 We'll welcome everyone to another crisis conversation live from the Better Life Lab. Today, we're going to be talking about childcare, and particularly childcare in this time of the corona crisis. I think before we get started, we've got a wonderful group of people to share their stories. Childcare provider and early care educator, a reporter who can give us a 30,000-foot view about what is and isn't working. Catherine from the National Women's Law Center, who's done a lot of really good research about how to move forward. I think I want to start off with saying, this is already a pretty broken system, our childcare system in the United States. Early care educators are caregivers, they earn poverty wages, parents are shouldering the bulk of the cost of childcare, the government pays about 40 percent of the cost of childcare, parents 60 percent, and philanthropy about business, about one to 4 percent. More than anything, this crisis is showing how broken the system is. Here we're in a position where a number of governors are saying, it's time to go back to work, and yet nobody is really addressing childcare or addressing it effectively. I want to talk about that, about what the experience is now, and what we're learning and what we need to change moving forward. Let me first start with Patricia Moran. You're a family care provider out in California. When we were talking before, you usually have about 14 children, and when the crisis hit, a number of parents then pulled out or they had to shelter in place and stay home, but you stayed open because you had some essential workers who really needed your help. Tell us your story, what's been happening since the pandemic hit, and how is that affecting your business? Yes. Good morning. My name is Patricia Moran and thank you for this opportunity, because really this COVID-19 pandemic has revealed just how indispensable our childcare is to our... It is providing direct service to frontline workers. My childcare is open. I have before 14 children, and now I have only three. And before this crisis, we were facing a lot of situations that provide us with not any benefits. They paid really low to us. We didn't have any protection, any support as the correct word. Now with this crisis, imagine how hard it is for a provider, because we have to, you know, we are working very close with parents, with the community. We are seeing their necessities, the parents, single moms, the children, and at the same time, we were like trying to find the cleaning supplies, the food for these kids, and this crisis. And we are, you know, working with a healthy... help the partners in our state government to keep our children safe. But, you know, it's like... This crisis, like I say, I told you before, it's a wake-up call for everybody, because especially for the childcare providers, that's why we are, before this crisis, we start getting together to have our union, to raise up our profession, to raise up our voice about these situations, because we were seeing how we didn't have that support. And now with this crisis, it's completely, it's terrible, because, you know... So you said that you stayed open for three children instead of 14. You know, can you talk a little bit more about why? Who were the parents and, you know, why did you stay open? And then what is that like? You've got, you know, governors who'll say, oh, we'll just keep our, we'll just make sure that children stay six feet apart. Well, how can you keep toddlers six feet apart? How are you? Talk about, like, who are the parents that you needed to stay open for, and how are you managing the children in a pandemic? I mean, like I said, 14 children, but most of those parents, they were essential workers. The three children I had, the parents, they are essential workers. And my daycare is completely open for all the essential workers, but for the citizens, you know, we are trying to get those children, but right now we are using, you know, through the union, we have that platform. We create a platform, the Karina platform to reach those essential workers, because like me, myself, is, you know, I have an infant and I have a toddler and a preschooler. And like you say, it's really, really hard. It's really hard to maintain to the guidelines for this crisis, like social distance. We need to clean, we were cleaning before, a lot of times, our child bankers for the quality to care our children, but now we need to do, you know, more often, more. And we don't have the access to those supplies. We are working, we are calling to the major retailers to get access to those cleaning supplies. But, you know, in the meantime, we need to, we are organizing ourselves with, you know, through phone, to digital platforms, to direct action to support each other. And, you know, sharing supplies, you know, trying to find who has the supplies, who has the other ones. In the social distance, like with an infant, how are you going to have a social distance with an infant? How are you going to do that with an infant? You know, to change the diaper, you can stop a toddler's faith, don't hug me, don't give me a kiss. It's hard, it's hard. And you know, we are working day by day and this, the childcare system is completely, we need to do something. That's why the union, the CCP, childcare providers in California, we are going to very soon be able to both to have our union officially