggling. And we don't look at the system, we don't look at the choices that we have made through policy, we don't look at the choices that we've made through the way that we decide to look at things are cultural expectations what our workplaces expect. And so that's really where we are now what we've tried to do at the better life lab throughout our history and certainly with this new project is really take a look at families but ask them where they are and what they need and what they're experiencing, and then put them in a context to understand these larger systems. And I would argue that our storytellers are journalists are reporters, you know, having enormous power to shape the way we see things are readers are viewers, we shape the narrative of what we believe as a country in very powerful ways. And because there's been really such a lack of attention for so long. A lot of people don't understand. When we began working on what became the care index, the new America care index, a couple years ago, where we did a deep dive trying to understand, well, what, what's working what's not working and it was really a sort of a landscape map of how broken our childcare system is. We looked at cost quality and availability in all 50 states, and found that not one does all three of those things well. And when you talk to people. I interviewed someone who a parent who was so livid by about how expensive childcare was for her, you know, and for many families all across the socio economic spectrum. childcare early care and education is the second largest expense after a rent or a mortgage infant care. Most other advanced economies handle infant care through a paid family and medical leave program, so that parents can be the first caregivers. Well, we also don't have that in the United States and so, you know, a lot of parents, they're lucky if they have paid leave. Many of them cannot afford the one program that we have which is unpaid leave, mostly people with resources can afford that. Most people who have access to paid leave through an employer have resources there it's sort of a race for talent and the vast majority 80% of the workforce has no access to paid family leave so many parents are stuck trying to find childcare for a six week old baby before the baby can even sit up. And it takes a lot of people to do that. And that's why childcare is expensive, because you could have one kindergarten or garden teacher taking care of 20 or 30 in some cases, students which is too many but that's what the regulations call for. But all the different state regulations, it's maybe one parent one adult can take care of maybe four to six infants so you need a lot of people to do childcare well. So that's just one example of how there's just a real misunderstanding that parents bear the brunt of the cost of childcare and it's way too expensive for them. And that we, we do subsidize childcare we don't do it with our tax dollars we don't do it with through federal or state public dollars, we do it by paying caregivers poverty wages. That's how we subsidize childcare is we bank on this labor of love of a lot of majority women, and where women of color are over and immigrant are over represented. So we've created a low wage workforce. So we've written the care report, we wanted to move beyond that and try to understand well how do we help people change this narrative shape this narrative understand that childcare is not necessarily it is a family matter it is something that we all should care about it's something that affects all of us it affects child development, it affects family stability, it affects our economy, it affects businesses and their ability to rely on a stable workforce. And there's research that shows it pays for itself when you invest in childcare it pays for itself in the short term, with parents being able to work and contribute to the economy, and it pays in the long run when the investments that you can make in childcare are different and equity of opportunity. So, this report that we'll be talking about today is all about, how do we begin to build that more equitable universal system. We were all hoping for a much greater investment in the build back better legislation from the foundation that we're all stripped out we got climate which is wonderful and we got none of the care provisions that. And so we're sort of back at square one. So one of the efforts that we take at the better life lab we, we're trying to shape and change the narrative. And one way to do that is to not only focus on the problem and the sad story and what's broken. We need to understand that fully through data and through stories, but also look for where things shifting, who's trying something new, who are the change agents, what are some bright spots places that we could learn from, and that's what we'll be talking about today. And so I'm delighted to turn this over to my better life lab colleagues. We've got, we'll be talking about I've been hoe our fellow will be talking about the key findings from the report that that we're releasing today. Rebecca Gale will be talking about takeaways for reporters and then we'll have a really robust discussion with some journalists who are already in the space and working to change the narrative and really understand the reality of what's going on for families and connecting the dots with politics and policy and history and family and lived experience and cultural expectations because it's all part of the same story. So let me introduce I've been and Rebecca, I've been hoe received her PhD in literature at the University of Michigan, and is an American Council of Learned Society, leading edge fellow at the beat at the better life lab. As an immigrant mother of two toddlers, I've been understands childcare as a feminist as civil right and as an immigration issue. Rebecca Gale is an award winning journalist who has written about childcare for major news outlets, including the Washington Post, the Columbia journalism review and early learning nation. She currently serves as a reporting fellow for the better life lab while raising three kids, which is not easy, but we, we try to walk the talk here at the better life lab. One thing that I will say is that to continue this work to extend this work, the better life lab is also announcing the opening of reporting grants that we are making available to writers and storytellers and graphic artists to continue this work of finding where the solutions where the innovations that we can learn from and scale and build an early care and education system that works for everyone. And with that, let me turn it over to Rebecca and I been. Thank you so much for the introduction today is a special day for me actually it marks the day that I started the better life lab and this trial care innovation project with Kaylee and Rebecca slide please. Just to give a rundown a slide again please. Just to give a rundown again, Bridget already did give us a little idea of what the program is going to be like for a back and I will give you a brief overview of our report innovations for universal tile care which is live on our website. And we will hear from our panelists and we would do have time for questions at the end so please send in your questions throughout the events. We started by giving some background of how we got on to this project, we started this project during COVID pandemic spotlighted child care as a necessary public good for our children and critical for the workforce to function. The trial care sector as you can see in this graph has not recovered from the pandemic with tens of thousands fewer workers than prior to March 2020. Though some relief came to the trial care sector through the American rescue plan Congress has failed to expand the current funding mechanism to shore up the early education workforce and to propose infrastructure for a fair and more accessible system. Child care has historically received far less public investment than K to 12 education and less private investment and fields of education and healthcare slide. The United States spends less than 0.2% of its GPD on child care for children to and under, which is significantly less than wealthy countries. As you can see, the US is at the way bottom. The child care system in the US is woefully inadequate and inequitable patchwork built around private market of those parents who can pay and public programs for those who financially struggle to meet income thresholds and other eligibility criteria. Families below the federal poverty level on an average of 30% of their spend an average of 30% of their income on child care costs compared to 8% among non poor families. So child care literally costs more for families who are poor. Early childhood programs are among the most racially and ethnically segregated education spaces in our country. Black children also face the most difficulties in accessing high quality early education and have the highest likelihood of losing their access due to expulsion and suspension. The pandemic also highlighted the racism within the US infrastructure with more people of color