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Description

Gloria outlines actionable steps for building a better child care system with author and policy expert Elliot Haspel. They discuss how we can work together with businesses to invest in a better system, why we need to reframe child care as a collective responsibility, and what you (yes, YOU) can do to get connected with child care advocates in your community. And if you thought that expanding the public school system down to infants and toddlers might be a way to fix things, Elliot explains why you might want to think again!

Follow Elliot Haspel on Twitter @ehaspel. Order his book Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It here: https://www.amazon.com/Crawling-Behind-Americas-Child-Crisis/dp/1684334276/

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gloria Riviera, Elliot Haspel

Gloria Riviera  00:00

Good morning. It is Tuesday. And what is happening? Oh, I was going home. I actually got in a little workout this morning. I was going to be at my desk by 9:30, which is I know a little late. But instead I’m driving back to my son’s school because he forgot his gym clothes. And my other daughters off for the week. And I made zero plans. I guess we’ll just wing it. I’m sure you’ve been there too, right? It’s the morning you drop your kid off at school you get the whole day ahead of you. And then you get the call that they forgot their lunch or their homework or their gym clothes. Fun times. This is No One is Coming To Save Us from Lemonada Media. I’m Gloria Riviera. Alright, folks, get ready. You are about to hear the wonkiest conversation I’ve had on early childhood education to date. And I do say that in the best way possible. Why? Well, because in this episode, I’ll be talking to Elliot Haspel. He is a nationally recognized Child and Family Policy expert. And he’s also the author of Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It. It’s the go to book on the child care crisis. And here’s the really, really good news. In this conversation, Elliot offers actionable steps for how to improve the child care system. His delivery is very matter of fact, and he totally strikes me as a very factual guy. But guess what, A, that is as it turns out exactly what we need in this fight. Elliot is like the calm before, during and after the storm. And B, he is passionate. He basically grew up in education. His mother was a teacher and Elliott Himself taught fourth grade for a few years before getting into child care policy. And he still remembers one student who had slipped through the cracks and could not read past a kindergarten level in the fourth grade. You’ll hear him tell me that story and how it inspired him to investigate the foundations. What happens in those years before kindergarten, when a child’s brain is developing so fast. He saw clearly that those early years, that is where he needed to focus his work to really make a difference. So he made it his career. And thank goodness for that. He sees what we need to do so well. If I could vote for a captain to fix childcare, Elliott would probably get my vote. I really hope you enjoy this conversation. Take notes rewind, listen twice, three times. It is a lot to take in. Here’s my conversation with Elliot Haspel. So how did you get involved in teaching? Take me through that. Was it elementary school? Was it high school? You said it in college? What happened?

Elliot Haspel  04:10

So I taught fourth grade, public school. A great age. I always say it’s like the age they know to tie their own shoes, but they aren’t like rebelling against authority yet. It’s fun. So I taught fourth grade in the public school about 10 miles outside of Phoenix, Arizona. And so I’ve always been interested in you know, my mother as a reading teacher in Title 1 schools her entire career. So it’s kind of had education on the mind, but I was more focused on politics and public policy. But over the course of especially my college career, and after taking some courses and reading some books, I’ve been very compelled that the root cause of so many of our social ills comes back to education and child development. And so I ended up applying for Teach for America. You know, experience for me was very transformative in seeing these amazing kids and these amazing families, and then also the challenges mentioned that they were facing, and the systemic challenges that they’re facing. So that was, you know, for me a really eye-opening experience, it convinced me that this is where I need to spend my career is working on child and family issues, because the opportunities were being curtailed, you know, for no reason, and the dent of a child zip code. And the way that that intersected, you know, with what I now can identify as systemic racism and systemic classism. And so understanding, like being able to see that sort of firsthand was really, that kind of, I will never gonna leave this this area.

Gloria Riviera 

And that was two years, or how long was the whole program?

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah, so it was two-year commitment. And although I thought very hard about sitting around for a while after, I was very much, I think, in big systems and saying, I taught in this small 2000 student district I mentioned outside of Phoenix new surrounded by a bunch of other small 2000 student districts. It occurred to me that even if I, you know, taught there for my entire career, I might be the superintendent of that district, and you know, helped improve the outcomes, like there’s still so many children every single day and every single year that are working through these inequitable systems. So I went to get an education policy degree after that, to understand better how to make system wide change.

Gloria Riviera  06:32

So that was a young age for you to look around you and have the perspective that what you were doing was satisfying. But you had to do more.