recognized. Patricia, I want to come back to the, you know, to the provider side of the story and talk about, you know, if you tried to get one of the small business loans that was supposed to be part of the bailout and we'll talk more about the union efforts. But let me move over to Rishanda now. Rishanda, you are an early care educator in upstate New York. You've worked in the early care and caregiving field for what, nine years, you know, your children love you, work at a YWCA. But when we've been talking, you talked about how, what a challenge it is, you know, that in New York state, you do have more of a living wage, but in many places, caregivers earn, you know, on average about $10 an hour, which is just, it's not livable. And what's it been like for you through this crisis? Have you been able to continue working? How, you know, has there been turnover? You know, are people, you know, kind of what is your experience through this crisis and turn it over to you? Well, my daycare center closed down on March 18th. We had, our boss gave us different options. So I decided to continue to work in the classroom. So I usually was like cleaning, prepping from what we do, open back up. I was bringing home the same amount I usually make, but as time went on, the crisis got more serious. I decided to stay at home and work at home. So I was helping my boss, with like PowerPoints and giving her feedback. And at that time, I wasn't working a lot. So my paycheck wasn't a lot. So I also had to use my PTO, which I didn't want to, but I had no choice. After that I started feeling a little overwhelmed because we have to do training now. It's a 15 hour training a week. And you have to also reach out to our parents, do Zoom or Facebook. So on top of me going to school and that also switched over where my curriculum was changed. And then I have to teach my daughter. Right. How old is your daughter, Rashonda? She's five. And so she's out of school too. So you're trying to do this and do your own childcare at the same time. So just the other day, I actually like turned my phone off because I was overwhelmed with emails and I'm like, I'm slacking on my schoolwork because I'm not that focused. So I'm like, I have to do this, I have to do that. I got a little frustrated, irritated. So I decided to just cut myself from like the world. So my daycare center is opening up May 18th for sure. I haven't heard back from my daughter's schools saying if they're going to open up or not. So I also have a fear of what am I going to do when she does, when we do open up, where am I going to put my daughter? Yeah, yeah. Well, let me turn over to Lillian right now. Lillian Mongeau, she is an editor and writer at the Hec ginger report. And you wrote a really powerful piece about how this pandemic is about to shatter what you call an already fragile childcare system. So can, you know, you've heard Patricia, you know, she's down to three kids, you know, struggling to make ends meet. Rashonda, you know, the same thing with trying to figure out how to, you know, get through the crisis and then go back to a situation that's also, you know, less than ideal. What can you tell us about the overall system, how it's working and what the pandemic is showing us about whether, you know, just how fragile it is. Well, I think first, I mean, in the headland to that piece, we had system in quotation marks because the truth is there is no system really. There is no childcare system in the United States. There's a patchwork of different things, different parts of this don't even interact. I mean, there's like headstart funding that comes from the federal government. That's for children living in poverty. There's CCDBG, which is an acronym for a program that provides childcare subsidies for low income parents. Together, those two programs reach one in six of the families that are eligible to receive them. So that means that everyone who's actually eligible, it's one in six. And then there's millions more families who can't really afford care. On top of that, the reimbursement rates that are paid to providers are too low to expect quality. So you've got that. And then you've got all the private care, which is the majority of the market. Parents struggle to afford that care. And even paying, even with parents paying the same amount of state college tuition, providers are often unable to meet all the requirements in terms of space and health and safety and all the quality requirements and pay their workers more than a living wage. As you've been talking about, 53% of childcare workers access government benefits themselves because the wages are so close to the poverty level. So it's really just, it's not a system. That's the answer. That's why it's fragile. There's no one mechanism. Even like with K-12, it's not like the federal government can say one thing and all K-12 schools do it, but at least the state has that kind of network. And that's not true in early childhood. So, one of the questions is when you look at other advanced economies, they don't have this same kind of patchwork system. They have a much more sense that this is a public good. It's almost treated like education. A recognition that this is not a market that works. This is not a free market. Why is it that, why are we where we are in the United States? And what will it take to change that? It's a good point. I think a lot of American parents don't