dying and negatively affected by COVID-19. Despite the despite the unprecedented financial relief from the American Rescue Plan, the number of uninsured and child poverty rates actually increased for black and Latinx children and their families. Universal child care is not universal unless it can proactively account for the US exclusive history and infrastructure. Slide. I'll be moving to talk about how we did this project. In 2021, we started to better understand the most critical pain points in the US and find realistic solutions that could pave the way for the universal and equitable child care system in the US. We interviewed dozens of parents of young children and more than 50 experts and innovators in the child care space. Along the way, we asked interviewees to tell us about the problems they've identified in the child care space. How they came to identify certain innovations as promising and the details of the changes they're trying to make and the success or barriers that they have dealt with. We've published 20 standalone articles and different outlets, including the Washington Post, the Columbia Journalism Review, Working Mother Magazine and Early Learning Nation, among others. In each case, we use a solution journalist framework to articulate bright spots and explain which innovations could work in multiple instances and could be scaled for wider adoption. The solution journalist framework shifts from intractable problems to seeking out and focusing on solutions. As Haley and Rebecca argued in their Columbia Journalism Review op-ed, there are no other complex public policy topic that affects so many people that is still not covered with allocated journalists who understand the intricacies of fragilities of the US care system. So what do we mean when we say innovation? We define it as a group of an entity, idea, movement or organization that improves access to high quality education and care with the potential to be scaled or applied elsewhere in pursuit of just, equitable and truly universal child care. We say high quality early education and care a lot. What does that mean? It means that we promote children's physical, mental and emotional well-being and development through a consistent, positive, caring relationship between child and caregiver. There's a lot of economic evidence of early education's benefit on the economy and workplace, but that should not overshadow the potential of early education to create a better and more just society. With our interviews and research, a clear policy goal emerged across five main areas of innovation, offer child care as a public good with strong federal investment to shore up a national child system. Without the political will to do so, child care innovations may remain limited, local and unsustainable in a fractured system. So I'll begin by going, I'm sorry, I'm going to move towards talking about the five areas of innovations that we found. The first slide please is to increase public and private investment into early education and child care. In the absence of sustainable public investment, including the temporary pandemic era spending aim at keeping the broken systems somewhat afloat, child care innovations are stepping into the void by taking place in the public and private sector. States like Vermont and New Mexico are currently the lone actors in making sweeping changes with little federal support. And private sector solutions such as promise venture solutions and spring bank collective are useful and can be built on, but alone are not sufficient for widespread change. Families are different and they want different types of childcare and this type of childcare that they want change as the children age slide. Innovation surrounding child care, unlicensed child care can meet better the needs of families with non traditional schedules who live in child care deserts, as well as ensuring access and quality and variety of setting from small family homes. As are needed to ensure supply and meet market demand. Groups like homegrown care and our can work. I'm sorry, groups like homegrown child care and all are can work to increase supply and success of home of family child care providers. Slide please. As you can see here that licensed child care facilities are not the most used type of care. And we need to incentivize and support a wide variety of settings for early learning and care that meets families needs and preferences including home based and formal care providers. Our third innovation area slide please is to centralize and subsidize administration and program management to diverse childcare providers in order to ease the burden on providers. Centralize administrative roles and allow children centers to focus on providing quality care, not back office functions. This will help lower the cost for parents and overhead, keep family homes and small childcare center sustainable and raise the low wages of childcare workers. Some of the most promising scalable innovations, many wonderful and we care seek to centralize administrative roles and allow childcare centers to focus on providing childcare that is quality high quality, not back office function. This can help lower the cost for the parents, as well as the child care providers. It increases high quality and increased quality. Other groups like neighborhood villages work as non-profit to provide those support services. It's like neighborhood schools. Aim to make the licensing process less burdensome from childcare providers. Well, Mirza is a startup that works with employees to subsidize the cost of childcare providing limited relief for some parents. And our fourth area of innovation is to restructure early education settings to be accountable to the needs of the increasingly diverse US child care population. Provide holistic care that centers both academic and social emotional needs and supports the entire family, not just individual children slide please. This slide shows that the US population is increasingly diverse, but some of the things that it doesn't show is that immigration make up a majority of population growth in 2021. At 2025 children of immigrants are expected to represent nearly one third of the US child population. One tenth of black Americans are immigrants and states in the Southeast Midwest and the West have all seen very rapid growth in the foreign born population. Between 1990 and 2000, the population of young children of immigrants in North Carolina increased by 270% as one example. These types of internal diversification is very important because it is responsible for example that increased number of children who are uninsured because these states have not been familiar with how to help immigrants get insurance. So we broke it down in terms of this to increase accessibility quality for people and tutors. The first is to increase access. We need to mitigate inequalities by reaching populations of young children and building trust with their families in order to understand their wants and needs for a childcare program. Then we have to help them enroll in the programs that meet their needs. Data collection, which is necessary in order to understand and allocate resources to underserved communities such as head start routine community needs assessment, which happens every five years. We can help families with multi-step enrollment process like New Orleans two-way text message community verification reminders. As you can see the requirements for public funded childcare is very extensive and head start even requires an in-person interview. My mother responded that it was like she it's like I'm trying to sell my children or something because it's just so many requirements and it's so confusing. And when they open up a two-way chat text message system, over 90% of parents responded, which means they want a childcare available, but they just don't know how to do the application process. In addition to reducing helping with the verification, we need to reduce structural barriers that prevent families from complete applications like partnering with health mobile clinic to offer vaccinations at enrollment centers. We can remove the barrier of enrollment process altogether. Policy makers, for example, could align early education income eligibility requirements with requirements for other social services such as SNAP, which is a food stamp. SNAP is the new name for food stamps. To pre-approve early education applicants who qualify for these services. And then the other point of promoting equality is to enhance the quality of early education. Part of which is to develop early education workforce in a way that is more diverse. Slide please. Develop and start diverse early childhood education workforce. Colorado Pomodsa Early Childhood Education Workforce Program offers free college accredited system for languages. And this allows more diverse populations to join and to become teachers, lead teachers specifically in early childhood settings. Next slide, please. We also suggest promoting whole family solutions and resources such as home visiting to help children who have experienced trauma. Washington