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah. Because, you know, I was 24 at that point, so yes, it was and, you know, I think in addition to that, sort of the same feeling that in some ways drove me to move more the early childhood, and the childcare world, like I’m temperamental to lead dissatisfied with incrementalism. And I find that when we have these systems that are again, touching on the opportunities of 10s of millions of children every year, like that’s the scale at which, you know, in, I feel like I can bring to try to address, although, I mean, I have nothing but incredible respect, and, you know, honor for the for all of the folks who are on the frontlines every day, the teachers, the childcare educators, you know, everyone who is doing this and, you know, 100,000 schools around the country.

Gloria Riviera 

What was it that made you hone in on early child care? And my other question is, what did you take away from those two years? What did you see in your students? I’m wondering if there’s anything that you observed that led you down the path that would end with a focus on early childcare?

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah, that’s a great question. So Well, I think my experience is teaching laid the foundation that wouldn’t kind of sprout for a few years later, and then I’ll explain that. So one thing, one story that sticks with me is I had a student and he became very clear when we do the beginning of the year reading assessments, and you start them on a fourth-grade passage, and if they can read that literally go up, and if they can’t go down, and they’re starting in the fourth-grade passage, and he couldn’t read it. And so he went down to third grade, and he couldn’t read it. And we kept going down and down deep into the kindergarten passage, which is you can imagine is not particularly complicated, and he wasn’t able to read that and I realized his reading skills were, you know, basically nonexistent. And I remember after school that day, going to the office, and you know, looking through his file, basically, and going back and realizing that every year preceding he had been passed through and reading, right, like, it just kind of slipped through the cracks. And I couldn’t like knowing many of those teachers who even had […] and this wasn’t just like an issue of like, teachers aren’t doing their jobs, this system where, you know, I had 32 fourth graders, right? Like, that’s so many kids, it is too easy for a child to fall through the cracks. I’m realizing by that early age, fourth grade, you know, they’re 9-10 years old, 11 years old like that, he’d already fallen so far behind. And that if the intervention had happened earlier, you know, they could have been caught, he would have been in such a different trajectory. So I think that that’s one that crystallized for me that like the earlier you can make sure that children are on a healthy trajectory, the better. I will say how that translated to my work, you know, into early child care is, you know, I worked after Teacher American after my policy degree in edge school reform, K12, for quite a while. And I begin to be very, very frustrated because despite the amount of time energy, person, power, money, talents, and just sheer sweat and blood that are going into trying to improve schools, the fact is, there’s no school district, there’s no state in this country that has been able to really change the odds for lower income children and children of color. And you can find individual teachers and find individual schools, even though they’re doing better that are helping kids beat the odds, veterans have like literally changed, like, making this probability is different, that’s not happening. And so I became convinced kind of much like that student that me the theory of change was wrong, maybe we were actually trying to push on the wrong inputs, or at least an incomplete set of inputs. And that really started my transition to look much more deeply at child development. And when you start realizing, oh, you know, 80 plus percent of the brain is developing, you know, at least size wise, in the first five years of life, when you start to realize, actually, those brain architecture is built in a cumulative way. And so you know, those, you know, the ability to concentrate, there’s ability to process information and make connections, the memory, like all of these things are actually built starting at birth. And they’re very much mediated by questions of early childhood experiences by questions of family stability. And I was like, okay, this is like, we’re missing a giant chunk of the puzzle. And so that’s really when I started to home in a lot more on the early childhood field.

Gloria Riviera 

When you look around now, who do you think is getting it? Want to say the most right, like, Is there any place that you look at and think okay, this is a model that could be replicated. And I know, there are many, many barriers to replicating anything, but is there anything that you say, you think to yourself? Yeah, this is it.

Elliot Haspel 

I think there are places that are have doing better on elements of a system. And I will say, an ideal system, would be this comprehensive, seamless support from the time of a pregnancy through the child’s entire schooling, and we just don’t have that, we treat the first five years of life in a distinctly different way than we treat the ages kind of five through 17 or 18.

Gloria Riviera  12:11

How do you think we treat it? Like, what is the US perspective as you see it towards zero to five?

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah, the broader US perspective, during the zero to five is parents, good luck. You know, I just like, you know, they like, yeah, they hand you the baby, and they hand you like a thin blanket with like, colored feet on it, right. And then they’re like, we’ll see you in five years for your free, you know, school thing.

Gloria Riviera 

That’s a lot of time.

Elliot Haspel 

It is, it’s a lot of time, and in fact, of all the time, all the ages, when you might want to have support, you know, those are some of those vulnerable ages for parents and for kids.