realize that if they lived in any other developed country that basically by the time their child was three, at least they would have guaranteed public care. And in a lot of places that that's aged two, there's also paid rent to leave most places of up six months to a year, which gets you a little further down the road before you need to start paying for care. So there's just like a whole bunch of supports that don't exist in the United States. Why that is? I mean, ultimately if you look at the history of the attempts to create broader care programs, there's just a feeling in the United States or there has been overall that this is a personal problem. This is a problem for each family to figure it on their own, children belong to their parents, not the government, that's kind of the attitude. And so repeatedly we've had chances that there was a universal system in place during World War II that was taken back when the men came home from war with the idea that women should now be returning home. There was in the 1972, there was a bipartisan bill that went to Richard Nixon's desk that would have established universal childcare for everybody and that was vetoed. On top of all that, there's the racial dynamic where poor women and women of color have typically been expected to work and most of the benefit programs that are supposed to get childcare in are aimed at people that are expected to work, which is that group unfairly and that's the old racist policy, but that's how it's been. And then policies aimed at the middle class have assumed, oh, you're probably like a middle class white woman who's choosing to work and you don't need to go to the office so it would be better if you were home with your kids. So there's this, and it separates the people who need the care into these two different competing groups when really they all are wanting the same thing. So there's a lot of just precedent in the United States for the way we think about who provides care and who needs it and that has influenced how our policies have evolved. So let me go back to Patricia at this point. So thank you so much for that, Lillian. Thank you for all of you for sharing your stories and as Angela mentioned, we do have the chat open and really wanna hear other people's perspectives and points of view because as Lillian said, part of why we are in this situation where we have a system in quotation marks that's really broken are these assumptions about who should do what in society and if policy makers think that, well, it's better if certain women are home and other women are just expected to work, that's not the reality that most people are experiencing. The majority of children in this country are being raised in families where all available parents are working. So if that's what the reality is, why do we not have a system that matches that? So Patricia, let's go back to you. We've heard about a lot of these government bailouts and Boeing is gonna get millions and millions of dollars and yet childcare providers who are, like you say, essential workers yourselves have gotten very little. What was your own experience? Have you tried to get some government money that was designed for small businesses and how has that gone? You know, my experience that I applied, I've applied for the SBA, for the check protection loan in the first round and the money was gone. I couldn't get anything. Wow. You know, in essence, it's a small business. It's a small business that is supposed to not help us. And they only, you know, emailized. You know, the answer was, yeah, I'm sorry, but the funds were completely quickly gone. So how, you know, in the past few years, the number of family providers has really dropped, you know, and family providers really do help workers who are hourly workers or who have, you know, unpredictable schedules or work, you know, alternative hours, you know, are really the backbone for a lot of who are now essential workers. You know, you were saying, so if you've only got three children coming in, you know, how are you able to pay your bills? And you know, how are you able to pay, you know, do you still have your staff and are you worried about being able to stay open yourself? Yes, yes, we are, that's one of the comments, you know, we had with other providers, you know, the communication is that what is gonna happen without, you know, our care. Some providers, they are deciding to close permanent the childcare business. Some like me, I have the hope, you know, something is gonna change. And the thing we are doing now, we are getting help, a little help for the subsidy children, but I let you through in context that providers, we have subsidy children and private children too. And the private children, they are right now, they're completely, you know, they are not bringing the kids, they are not paying because we didn't have this situation in our contract, you know, it's a crisis, it's a crisis because if we have better training to do this, all this, you know, it's gonna be different. That's why it's how important to change this, to not change back, at least have a voice to hear us, like child providers, we know our necessities. We know, you know, and the parents too, because we have the communications. And my stuff, I have to do my stuff. Before I told you, I have my children's system, now I have one, only part-time, because I can't afford to pay them. And that's