DC's Bria public charter school and the Mary Center offers education for their parents, both to get new careers and also they offer childcare at the same time at the same location. And on their campus is the Mary Center, which is a health center so they can get everything they need in one center. And Chicago's refugee one offers home visiting program for refugees who experienced trauma. The best growing conditions for young children depend on comprehensive support services for families because the stresses were conditions and overall well-being of caregivers for family impact young children's cognitive and emotional development. That means we also need a path to citizenship, adult education, real access to social services when we talk about the overall well-being of young children. Slide please. Our last innovation area focuses on expanding and increasing public subsidies and reform the subsidy model to make quality early education more accessible and affordable to more families. Innovations are still needed around subsidies and making the process more accessible and understandable for families, including making subsidies available in higher dollar amounts like New Mexico, regardless of the parent's work or citizenship status, for different types of care, like California, including home base and family, friend, neighbor care, creating funding and I'm sorry, creating funding avenues for family providers without requiring license, the child tax credit That's the ability for parents to use money how they wanted, trusting parents to find the best care for their children based on their specific needs, which might include linguistic and cultural continuity. Disability and elder care can provide a sustainable model of family members receiving government payments to do care work. Thank you for listening through that. I will now turn it over to Rebecca to offer some journalist takeaways. Hi. Thank you so much. I've been for that summary. Do you mind moving the slide forward? Please. Okay, so I want to talk about this from a journalist perspective and sort of give you some backup as when I originally started reporting on this issue and I've written policy stories before I was surprised with the breadth and depth of childcare policy and exactly how intricate it is and why understanding the nuances really need for a better story. And so in the process of reporting, we came up with a number of takeaways we thought might be helpful for other people who will be approaching these issues, both to find stories to pitch stories and report them out. So at first, as I've been said, the states are the innovative battlegrounds. You want to write a story about something innovative happening on childcare, especially efforts to expand certain programs, look to the states and understand the difference between the different types of childcare and why the differentiation matters. Differentiation is a big deal, both in terms of quality metrics that are used to evaluate the types of care and the subsidies that these different centers or different childcare providers receive. It's interesting about license care for unlicensed cares or there can be an inherent bias. So, oh, license care is better or license care. There, there's more, it's more official, but that's not always the case. As someone from Natalie Renew from Homegrown, someone, a group that advocates for home based childcare. Explain to me there really is a bias towards center based care and for some families that can be a great option for families to work non traditional schedules or who don't live in places with a lot of childcare options. A family find a neighbor an informal childcare provider a family childcare provider, all of these could be excellent options as well. And licensing requirements vary widely by state, they vary in terms of number of kids you can have the requirements to get it and what it actually entails so what licensing means in one state maybe something completely different across the border. And also the private sector funds as intimated earlier there's a lot of interest now in childcare from private sector funding. A lot of this comes from the success in other private sector fields where funds have flown into healthcare to them tech, and you're seeing an interest in what can happen with childcare because it's a huge expenditure for a lot of families making up a huge amount of their income. And, while it's really exciting for people who are into the business of receiving venture funds and we spoke with some innovators who are getting a decent number of series a funding. These innovative services are great they can certainly make childcare more efficient, but we haven't seen them be able to solve the whole problem and they don't necessarily the ones I spoke to expect to solve the whole problem. But something to keep in mind before being billed as the next great solution. Next slide please. Subsidies I've been mentioned subsidies are also a place that's right for innovation and since states do subsidies differently and they're often, they're getting federal funds and then they're distributing them on in their own localities. You see a lot of different methods for how they're calculated how they're distributed what the life with the requirements are. So, this is a great example of where you would lean on experts and find different states or example or localities that are doing something innovative in the subsidy space. I also mentioned the increasingly diverse childcare population or child population and how it's expected to grow in the coming decades. And this is another place that we've seen some bias or things taking account when reporting on these issues, including the potential fear that some populations have of the early education providers citing policing discipline family separation. Even I think one woman spoke to Ivan talked about how she wasn't sure her boss would get there on time and there's penalties for being late for pickup. There's bias and kindergarten readiness that may marginalize and stigmatize immigrants and families of color, specifically. Next slide please. And another area that we've seen that could be right for more stories is the potential for reporting on the more holistic needs of young children and the institutions that can serve them better. So childcare is a big piece of this but it's not just childcare we're talking about healthcare system the mental health providers and public play facilities. There's the opportunity there to see how childcare connects to these things as a larger issue that are affecting certain communities. And finally, I guess we're here I know a number of us really care passionately and want to make the case for more reporting on these issues. It's a very broken complicated system that needs a lot more attention. And I know Bridget talked about how in the 1970s there was this huge political movement to get national childcare and it was really undone pretty by only a few people with some misguided perceptions there but the point being that more reporting is out there the more people hear these stories about why childcare is needed and the more they understand the role this plays and raising young children in our society, the greater appetite there may be for change on a larger level. So, for all of you out there who thinking about reporting on childcare and Bridget did mention the reporting grants. We really want to encourage that and happy to be a resource as well. So thank you very much and I'm turning it back over to I believe Haley. Thanks so much Rebecca and I've been you can go ahead and close those slides out. I'm Haley Swenson I am a research and reporting fellow with the Better Life Lab at New America, then affiliated with the Better Life Lab for about five years now. It's been a long and exciting journey. And I've been writing and editing on childcare since I joined the team I was first editing our partnership with Slate.com, where we cover gender work and social policy on a daily basis. That led to my first real deep dive into understanding the childcare system. And then I was able to work with I've been in Rebecca on this recent report. If it already hasn't been dropped into the link on the report went live today, it really is a synthesis of some of the reporting that we did and what we do is we structured around five main stories that we were able to publish at Early Learning Nation. Thanks to our partners there and Linda Shockley in particular. So thank you Linda. I encourage people to go check it out you can really read one story at a time so it's not too overwhelming. And hopefully, as you've seen here and as took away from that that last bit, we feel that we've barely scratched the surface when it comes to the potential for more reporting on childcare and the critical piece of the puzzle, because it does seem that while public understanding of the problem has certainly increased since 2020, the public's understanding of what we do about it is is reduced and I think a lot of that has to do with a sense of low expectations that's different from other wealthy nations, in terms of what the