Gloria Riviera 

That’s such a good point for parents and for kids. I mean, all of this is everyone’s in this boat together. It’s not, you know, nobody’s sailing through unscathed.

Elliot Haspel 

That’s right. And, you know, and we do so we treat these early years as purely individual familial responsibilities, the idea that like, okay, well, you’ve got your kin group in there, they’ll take care of you. And you know, that in modern America, and in a country where two thirds of all children under the age of six have all of their available parents or guardians in the workforce. And in an age when, you know, especially now and baby boomers are becoming much older, and in many cases, actually requiring care for themselves versus being able to provide care. You know, when we’ve spread out, we don’t, many of us don’t live by our parents anymore, right? Like, in modern America, this idea that, you know, taking care of a child is an individual responsibility, although, arguably, if you talk to developmental psychologists and evolutionary biologists, they’ll tell you that really was never sort of an individual responsibility. It was always a communal responsibility to some extent, but you know, it really is, works across purposes. And then, you know, you shall begin, your kid turns five, and like, at least for, you know, seven hours a day for nine months a year, like, you know, you got the state says, cool, we got it from here, you know, here’s free care and education. You know, and so, you know, you asked the beginning, where it’s going, I do think actually, of all places DC, where you’re at is, has many of the elements. So you know, they have a strong universal pre-K program, you know, which I believe enrolled. Last time I looked at rolls around 90% Of the four-year old’s, and around 70% of the three-year old’s.

Gloria Riviera  14:22

We were the 10% that didn’t get in, the lottery. Isn’t that everyone was like, it should be no problem. Just sign up for the lottery. And she didn’t get a spot.

Elliot Haspel

Yeah. So as we said, this is they may have the better than most but still aren’t there all the way the idea that you’d have to lottery and versus again, no one has a lottery into having a slot in their neighborhood public school. It’s entitlement. It’s a right and, you know, that’s, I think, another way we treat it, right, like in all 50 state constitutions, there is a right to public education. You know, in zero state constitutions, is there a right to early care and education. So that’s another way we treat differently. DC just passed recently this this under three DC bill as well, which is going to start to pump a lot of money into the infant and toddler care, they’re going to create pay parity among, you know, child care educators, kindergarten and elementary school teachers. So these are, they’re getting much closer and closer than any other jurisdiction in the country really to treating the birth to five years, you know, at least on the same level as public schools, not identical because they’re not identical.

Gloria Riviera 

And let me ask you this, just to interject, because you’re smarter than I am on this. Why is DC able to do it? What goes into that equation? Why DC?

Gloria Riviera

It’s a really interesting question. I’m part of it is this an extremely hard-fought battle that the community organizers and advocates have in you know, the DC pre-k for all campaign began in like the early 2000s, right, and like, so, now we’re in 2022. And we’re still waiting to like fund, we’re just starting the fund, or they’re just trying to fund the under three DC. So this is fast. And I think some of it has to do with, you know, the political will to do it. So DC, you know, they’re funding it by this number three DC is funded by taxing you know, affluent people. And that’s in many cases around the country, you know, when you’re talking about raising taxes, like you get the blowback. So I think part of it is also showing, you know, the leadership and the political winds kind of all going in the right direction, but there’s no reason DC has certain aspects of it that are unique, certainly, and there’s no reason to think that just because it’s happening, because he doesn’t mean it can’t happen elsewhere. It’s not such a unique place as to not be replicable elsewhere.

Gloria Riviera  19:27

Where is this money for what should be a social good, right? Like a library or a fire station? Where do you see this money coming from?

Elliot Haspel

Yeah, so there are two answers to that question. So states have the ability to you know, put money in via taxes or you can either do the general fund taxes. They also have the ability to levy dedicated taxes right and so one thing I’ve been talking about recently is that in the businesses who all need childcare for their employees of today and their employees of tomorrow are freeloaders when it comes to childcare, they pay into the public school system because they pay business property taxes, they do not pay anything into the childcare system. And so states and New York is the first state is talking about this and talking about this pretty seriously, is to levy a payroll tax on employers, not an employee’s saying basically, per, you know, each of your employees, you’re going to have to pay a small percentage so that you can have a functional childcare system. You know, that’s one answer. You know, the other answer is the federal government can pay for it. You know, and that’s childcare, you know, was obviously a big part of the sort of now dead, Build Back Better act, but it’s still something that’s been talked about.

Gloria Riviera  20:41

Yeah. You said certain now dead.

Elliot Haspel 

I know, it’s painful.