why it's so important, you know, we are getting together to try to do something, we have the hope. Well, so you talk about, you had to let one of your caregivers go, so Rishanda, can we come back to you? Because one of the things that really struck me when you and I were talking is, you know, you talked about going to school and you've gone back to school to get more education. You know, there are a number of requirements now that early care educators have bachelor's degrees or get more education, but then you're stuck holding student loans and you were saying, kind of like looking at this crisis and looking at how much you might be able to earn as an early care educator, which isn't much. So you're actually now thinking, even though you love it, you're thinking about changing professions. Can you talk about that, sort of like the future that you see for caregivers and early care teachers? I decided to change career paths because financially I'll be able to provide for my daughter more, have health benefits because I don't have that right now. I don't really know what it's gonna look like for care. Tagers and providers, I just know that I just want more for myself and my daughter. Yeah. Big provide for her because I, you know, she's what's really important to me. Right. Well, you know, we're getting some questions from the chat and thank you for that. So let me turn it over to Catherine White at this point. Some of the questions are about like, well, what do we do? You know, what do we do at the state level? What do we do at the federal level? What are some of the answers? And Catherine, you're with the National Women's Law Center and you've been part of this big new report that's come out really looking at this. So tell me, tell us what you and your colleagues have found. So yeah, thank you. And first of all, I just want to say thank you to Patricia and Roschanda for sharing your stories. I, you know, I think they really just show how this system of sorts is at its breaking point and the situation is just untenable for parents, for educators, for providers. And, you know, for decades, for centuries, we've been asking women to do this kind of essential work without the compensation and supports to do so. And I think what's really crucial and that we show in our analysis is how this is a sector-wide problem. And I think Patricia, you mentioned this as well. It's not just about subsidy families and it's not just about private paying families. This is affecting the whole market. And so what we really need is federal investment that gets dollars to states and then to families and providers to cover all of the ongoing operational costs that providers have, including premium pay for providers like Patricia that are open and serving children of essential workers. And that makes sure that educators like Roschanda continue to get paid, have access to paid sick leave and other benefits. And that parents who rely on both of you for the essential work that you provide don't have to pay anything out of pocket. For too long, we've squeezed providers and educators and parents instead of providing the public funding that we know the child care system needs. So our analysis, which we did with our partners at the Center for Law and Social Policy and a labor economist from the University of Minnesota show that if we just wanna keep our child care system afloat during this crisis, we just wanna make ends meet right now. The system needs at least $9.6 billion a month in federal funding to do so. Wow, $9.6 billion a month just for the crisis. Yes, and then beyond that, we know that we cannot just rebuild to what we had before because as Lillian mentioned, this system was not working. So policymakers have an opportunity to reimagine what our system actually looks like so that providers have a living wage, educators can make ends meet and parents aren't struggling with an unaffordable cost of care as we come out of this crisis. And if we don't take our opportunity to both save our child care system and then rebuild it to something better than it was, we are going to stymie our economic recovery and women especially are gonna be left behind. So let's go to Lillian. I see that you're raising your hand. You have- Just to jump on what Catherine was saying, I think the other thing people should know is happening is there is a push right now and actually it's been going since the original negotiations on the First Cares Act to get $50 billion of direct assistance to child care. That as you, if you're listening to her 9.6 billion a month, that is not gonna be sufficient to cover what needs to happen. And also so far there's been no indication that that money is actually going to get there. So there was a letter that came out earlier this week. I think it was 29 Democratic senators, but there's not a single Republican senator signed on. I mean, as the journalist skeptic, I'm not actually seeing, there's been no real interest. It doesn't seem like from leadership in making that a thing. And what Patricia was saying earlier about the loans, like the writing was kind of on the wall for that, that was set up for small businesses, yes, but ones with like a business office where there was an accountant who knew exactly how and when to get that loan application and right on the deadline. And it was always gonna be hard for smaller businesses. And I applaud you, Patricia, for