federal government could be doing and what our government in general could be doing to bolster early childhood in this country. So with that I want to introduce our panelists today, journalists from around the country, who I hope can give us even a more complete picture of what reporting on childcare has been like over the last couple of years, and what to look for and hope for in the future. I'll note at the outset that unfortunately one of our scheduled panelists today Jackie Mater, who covers early education for HEC and your report is out sick so everybody, let's send her the best and in healing and and reminder to get your thoughts. With that said I'd like to start out from hearing from each of us by hearing from each one of our panelists about what the story of early childhood and care has looked like from their particular vantage point. Since the pandemic began, some of our journalists are full time dedicated to childcare and early education and some are not. And I think that that itself is a really interesting question about how to cover these issues with sometimes very limited time and resources. So let me start with Jack Rooney Jack is the deputy local news editor at the King Sentinel, a daily newspaper in southwestern New Hampshire where he previously covered education as a staff writer. In 2020 and 2021 he co led a reporting project pandemic parenting, which focused on solutions to long standing and pandemic induced childcare access and afford or affordability gaps. And for this one a public occurrences award from the New England newspaper and press association, recognizing the very best work that New England newspapers produce each year. Jack, please tell us what you've been seeing hearing and writing about childcare. Yeah, thanks so much for having me and I guess to just jump right in. Really from the sources and the folks I talked to up here, primarily in New Hampshire in Vermont, the story of childcare, since the pandemic began is really one that went from bad to worse or I suppose a fragile system to an even more fragile system. Obviously when, you know, everything shut down and in March and later in the spring of 2020. It really very quickly highlighted the importance of childcare and early childhood education and the just how critical the system is to the workforce and the overall economy and the overall well being of our communities. And so that's kind of the place where I stepped in and started reporting on this issue. We had a project I did was actually funded by a grant from the solutions journalism network which my editors here applied for before I even came to the Sentinel and so once I joined as a as a staff writer covering education. There are pretty small staff here. We've got five staff reporters at the moment. And so that meant that education meant education from preschool to grad school basically so I kind of jumped right into to this issue specifically and have been following it, you know, primarily through the completion of that series and then we did some public listening sessions on zoom afterwards to kind of continue the conversation off the page. And, you know, following it kind of as, you know, pandemic era restrictions have lifted particularly around childcare that the story has kind of been, I think two fold here and in these small states and in New England. Which is just a continued staffing crisis and just the absolute unsustainability of staffing childcare facilities. But kind of on the, the, the one silver lining that everyone up here has kind of pointed to though is that most of the childcare up here is through, you know, small standalone centers. And what I'm hearing from from the folks who run those centers is that part of the urgency created by the pandemic. When everything shut down is that now these childcare centers and their directors and their staff are way more connected and way more collaborative than they ever have been before. And so because of that there's a lot more momentum towards solving these shared problems and in the case of Vermont as as I've been alluded to in her presentation. There's kind of a continuing effort to address on a more systemic level these those kinds of issues that have long affected the childcare system so happy to talk about more of that as we move forward here to the next slide. Thanks so much, Jack. I think we're going to be moving from east to west here so we're going to take a big leap across the country now and I'd like to introduce Patty Mackler. Patty is a senior reporter with the Arizona Daily Star, where she has covered issues pertaining to children and families for more than a decade. She was reported on criminal justice and the courts with an emphasis on juvenile court. She has received the state and national journalism awards on these topics and was awarded fellowships focused on children with the Thomas Reuters Foundation and USC and Burke Center for health journalism. Patty welcome. Tell us what you've been seeing hearing and writing about in Southern Arizona. Hi, thank you for the invitation to talk today. So I want to just start out with explaining that before the pandemic started Arizona was not in great shape. Arizona is not in great shape. When it comes to families and children and childcare has suffered tremendously. So if we go back to 2017-2018, I reported quite a bit on childcare centers closing because the state had not increased its reimbursement rate for families that qualify for assistance in 18 years. So I was trying to remember if it, why it all kind of crashed at that time I think a lot of centers have been closing over time but there was a crisis at that time kind of coming out of the great recessions and it snowballed and that over about 18 months, 788 centers stopped taking childcare subsidies, about half of them closed. So it was, it was a crisis at that time and I reported quite a bit on that in 2019 we had an infusion of federal dollars. The state was able to increase its reimbursement rate, but a lot of the centers that people have been relying on were closed. And these are marginalized families these are families that are struggling to and need childcare in order to work. So we have a very active child welfare system so there was a lot of stories related to all that intersection like wouldn't it be better to help the families early on before they get in the child welfare system. So anyway, that's a background to the pandemic. And after the pandemic started, I, I wasn't report I hadn't reported on childcare and a little while like Jack were not a huge staff. So I wear a lot of different hats and I have been reporting on I try to report on things that are happening for children and families, you know, a variety of things housing and things like that. So after the pandemic started, I, I touched back in with some of my sources on childcare and by May, a third of the state's childcare centers had closed. And some of them closed permanently and there were just heartbreaking stories that still bother me when I drive by one place that closed and remember going in there and reporting. This woman who had worked as a teacher for a long time she was an art teacher and she wanted to open an art infused childcare center. And she did a month before the pandemic. And she ended up closing her doors a few months after the pandemic started. She just could not afford to stay afloat and so So I reported on that and you know the competition to get federal assistance with other businesses, which was a nightmare because aren't, aren't they vital and to the credit of our governor. He did say that they are, we need to support childcare centers now. I mean it was obvious to anyone. There was an infusion of funding that helped some of the childcare centers that could stay open stay open. And then the stories morphed into well how do we open during a health crisis and how do we protect our, our workers. Of course, that wasn't a big consideration but I reported on some places where it was really taken into account and people were innovative and creative and taking temperatures and having like green, yellow, red, like how many people are getting infected and can we stay open and do we have to close for the week and so. As Jack said in collaboration increased between the childcare centers we have a pretty active into some we have a pretty active community of people who work for the betterment of, of childcare, early childhood and emphasizing it's been a big push to help people understand how critical it is to have high quality care that the first five years of life are are vital are critical times for children to be getting really good enriching care for the development of their families, trauma, you know, all that kind of stuff that they've, this nonprofit has worked really hard to get scholarships for people who can afford high quality care, and that collaboration increased with families is that was a bright spot so anyway I can talk forever on this topic so I'll leave it there and wait for some questions but that was the nuts and bolts of reporting on it during the pandemic. Thanks for that. Our caddie and we'll get back