Gloria Riviera 

I have to go back, though, to you saying that, like, so the government or state government would go to a business and say, for every employee you have, we’re going to charge you a little bit more to provide childcare? How do you think businesses would respond to that? How aware do you think the importance of a high quality, accessible, affordable childcare system is to, I mean, there’s a Starbucks down my street, there’s a Crate&Barrel down my street? I mean, how are they going to react?

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah. So here’s what’s fascinating about business and childcare is they get it. No one is holding into account for it. So, the US Chamber of Commerce, which is the nation’s largest lobbying group, regularly comes out with reports about how the childcare crisis is costing businesses money, and how it’s costing states money and how we need to fix it, right. And in state, so there are you can find groups of CEOs all over the place who will get up there. And they will say very publicly, and very loudly, yes, childcare is essential. Because for this businesses, it makes it hard. You know, absences due to childcare breakdown is bad for their business, it makes it harder to recruit employees, makes it harder to attain employees, like it’s bad for their bottom line. But at the same time, the US Chamber of Commerce will then go and spend like seven figures, fighting the Build Back Better act like even just for advertising, right? So there’s this tiny little side of their mouth that the businesses do, I think they’re just hoping that no one notices the states ends up picking up the tab with federal government sends a pick up the tab for them, which, you know, I mean, capitalism, that’s the answer. But I think it’s pretty hard. You get them in a room and you’re like, you need childcare, you know, you need childcare. You’ve said you need childcare. And so you need to pay for childcare. You know, it’s, pretty hard for them to say no, in that case. So it was certainly I think we expect them to push back. But I think that you can get the public behind the idea of getting business to pay their fair share, especially if you’re carving out, you know, exemptions for like the really small businesses, you know, things like that, we’re talking about sort of moderate and large.

Gloria Riviera  22:58

And do you think that’s it place where that’s a space, I should say, where communities can apply pressure to businesses, like, I am not aware of any group out there saying, you know, Target, you got to pay more for childcare, I feel like I would in an ideal world, that will be the next chapter. But it’s not going to just happen. I don’t see it just happening. I mean, please tell me I’m wrong.

Elliot Haspel 

No, you’re right. What needs to the way this tends to work? You know, you get a proposal, like what is happening in New York, right? And then where you need the public pressure is a public pressure to, you know, basically counter veils of businesses. We don’t want to pay this, and in the legislators need to hear from the constituents. Yes, you do need to do this. And, you know, there’s the theory of political influence, you know, there’s money power and those people power and like, you know, yeah, the businesses are going to say, you know, we don’t want to pay more, and, you know, we’re gonna work against you, if you vote for this, the legislators need to know that there is a public will for their constituents to move forward with it.

Gloria Riviera  24:03

And that’s how it happened in New York. Again, what I’m hearing is that you’re kind of out lining some actionable steps people can take, I mean, I feel like my youngest is 6, and I had blacked out those first few years. So I was like, we’re still standing. Thank God. Let’s keep going. And now, I don’t want it to be like it was for me or for my mom, for my daughter.

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah. this is the good news is in almost every state, there is an advocacy groups and community organizing groups that are fighting for better child care policies. And so they all have different names. And they all have different plans that reflect their state context. But almost every single state there’s a group or groups that are fighting for this and increasingly, with states, what these groups are starting to say is we’re setting these goals, we’re gonna say, you know, this is where we want to go so that no one has to pay more than, you know, 7% of their income so that it’s free if you’re making under $50,000, so that all the childcare educators are paid well, so that there are lots of options, right? And you know, and it’s gonna cost, you know, X amount of dollars, and that’s okay. And here are the Y and Z ways we’re going to pay for it. And then so for parents to be able to hook into those campaigns, right, like New York, because like things got the Empire State campaign for you know, affordable childcare that might not be the exact name of it right here in Virginia. It’s called the Virginia Promise Partnership. In Vermont, it’s Let’s Grow Kids, right, each one has its different name. But if parents look into those, they don’t have to go and do this on their own. Those groups will say, hey, we’re having a lobby day, right? We’re going to the statehouse, like, we’re all calling our legislators, we’re all rallying here. So I think that it’s very actionable. And I do think it’s feasible, because the other thing is childcare, unlike most social programs, pays for itself, both in the long term, and also very, very quickly. So the reason for that is because there are a ton of parents, by and large, these are mothers who are not as engaged in labor forces that otherwise would be if childcare was available and affordable. So we’ve talked about choices a lot. And I think being a stay-at-home parent is a great choice, if you want to do that. And I you know, I stayed home for part of that when our daughters were infants, but also if you want to be able to work or be able to have more hours than you currently are, then you need childcare. And when you increase the maternal labor force participation, you start to build a bigger tax base, you make businesses more productive, right, you’re increasing the number of, you know, the business taxes themselves. And so one thing that study after study after study finds is that childcare very quickly, not only pays for itself, but actually can start to make states you know, money. And so that’s the other thing is we talk about the cost a lot, right? Because it’s a big number, and it is a big number. But the benefits are also just absolutely, you know, monumental, not just economics, where you get to the end the human argument of we really should be able to have our flourish and thrive and not have our choices constrained by whether or not this childcare slot available down the street.