getting through those applications, but it was always gonna be hard for the tiniest businesses to get through and get that money because it was first come, first served. So it was complicated from the beginning and unlikely to succeed. Well, at this point, let me turn it over. Let's see if Abby Lieberman is available to come on. Abby is a colleague of mine at New America. She works in the early ed team. And this is one of the things that you all have been looking into, specifically looking at the small business loans and how that's working with childcare providers. Can you tell us what you're finding? Hi, Bridget, yeah, thanks so much for letting me jump in. I put it in the chat and I'll share it again. One of my colleagues wrote a blog a few weeks ago on the small business loans and basically just in line with what Lily and Catherine have said, you know, they weren't enough. A lot of the childcare providers weren't able to get to them. And mostly I'm curious to hear from the providers, again kind of in line with what Lily was just saying, what types of supports would be helpful from state governments or local governments that you're not seeing that you'd like to see that you think could help you access these resources better? So I'm sorry, Abby, was that a question that you had wanted to ask for Patricia? Yes, yeah, I'd love to hear from Patricia more about their experience or maybe not in relation to just the loans, but in general, what kind of support from state or local government would you like to see that you think could help make a difference in this? Yeah, Patricia, so what do you think would really help? What do you need as a provider, a family care provider? What do you need from the state? What do you need from the government? What do you need moving forward in this pandemic and also beyond? Are you asking me? Yeah, I'm sorry, I was asking you, yeah. For Patricia, what do you need? In terms of my connection, something happened. I couldn't hear really the whole question. Can you repeat? Sure, so Abby was asking for family care providers, what do you need? What do you need from the state government? What do you need from the federal government? What do you need to really get through this crisis and survive and thrive beyond that? You know, first of all, they need to hear our voice. They need to hear about our necessities. They're not like, they need to support us. In this crisis, we need to do cleaning supplies. We need to, a lot of stuff, like we can protect our bakers for their loans, to prevent the other child providers, they can close their bakers, their business, because it's one of the things I like to put in an emphasis is child care, family child care providers, we open our daycares four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning. We take care of kids until midnight, Saturdays, Sundays. We are just our special, the parent's special. You know, we are the service, it's completely, you know, out of service, and they take care of the kids very early. And sometimes we, we care children 11, four hours a day. And yeah, they need to pay attention to how much money we are receiving, you know, they are paying us. It's so little. Right. 14 or 12 hours. So you're putting it all of that time and you really need to make sure that it's, that you're being compensated and that the care that you're giving is actually valued and valuable. So let me turn it over to Roshanda for some final thoughts, you know. So here you are, you know, dedicated early care educator actually thinking about leaving the field. You know, was that something that really became clear during this crisis? And, you know, this is a, this is again a system in quotation marks where there's so much turnover and that really does impact children. But, you know, what do you think the system needs in the future to keep people like you in it? They need to be more supported to keep teachers, understand that, you know, we are important too. You know, we love what we do, but we also need, they also need to understand like we have children and family also. Cause I know that I read a couple, a month ago that the governor of New York was saying that, you know, day cares would just be open. Like we're just like, we weren't that important enough where some day kids did open and took a hit in some day care that was taking a hit even if there are open. So I had to tell my people, I said, you know, we do matter in early childhood too. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much. You know, I want to, I want to thank everyone for, I want to thank the panelists, Lillian, Patricia, Rashonda, Catherine. Thank you so much for joining us today. I want to thank all of the participants who have been on the chat and asking all sorts of great questions and sharing your stories. I want to thank the New America Events Team and the Better Life Lab and my producer, David Shulman. You know, thank you so much for helping us get some clarity about where we are now with childcare and more importantly, you know, why it's broken and what we need to do in the future to fix it. So next week, as we get closer to Mother's Day, we're going to, we're going to be exploring the pandemic and single parents, many of the mothers. So hope that you will all stay safe this week and that you will join us again next week for another crisis conversation live from the Better Life Lab. Thank you, everybody.