to you because I know you're all very passionate about this issue and have a lot more to share. First I want to bring in our last panelist Sonya sharp. Sonya is a metro reporter for the Los Angeles Times with an emphasis on children care work and reproductive justice. During the newsroom in 2019 she worked as an NYPD credentialed member of the New York City Press Corps, writing stranger than fiction stories of crime and culture for vice the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice, among others. Her 2021 project on disabled motherhood was funded by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. Sonya over to the West Coast. Thank you so much for being here. Please tell us about what you've been seeing and hearing from from LA and from from California. Thank you so much for having me I'm really honored to be here. I guess top line for me, covering childcare and this pandemic the story is the story of labor. Right, it's labor on the side of the workers who we know that in California, early childhood workers preschool workers are making sometimes half of what a convertent teacher is making right, we know that for families in California, the cost of preschool is as much or more as a year of UC Berkeley. Okay. California has been very innovative in a lot of what it's done and there was a major win childcare workers union here just this month that is going to expand access probably for a lot of kids as well as really improving conditions for a lot of workers but the need is very acute the kids are really bad we have so many children in poverty, many many children who qualify for subsidized or free care, but cannot access it the care is not there and, and they can't get the subsidies that they're entitled to that problem is particularly acute here in Los Angeles about a third of the kids who qualify and can't get access are here. And so that was the story right it was first of all that the labor of the people a lot of them grandmothers people who are very vulnerable to coven 19 and yet we're remaining face to face many workers here, never closed, right they they continued the entire pandemic and they were working face to face. When our K 12 teachers were remote right teachers who are much more likely to be white much more likely to not live in poverty. Generally younger so just in many ways less vulnerable than the workforce that was face to face the whole time. On the other side of that, it's also a labor issue for families and I think that's what made it a really big suddenly very interesting to my career like we did not have somebody covering early. We had a we have a wonderful education team, but we just really didn't know anything. I got pulled in because I have kids in this age group that were in this system at the time, and I knew a little bit which was more than what anybody else do. And all of a sudden a lot of people just like me were getting hit by the fact that there was no care for anybody. And in fact, a lot of our children and growing number of our children here in California ended up in daycare centers or camps, when they were doing online school, they were doing their K 12 school online but they were sitting in the care of these workers and so I think from both sides it really was and continues to be a labor issue, first and foremost, in my mind. And I think increasingly, if we're looking toward the future, I, I hope that people start to see it as part and parcel with reproductive justice. I think there's more about that, if we circle back but I think it is very intimately connected to the part of reproductive justice that is the ability to have the children want and care for the children that we have. Thank you so much Sonya as you can tell we've got a fantastic panel here. We actually have a panelist well we'd hope to have as a panelist wasn't able to make today, because of a meeting, and we'll get into the day to day of being a journalist and what it's like to actually juggle all these priorities hopefully in this panel as well. I'll turn it into a video. If my event staff can cue that up from a journalist Deepa Fernandez, who actually Sonya mentioned that childcare providers union in California and deep has been reporting on them for quite a while so I'll turn it to video. Hi everybody, my name is Deepa Fernandez. I'm the host of the NPR show here and now. I'm new, I've just started in the job, and I will be coming on the air soon, but I'm joining this fabulous conference today via video. Just for a moment to tell all of you about some of the work that I've done in the past and that I hope to continue. In 2012 I started covering early childhood development for KPCC Southern California Public Radio, and at that time I was one of the few sole early childhood reporters in the country. And over the years I've stayed with it. I've covered early childhood issues, you know, right up until, you know, now. And one of the things that I've learned a lot about is the childhood workforce, the women, mostly women of color who do all the work, the educating of the littlest children, and those may go from people who run their own home daycares, all the way up until people who have master's degrees and work in preschools or childhood centers. And I think the workforce is one of the most critical parts of covering early childhood development, and I would really encourage everyone, wherever you are, to look into it. Because a lot of these women, mostly women of color, are underpaid. They're very low wage workers, especially in California. And there are many issues. Many of the early childhood development issues are tied into the very people who are doing the care of the littlest children. Many of my stories over the years are focused on that, including one that I was working with on the Better Life Labs, which is about the organizing of one group of women of color in California to get a union, to unionize childcare workers, and especially childcare workers who work from their own homes. And it's this kind of interesting strategy because they don't have a boss. The question, if you work, if you're more of a small business owner, so if you work from your own home, who's your boss? Who are you targeting when you unionize? And it turns out that they targeted the state of California. They targeted the governor. They wanted to sit down with the governor because it's the state of California that pays them for low income children. And that was the real stumbling block. And many of these women didn't have any kind of healthcare benefits or any kind of benefits, didn't even get paid if a child didn't show up or if they were sick. Many workforce issues that were really interesting, and they've been trying for years to get a union and governor year after year through three or four successive governors for almost two decades. The legislation was introduced and even in the times when it made it through the state legislature, the governor vetoed it. Yet these women came back again the next year and tried again. And to me was just an incredible story of grit and perseverance. And then a few years ago it finally got passed and a progressive governor in California, Governor Newsom, signed it. And he said, yes, I will sit down directly at a negotiating table and negotiate with you. And that was just a kickoff of a story for me that I really wanted to know who these women were who kept trying and trying. And it really broke some stereotypes about black women and Latina women who are the ones providing the care because they really kept at it and conditions have improved for childcare workers in California. So it's just an example of a story that I have covered and been on for a few years. But I think the issues are many when it comes to the childcare workforce and I highly encourage you to look into it wherever you are. Thanks. So I'm really curious from the panel, what Deepa's words might have brought up for you in your own reporting. Obviously staffing has been a big part of what everybody has talked about here. And the really strange position of childcare workers who are in such a variety of settings with such a variety of relationships. And, you know, I think we've seen a, you know, I've been showed that slide really early on that slow recovering not recovered childcare workforce. And, you know, you can't really explain that without looking at the wages these these workers are receiving where, you know, their story after story right now about really experienced childcare teachers, leaving the sector for different jobs in the service sector where they can make more money and have more secure lives with their own families. So really interesting situation and, and, you know, one that is really hard to solve outside this concept of federal funding of more money coming into the system, or at the state level, as Deepa talked about. So really curious what, what kinds of stories you're hearing from the workers in this sector now, and any potential kinds of solutions we should be thinking about, you know, is unionization the path forward. Are there other ways that these workers are advocating for themselves to make this a