Gloria Riviera 

All those good things. I mean, so but you have a different opinion about businesses that we should not be dependent on our jobs to provide childcare. So what I’m talking about, I mean, right now, we spoke to the folks over at Patagonia and I was like, this is amazing. But it is only for people who work at Patagonia. So why is that not the way to go?  I mean, I know we’re never going to convince every business to open an amazing childcare. But I want to hear from you.

Elliot Haspel

Yeah. So there’s a practical reason there’s a philosophical reason why this is providing childcare for their employees. And it’s a good idea, in my opinion, the practical reason is, as you say, like making childcare a job linked benefit means that when you lose your job, you lose your childcare. That is a terrible setup. You know, it’s all of the things we hate about health insurance, right, like, so we’re like, let’s replicate that.

Gloria Riviera  28:10

We do love you Patagonia, but it’s not the best idea.

Elliot Haspel 

And I do and I have a lot of respect for Patagonia as a brand in general. They you know, I think are very progressive and forward thinking but..

Gloria Riviera 

And when they talk about it, they’re saying all of the things that we’re talking about here, they’re like this started because we knew we could not run a business without providing childcare to our employees.

Elliot Haspel 

Exactly. And so there’s that right, and then there’s the idea that you don’t want right so you don’t want to be doubly benefit. And also because childcare you know, even more than health insurance, right? children thrive on consistency and reliability of their caregivers. So you don’t want to do is like, I lost, I got downsized. So now I have to pull my kid away from their loving teacher, right? That’s just terrible all around. And as you say, you’re not able to visit this can’t like Patagonia, Target like they cannot possibly provide childcare for all of their frontline workers. So that’s one and then philosophically it also still treats childcare like this private good like a benefit you get like a wellness perk, right like a gym membership discounts and we don’t want a childcare like the gym, we want to treat it a lot more like a social good, as we say like a library like a public schools. So and I think it’s much easy for businesses to say, oh, look, I’m providing childcare or some sort of fringe benefit, therefore, I don’t have to pay more in taxes. Again, I often will use this analogy. Imagine if we required businesses to provide the second grade. And if we said, you know, the second you know, there’s no public second grade anymore. Everyone has to come up with their own, you know, money to pay for second grade. And then some businesses like oh, I’m going to onsite second grade and I’m going to, you know, provide a voucher for like, you know, to 20% off of your second-grade cost like it’s an absurd suggestion, but it is literally what we’re doing with kids who are only you know, a year or two younger, you know them than the second graders.

Gloria Riviera 

I know. I mean, it feels like kind of a dark outlook, though, to think that businesses I don’t know, the businesses that I spoke to the childcare they provided all came predominantly from women who were saying we have to provide this for our employees, but supported by the many hospitals, you know, large organizations. But do you think it’s true that businesses would not they want to avoid paying more taxes and it’d be cheaper to fly their own child care for early education, childcare?

Elliot Haspel  30:30

I think if a business wants, the ones that have use case I’m kind of okay with is if a business wants to say we’re offering childcare to our employees at Central HQ, whatever. And we are actively advocating for taxation of corporations in order to fund a universal system and we’re putting some kind of policy in place so that if someone leaves their job non-voluntarily that they’re not losing their childcare for like, you know, a year or something after like then okay, maybe then I think that’s responsible and I will say this a lot of the corporate groups that are setting up you know, their onsite childcare, you’re right they’re doing it from good intentions. And they’re doing it in the middle of a wasteland of care where like the three isn’t like a good alternative at the moment but what I do think it can be too easy to focus the with finite energy for focusing most of your energy on the onsite childcare that I think you’re taking away energy you can be using to really fight for good policy that helps everyone.

Gloria Riviera

In just a minute Elliot is going to tell us why he thinks expanding the public school system down to children under five is absolutely not the right idea. And then stay tuned until the end of the show. To hear more from art. No one is coming to save us community, your voices, your real childcare moments are coming up. Where are we now, compared to pre-pandemic percentages on employment in many sectors versus where we are with child care educators, providers, etc. Talk us through.