more livable situation for them, because that really seems to be the crux of the situation here. I'll jump in. I know that getting a lot of centers and a lot of preschools stopped taking, as I said, stopped taking the state, the families that qualify for state subsidies. And now that that's increased and I need to revisit and see where this is at now but now that that's going a little bit better. So can we streamline that and have centers that don't currently take state subsidies start taking state subsidies. And we have money that sits in Arizona, and should be being used for a variety of things we had that with the cares act and housing and people were pulling their hair out. One of the things that I want to get back to is how much money do we have sitting that could be used to to kind of infuse that solution and get more centers getting assistance to raise wages. There's one center here in town a school that has health care for their employees. And that, you know, helps with longevity. And they try to be very cognizant of like when the day is done, you have to be here to get your kid because these people have worked hard all day. And this isn't an easy job. And, you know, let's let's be respectful things like things like that. I mean that's an unusual school. Anyway, that was one thing that came to mind when I was listening to you. I think a little bit from the kind of the solution space with I guess the big asterisk that in basically all of my reporting, which was, you know, solutions oriented. I kind of find myself I found myself in this tricky situation and I remember having conversations with my editors. While reporting my series saying everyone's telling me that the only real salute systemic solution is more federal funding. So what do we what do we do and in lieu of that. And, you know, the answers up up here in New England are kind of, you know, smaller but pretty innovative and nimble, you know, stop gaps or little ways to kind of chip away at some of the, the bigger problems. So actually one of the points from the one of the key innovation areas from the report that was just released today on centralizing and subsidizing the administration of programs actually connects with a group here in New Hampshire called the state early learning alliance or CELA. And it's run through early learning New Hampshire statewide nonprofit and it's basically a membership model where individual childcare centers pay an annual membership fee, and in exchange for that fee, they basically get access to the shared services model that kind of it's basically like pool purchasing for anything from food and property maintenance to insurance and you know heating oil. So instead of, you know, if you're a member of the state early learning alliance, you know, instead of having to have say a maintenance director on staff. You have access to this property management company that the alliance keeps on kind of a retainer and so if you have a pipe that's leaking. They have a list of plumbers that they can call until and we'll just keep calling down the list until they find someone who can come out and fix the problem right away. The other example there that is kind of ironic though because I went back and talked to some of the folks from the state early learning alliance earlier this week because at the time I was reporting my series. They were just launching a pilot program to create these kind of back office service hubs. So having, you know, a finance director business manager payroll people working for multiple different childcare centers so that, again, not every childcare center needs to have the, all of those people on staff, especially not full time. And so I did ask about, you know, hey, you were just piloting that program when we last talked how's it going. And they said well we actually kind of had to mix that because we couldn't find the staffing for it so it just kind of illustrates how it's, I suppose it's not just the childcare industry specifically, you know, childcare systems specifically having staffing problems but but you know while they're dealing with those staffing problems there are some of these kind of smaller ways to chip away at it in, you know, in lieu of greater public public money. So I want to turn back to you as we sort of dig into these issues you raised the question of reproductive justice. And, you know, I think, you know, part of this equation of getting government to sort of increase their funding, so that childcare teachers can be making more money enough to live on to support their families. So much of it seems to hinge on a certain taking for granted of these workers and it's not surprising that they're largely women, women of color and that's historically who's done childcare. But, you know, since the 70s when we rejected that public model as Bridget talked about earlier, really come down to the market, and the market does not necessarily favor those workers. What are you seeing and hearing and I'm just wondering if you can elaborate bit on your connection to the reproductive justice issue. Thank you so much for that question and I think it's really important and I'll try to be sort of cogent here. I want to go back to what Bridget said about the first kind of early childhood care that we don't provide in the United States I mean I think you can draw a really straight line from the attitude that a lot of people in this country take about abortion care right through childcare which is that the moment that you have sex basically you it's all your fault, and it's all your problem and the government like doesn't want to take any responsibility for your needs except if they want to get in your business right. I think a very similar thing happens when you have a baby in every other peer nation that we have, there is some money for you to spend some time recovering from the birth of a child and caring for that child if that's what you want to do, right. And I could give you a really quick example. We had the big formula shortage earlier this year it's important to understand that 50% of the formula in this country's bought by wick. Okay, poor people are disproportionately and overwhelmingly relying on formula and the reason that they are relying on formula is not usually because their first choice it is because they have to go immediately back to work and they have no opportunity to either establish breastfeeding with a baby that they might want to breastfeed, or to pump for that baby because it is not provided for in their work environment. And that, to me, is exactly how we kind of start to get toward this reproductive justice issue here in California, we have so much data that shows that people are not having the size of family that they want that our birth rate continues to decline at this rate that alarms a lot of, you know, pungent and politicians, and people say the number one thing they say is the cost of childcare, right people are not having the families that they want they're not raising their children in the way that they would most want to. They're not confident in the care that they can get people who qualify for subsidized care, it's pretty hard to qualify or that we're trying to make it easier here in California, but it's also really easy to get kicked out. Right if you go to work and you start to make just a little bit too much money it's very easy to un qualify yourself and then it's very hard to get back in all of these issues. They make it difficult for people to pull themselves and their families out of poverty, but it also makes it really difficult for them to have and keep and keep safe the children that they want. And without belaboring the point I'm working now, talking to some young women who are in the process of aging out of foster care, and who have already lost custody of wanted children and are trying to hang on to, you know, babies that they've just had or about to and again it is all connected to care you cannot separate out. Thank you Sonya for that. I, I want to say that we have some fellow journalists on this panel here who I think are really curious to learn from you all. But we also have a number of folks from the child care sector from nonprofits from philanthropies from, you know, who might be advocates or researchers themselves and I think they're really curious to hear the journalist perspective on all of these issues, and there's a bit more what it's like for you all it's not like journalism, you know, I'm like childcare is super well funded, growing fast really easy, you know, high wages. So I wonder if you could talk a bit about what it's like for you in your newsrooms right now and connected to this is, you know, we saw this huge surge in interest in early education and childcare at the outside of the pandemic when it was just impossible to look away. And so I'm really curious, you know, are your newsrooms still, you know, dedicated to covering these issues. You know, Sonya mentioned that there really wasn't an early at the prior to the pandemic. So I'm really curious how, how things are looking now as we approach 2023. And if you could just give us, you know, a little bit of a sense if you're wearing multiple hats, how you're making the case for childcare stories, how you find the resources for it and what what it's like as a journalist to try to balance all of this. Well, I'll go first again, keep talking. It's very challenging our newsroom has dramatically shrunk. So I'm grateful to still be working in the field because I love journalism. And there's, you know, when I've considered leaving I, I know I'd be chewing on the furniture. If I weren't reporting on stories because I just every day is interesting. Some days are hard, that's for sure. But so it I I first started working at the paper that I work for now we had a very full newsroom and now we're, we don't have a courts reporter for example right now we just kind of piecemeal it with people have had experience. And, and I write about I try one thing that is good is that we've tried to do now is to have themes that you follow for lack of a better word. In other words, I write about children and families and elderly people in a variety of contexts right now. So, I don't have like the health beat I have, although I have, but through the pandemic I was the primary doing a lot of those stories, but now it's more children and families and what's relevant right now related to them and might be housing it might be food it might be childcare. So, if that answers your question. Yeah, it sounds like a lot to juggle. Jack or Sonya can you tell us a little bit about, you know what it's like to try to wear all these hats and juggle at all. Yeah, I'll jump in and say, you know, I had been covering childcare and early at pretty full time and then I went on a maternity leave. And when I came back, you know the appetite was just not the same that it had been I think for a variety of reasons. I find I feel like this and a lot of stuff with journalism but you just sort of tricking people like I what Patty said resonates with me like I don't right now have to be I have themes that I follow. I can sometimes almost be easier to do that because you're not pitching your, your editor like this is another iteration on this thing that I've been following you're saying like this is the, you know here's the flashing headline here's the interesting weird thing and by the way it has to do with this theme or it's actually part of this larger story that that I keep telling. And we, by the nature of our work just have to keep chasing what's new. And so sometimes it's useful to be able to just kind of be putting a spin on something or be you know like be able to attach what you're continuing to follow to whatever people are paying attention to rather than trying to turn their attention, which we have the opportunity to do I think during the pandemic where for one brief second we were able to say oh hey this is not just a private concern that each individual family all across the country is dealing with this is a systemic issue. Now we kind of have to just like throw the systemic issue under where the spotlight happens to be. If that answers the question. Yes, and it raises for me a question that I wanted to ask about this problem of what happens if there's not big public policy momentum I think when build back better was, you know, still up for debate and there was a lot of childcare stuff in it. It was really easy to justify hey this is hard news this is happening right now it's on the hill we need to cover it we need to localize it. And it's not in the in the immediate headlines I mean obviously we can think about state level and local level momentum. But I'm curious, you know, what advice you give to other journalists about how to make the case for these stories. How do you report on a lack of policy movement, you know we saw that slide, you know seeing what other wealthy countries are doing when it comes to early childhood and how, how far behind the United States is, how can you tell the stories and keep them in the spotlight. How do you make the argument for their relevance I'm curious to hear from anyone on this. Yeah, I, I know, you know, to answer your previous question a little bit to it. It's at a, especially at a small local news organization. It's, it's hard to be able to take a step back and work on some sort of bigger project, like childcare reporting often needs to be to really get down into the weeds of it and understand it and report on it well. So, because of that I think the, the reporting grants that you mentioned are great idea that's the whole reason I'm really here talking to to you all today is because our paper received a grant like that to, to report on this issue. And then, just in terms of reporting on it when it's not an issue of national or even state level political attention. The biggest connection right now in the smaller New England states is as an economic development issue, because states like New Hampshire and Vermont main, particularly during the pandemic has had a lot of people move from New York Boston. You know, to get to more rural wide open places where they can spend more time outdoors. And a lot of the states up here trying to continue that momentum but they're finding that if it's young families who are moving up they really don't have the childcare infrastructure to support that really and so as both New Hampshire and Vermont kind of continue pushing towards more reforms to the childcare system kind of on both big and small scales at the, you know, state legislature and gubernatorial levels. You're seeing a lot more businesses and business organizations and business leaders speaking up in this space because they're realizing that, you know, it's one of the biggest workforce issues for them, and it kind of it goes really hand in hand with housing. But it's, you know, if you don't, you're not going to attract new workers if they don't have a place to live, and if there's no places or people who can care for their kids while they come to work for you so that's certainly one way it kind of in between legislative sessions and such that this issue stays top of mind from an economic perspective. Thank you Jack. Patty, I am curious in Southern Arizona you mentioned the turmoil over subsidies that they had stayed so stagnant and low for so long. Some improvement as a result of the pandemic, some budging on that. I'm really curious, you know, Jack brings in the economic aspect of this as a way to keep it in the headlines it's affecting work. Obviously it's a childhood issue and a family justice issue. How are you making the case for these stories and how is it if it is staying sort of front and center in Southern Arizona. What kinds of stories are you able to tell. I'm fortunate in that I, I haven't had to make a case for the stories I work the people that I work with my editors are on board. So it's not it hasn't ever been like oh are we covering that again because they see the relevance and and give me the time to report on it. So, unfortunately, I have when I was preparing for this and I went back to read through my pandemic coverage. I haven't revisited childcare in some months because I've been covering our housing crisis. And I also write about hospitals closing and, you know, things that are, you know, affecting families and children that are not related to childcare, but I'm excited to get back to it. Now that we're listening to Sonia and Jack and hearing about the projects and so I don't know if I answered your question but right now I'm not actively pursuing a story but I am making a mental list of what I want to do next so and the economic standpoint it certainly resonates in Arizona I mean if you want to get the attention of lawmakers and our governor. You know you, you got to drive home how it affects business owners. So that's definitely an angle you know when people couldn't go to work suddenly the childcare workers got some attention. We're down to about our last 10 minutes and I would encourage the audience if you have any questions or there's topics we haven't covered yet that you were hoping to hear. Please type into that Q&A box and it will make its way over to me. I do want to hear from each of our panelists at the end some kind of final thoughts about the next early education and childcare stories they might want to carve out time for or unexplored areas they're hoping to dive into and why they think those are going to be a crucial part of the future of childcare. Before we do that I'm leading you so you have a little time to chew on that question before we get to it. We did have one question from the audience come in about inequality exacerbated by the pandemic when it comes to childcare. I did see a Bloomberg article recently that said hey lots more families are hiring nannies because you know these these more group oriented childcare is closed down. We know of course that not every family can afford an individual caregiver who comes into their home. We also had this question of pods during the pandemic you know where some kids were able to kind of come together do their school work together. Maybe that's a potential source of inequality. Any other kinds of sources of inequality