Elliot Haspel

Yeah, I think the scientific premise is a hot mess. Yeah. So as of the last jobs report, I looked at, you know, overall employment in the US it’s back to within 2% of its pre-pandemic.

Gloria Riviera  34:10

That’s crazy. I mean, it feels like it’s happened so fast.

Elliot Haspel 

Yes, it’s been a hot, hot economy for the past, you know, few months here. But Child Care employment is still down 12% below its pre pandemic levels, 100,000 jobs that have been lost.

Gloria Riviera 

And those people are just not coming back. They’re walking out..

Elliot Haspel 

They’re walking out and they’re, you know, walking across the street to make significantly more money at Target and, you know, Chick-fil-A.

Gloria Riviera

And do you know, people like that. We just spoke to an educator and she told us some of the reasons people had left and they didn’t involve, you know, going to Target, going to Chick-fil-A but do you know people like that that have gone? I would love to speak to them?

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah. And I certainly I have to say I know directors to whom they were other staff members who know like their people have left because […], they’re going to seek better wages. You know, and there are other reasons, right? Where people are, where people are leaving, I think that’s, that’s absolutely true. Part of it, too, is like, right now, who would enter the profession, right, like the other side of the pipeline..

Gloria Riviera 

But we educate them, we give we offer degrees in early child care.

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah, there’s an advocate, who is a friend of mine, who likes to say, childhood training and degrees in early child education is a great way to prepare the next generation of kindergarten teachers. And what she means by that is that, you know, again, the median wage for a childcare worker is around $12 an hour. Most programs, even if you have a bachelor’s degree, or you know, you’re bumping up a couple bucks an hour. And so at some point, the case becomes continued to work in a childcare center, and make 35 $40,000 a year with maybe, health insurance, probably no retirement, or go to the public school system, you know, become a kindergarten or first grade teacher, use your degree, you’re making, you know, $20,000, literally $20,000 more, you know, with good insurance with good health, you know, good retirement with access to a union, right, like all these other things, it’s not a hard decision, I think and so, you there is a there was a study came out, this was pre-pandemic. And in Louisiana, they actually have really good data down in Louisiana. And what they did is they looked at a turnover in the private programs, you know, and found that between 40% and 50% of the lead teachers were leaving every single year, and they weren’t just going to a different status wasn’t like a teacher, of homeschool teacher going to another school down the road, or going to another school in another city, they were just, they were exiting the profession. And so among better paid teachers, so you know, public pre-K teachers, who are largely paid on par with kindergarten, who served nearby, you know, the is only like, 20%-25% of turnover, which still pretty high, but like, you know, half of what we’re seeing in the private providers, so you very, very clear, we’re just hemorrhaging staff because we refuse to pay them a, you know, decent wage, when we refuse to respect them. This is hard work, like, you know, you know, as you would know, you have kids and I have kids who like spending, you know, nine hours a day working with the two- and three-year old’s, you know, easy work. So, it is the fact that we, you know, we don’t treat these people with respect, and we don’t and again, as you say, disproportionately this is a workforce made up of women of color, disproportionately is a workforce made up of immigrants.

Gloria Riviera 

And yeah, we have laws that say, you know, you can’t have 32, you know, two-year old’s with one teacher, right? So we have laws in place that say, Oh, wait, wait, wait, it needs to be safe. You only can only be safe if it’s a much lower ratio. But we’re not going to pay you.

Elliot Haspel  38:05

We’re gonna break the economics, we’re not gonna pay you with the public money to make it up.

Gloria Riviera 

Yeah. Do you see, I know, you’ve talked about this idea of that we don’t consider it a social good, we consider it a private market situation like early child care. What do you think about the idea of expanding the public school system? downward to younger ages? Is there any infrastructure there? Is that a conversation? worth having state to state? Because I my sense is that we’re really talking to state to state now with Build Back Better. I can’t even say your phrase, certain death. Is that a workable idea? Or is that just not?

Elliot Haspel 

I am more wary than many of my colleagues in the field about the idea of marching the public school system backwards. And I’ll tell you why. It’s I don’t think it’s a great fit for early childhood development. And there are two reasons for that. One is that, you know, public schools, right, like are sort of by their nature, standardized and focused largely on academics. We know about Early Child Care and Education is one young children by and large, they need to play or they play bass. So we’ve actually seen, you know, this challenges of kindergarten has become so the new first grade is some scholars say right, and that it’s this push down to the academics. And there’s actually some thought that some of the sort of bad pre-K outcomes that came out of those cohorts kind of in the 2000s is because we push down too much, like sit in your seat, do this lesson, right? Whereas what we know is that, you know, or childcare programs, the best ones are deeply play based. Children are learning, they’re learning enormous amounts of things. They’re just learning it organically, right? And so I do worry that the more we can apply a standard that pull the school model, the more we’re going to focus on things like assessments are aware exactly the child like pre-academic skills and the fact that’s not actually what matters when they when they’re when they’re young. It’s much more about the relationship between the caregiver and the child about their emotional and behavioral development and their social development, all of that comes up. The other thing is, you know, when you ask too much of the public schools, you lose some of the pluralism that is really important in early childhood education. By pluralism I mean, it can be delivered really high quality in lots of different settings. Apparent, obviously, like a grandparent, a family childcare home where one person like has, you know, six or eight kids with them, a childcare center, that’s faith based childcare center, secular, like, you know, all of these things can provide excellent, you know, experiences for young children. And so again, if you kind of put say, like, let’s take the public-school model and marched back, like if you lose some of that special sauce.

Gloria Riviera  40:57

Yeah, no, I understand. And by the way, you let me down very gently, I completely understand where you’re coming from. And I feel like the answer is no, Gloria, that would be a can of worms. That’s not a good idea.

Elliot Haspel 

But my nuance to that the philosophy behind public schools, the idea of something that is universally accessible and free, and like provided as a matter of society’s obligation to families that I think can be taken down to the early childhood years, it just has to look, you know, different because the context is different.

Gloria Riviera 

Right. So here we are now, you know, Build Back Better is not the great opportunity that we thought it would be. But I mean, do you have any sense that it’s true what President Biden says that if it has to be cut into parts that might be palatable? And also, I’m curious what you think about Senator Manchin because West Virginia has pre-K for three- and four-year old’s.

Elliot Haspel

Yeah. So I do actually. I am hopeful that if any reconciliation package moves, childcare will be part of that. And I’m hopeful for two reasons. One, because like, again, the raw economic case, like he just is causing, you know, the slowing of economic recovery. And so there’s some self-interest there. And two is, it is much more bipartisan in historically, then things like paid leave, or like expanded child tax credit. And so I often bring this up in 2019, President Trump had a White House Summit on child care. And he got up there and he was the one talking about how, you know, do their parents have all of their kids in the workforce and how the costs are backbreaking and how it’s affecting our economy. So like, this is not a case that has not been made by the Republicans.

Gloria Riviera  42:44

I feel like we have Ivanka to thank for that.

Elliot Haspel 

And you’re right, in pre-K, you know, in particular, has had a lot of bipartisan support, right? re-K, you know, the widespread picking systems wherein Oklahoma and Georgia, the one with the highest rated system is Alabama, like, you know, holding governors and one, I would say, like, you know, analyze their state of the state addresses and like, across the board, like, you know, a whole lot of them are talking about child care. So again, it’s not. It is certainly fallen into a culture where and it’s fallen into like being just another sort of point of contention. But I do think when you kind of strip away the sound and the fury, there is a chance to move on child care. As Senator Manchin, you’re my understanding is yes, my understanding is he has no problem with that, he never said anything that he doesn’t think it’s important, or he doesn’t think that it’s something that’s valuable. You know, I think the question is where do the fall relative to other priorities. And on the question of taxes, right, like, that’s actually much more seems to be the kind of purview of Senator Sinema has been the roadblock to that piece of the puzzle.

Gloria Riviera 

So where do you think, sorry, I interrupted you a bit. So for Sinema, it’s the taxes, that’s the roadblock. And where does that leave us?

Elliot Haspel  44:04

Well, that’s the needle that you know, especially if you’re going to have to thread it’s like, how do you make the case in a way that you can balance? You know, it’s a fractious caucus, and you know, it’s 50/50.

Gloria Riviera 

And how do you sell it to the American people like, I’m a news person, I consume a lot of news, but still, I’m like, is it like, we’re gonna tax the wealthy? Is that how we’re gonna pay for early child care? So just walk me off that cliff? Because I think that’s a question a lot of people have, like, oh, we’re just gonna get it through taxes. What does that actually mean?