that might be that we might have missed that the pandemic has created things to look out for and to watch. During the pandemic, the families who could afford to stay home had children who didn't have to be put at risk. If I'm answering your question. So the wealthier families, their children didn't have to go to preschool because they worked out an alternative plan, as you said, so it really the racial segregation was really emphasized during the pandemic here. But there is a one childcare center in South Tucson that started providing food boxes. So I mean if you look at the difference in balance there, families are coming in and getting assistance. She's an angel, the woman who runs that center. And, and she was intuitive and creative about how to help them. And then other families that I interviewed they, they didn't need childcare because they had a lot of money and mom when her dad went part time. So it was an interesting way to look at it. I would, I would just add on that I think that there is, there has for a long time been a sort of a bias against daycare like especially if you need early care early, you know childcare for like an infant or young toddler. There's always been kind of a bias against group care. I think that has grown. I think there is kind of like a broader discomfort with groups and especially what groups mean in terms of who you are mixing with. And I would love to see more positive stories about the benefits of daycare and group care and the sort of cognitive and, and just other benefits for kids because I think that that bias has intensified sharply, and was already a problem. And then I'll just add one more inequality that is coming from kind of my rural community here in New Hampshire which affects a lot of different areas of life but certainly childcare to which is transportation. It's another big difference from the early childhood education from the public education system for those who are going to childcare centers or even other individual homes. There's no bus necessarily to pick them up in the morning and bring them back home after their day is done at the wherever they're getting childcare so that's another issue that that pretty constantly comes up here. Thank you for all of those answers. So I'm going to sort of bring us toward the end here and let you all come in one last time. I said before I wanted to hear what is the next story you want to be able to tell or look into surrounding early childhood. If, if you'd rather or if you have any advice for journalists aspiring to cover childcare about getting in where should they begin. So you can take it either way either your next story or where you'd recommend journalists were interested in covering this, who might actually want to apply for one of our reporting grants and we'll send out to all the attendees, our call for pitches that I'd encourage you. Not only our audience but the panelists here if we can support more story telling on this front. As you've probably heard here today, there's a lot of problems when it comes to infrastructure for early childhood in this country, but also just an incredible resilience among the families who seek childcare in trying to support their families give their children everything they need to thrive, and the workers and childcare providers and teachers who are often tireless and trying to improve these systems, even despite such limited infrastructure. So I think there's really just so much room for more storytelling on these issues. And I, and I hope that you walk away inspired to to join the chorus so we can, you know, spread, you know and educate the public about these issues but also get more people who already have, have the pen so to speak at their publications, covering these issues. So, let me, I'll start in the way we, we started the panel in that order so Jack, if I can start with you. I know you're not covering early education now so you can either speak about yourself or a potential journalist out there. What do you think is next in covering this issue. Well, from just my local perspective here to the point that Rebecca made in the presentation about how the states are the real kind of battlegrounds and innovation labs at the moment. I would encourage everyone nationwide, who's interested in childcare and early childhood education to keep a close eye on Vermont. There's a coming legislative session so that'll be starting next January through May or so, because they are really gearing up for the kind of, they have passed some legislation to kind of enshrine in state law to fundamental goals for early childhood education, the first of which is that families do not spend more than 10% of their gross annual income on childcare. And the second being that early childhood education educators receive compensation that is commensurate with peers in other fields. And so they've kind of been building piece by piece legislation with those two goals in mind and in this coming legislative session, they're going to be looking at how much is that going to cost and how are we going to pay for it. And so that's where the real kind of nitty gritty will come in, but they there's a nonprofit in Vermont called let's grow kids that has been working on this issue for, for years and is building up to this kind of universal state funded and you know public and public funding but primarily state funded system. And so I'm going to be very intrigued to see how that plays out in Vermont and how other states other communities around the country might be able to learn from that adapt that. And we actually cover let's grow kids in the report as one of these promising innovations in terms of how to win the public will to invest further in these systems. Patty let me turn to you. I know you're not working on a childcare story right now that your schedule opens up to shift that way. What do you think is next in telling the story. What I think is next is also what I would encourage people are just starting to cover childcare do as well I mean in addition to what Jack was just saying you know looking to other places that are doing it well and keeping track of what's going on in that respect is getting out and in talking to people who are affected by it and telling the story through those people. I feel like we can't do enough of that and my husband is a journalist as well and he always emphasizes that let the people who are experiencing the problem, the people who are in it, the people are doing the jobs the families it you know getting out there and and talking to them and telling the story through their eyes. And so I'm, I'm excited to do that and I think that that's what we really need to let people know more and more about is like how this really is affecting our communities and how it feels to be one of those families are one of those workers. Thank you and Sonya. What would you have us take away in terms of the next stories to tell about childcare. Well, I would say less about the next stories and more I guess just a general advice I think it's important to understand about all these stories is that there is a there is a deep and continuing and there is a lot of resilience and often a, an antipathy to women's work, right, undergirds all of these issues right is the fact that women are in the workforce the fact that women are 70% of healthcare workers. That is making a lot of people uncomfortable it makes a lot of people want to look away. That when we talk about this we're talking about valuing and appropriately paying for the labor of women of color that we're talking about subsidizing families that are often again for women of color and and allowing them to go back to work after they've had children all of those are things that a lot of the readership and a lot of the American public is still deeply ambivalent, or in fact opposed to, and you can't report that if you don't understand that that kind of dynamic that's undergirding this I think the most important thing we all need to be doing is continuing to insist through our reporting and through the facts that we bring to bear that this is a public issue, and then it cannot be solved by private people doing their own thing. Thank you so much and I would encourage folks if you haven't yet go to new america.org you can check out our report that summarizes our reporting on this today. In addition to the five stories we feature in that report we link to several of the stories we've published elsewhere, including one that Rebecca gail wrote about let's grow kids which Jack mentioned. We have a variety of stories about some other solutions out there, and so if you want to have a little deeper dive, then we get in into the report. Please check that out. We will be following up after this event to link you to the report to include our call for pitches. So if you are a storyteller who wants to dive into this issue, hopefully we can support you in doing that. And I would just say thank you so much for attending this event for caring about early education and early childhood. And, you know, until we can collaborate or work again please stay safe and well. Thank you.