Elliot Haspel

Yeah, well, that’s one reason I think it’s brilliant. I think it could be wise to talk about the business visa, because I think that’s a very easy case for people to understand. Businesses need childcare, they don’t pay for childcare. Like we’re asking businesses to pay their fair share, just like we asked them to pay their fair share of public schools. Right? Like I think most people you can kind of go from A to C there. You know […]. Childcare polls very well, it goes very well, across parties, you know, a tends to get, you know, as you’d imagine sky high support among Democrats, it also has quite a bit of support among independents. And in some cases, I’ve seen polls as much as 40% 45% support among Republicans. So it is not a particularly again, controversial question. And I think being able to talk about like, yes, we’re gonna pay this dude, various taxes through tax enforcement, you know, through asking corporations to pay more their fair share, and it’s an investment, it really is like, an investments make you money. And we have evidence from other places around the country or the globe, that this is actually the case. So I would also like to see that argument. Increasingly, you probably heard this much that I have, like, the argument of in the middle of inflation too, like, well, if we can’t keep costs, you know, we may not have a lot of levers to make the costs go down, we can make your expenses go down, you know, you’ll still end up you know, a net in the black like, that’s, I think, another argument here. Like I really, like childcare is too, was the rent is too damn high, right? Like, you know, childcare is too damn expensive, is not a hard, you know, sell, and talking about it […] again, like me about it in pluralistic ways. I think sometimes we leave state home parents out of this equation, and to our detriment, you know, that’s about a third of kids have a stay-at-home parent and like, had to be absolutely supported choice. You know, I’ve talked about things like some countries have things called Home Care allowances, where as part of their child care policy, if you opt out of using the public childcare system, you get a stipend to basically to help support you.

Gloria Riviera  46:40

Oh, it sounds like the UK. That’s what there was in the UK.

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah, Norway and Finland have that as well.

Gloria Riviera 

We should all move to Norway and Finland, and possibly Sweden. And I know, we’re almost out of time, and I really want to get your thoughts on these things. I know what’s weighing on you. That was obvious from booking you. But what gives you hope right now?

Elliot Haspel 

Yeah, I’ll say a few things give me hope. One is the advocates and organizers who are in that childcare educators, parents who are day in and day out fighting for this any despite the exhaustion, right, like we have seen this enormous efforts happening, really Herculean to keep lawmakers attention on this to say like, hey, like, this matters, like we matter. And this isn’t okay. And we’re not going to be okay with half measures anymore. So that gives me hope, like, they’re just some really powerful, you know, efforts happening. I think that gives me hopes. I do think that the issue, the political sciences issue salience, and it is penetrated, and what it just means is that like, if people are talking about it now, I mean, I went back and I looked, because I was curious about when State of the Unions, did Child Care get more than just like a passing mention. And the first one, I could find that any sort of section on it was President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union. So like, now, you know, it’s a big part of is one of the things that President Biden is up there saying, like when it was like three plans to you know, did handle inflation. Ever since Senator Warren brought it up in the Democratic primary, it has been kind of a big issue. And so that’s really helpful, because the more you’re talking about something, the more chance it’s gotten since it had been on it for quite a long time. Really, since the passage of the welfare reform bill on the 1990s until around the year 2015. Child care was in the wilderness. No one was talking about it. No one cared about it. And so that does give me, we’re having a podcast. We don’t do or any child care policy don’t understand how much of a sea change that is. So I’m hopeful about that.

Gloria Riviera  48:57

Well, Elliot, thank you so much for talking to us. I just can’t tell you. I mean, I know I’m going to stop the interview. And there’ll be 1400 more questions I want to ask you, but you’ve been so gracious with your time and thank you for your work. You’re talking about it and your book is fantastic crawling behind. There’ll be a link to it. So thank you so much. Well, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Gloria Riviera 

I could talk to him all day. I really want to thank Elliot Haspel again for speaking with me. His book is Crawling Behind America’s Childcare Crisis and How To Fix It. I love that he steered me away a bad idea, Gloria from expanding public school down, not the way to do it. Okay, folks, and that he emphasizes the best way to get businesses to pay for childcare is to convince them it is an investment, and what do good investments do, see a return. Yes. And he is hopeful right? Legislators on both sides of the aisle agree that this is a good idea, and we’ll Build Back Better may need serious help. childcare and early education is part of the conversation now. Let’s keep it that way. All right, before we go, we can’t forget my favorite part of the show, hearing from you, our listeners, our child care warriors, our battle team, our village. Our no one is coming to save us community. Every episode you send in your real childcare moments, here they are.

Speaker 3  50:26

Stefi, a mom of three here recently after having my third son, and my oldest had ballet, down in DC, on Wednesdays, after school and I obviously had three kids in the car with me driving down to ballet, practice running, hurrying, just, you know the madness and going through traffic, and we get to ballet, park the car and I had to get my oldest changed into her ballet outfit, which is a task because we had to do this in the car and trying to just do her bun and pin the hair. Meanwhile, my baby is screaming, crying. My second child is asking for a snack. And then she has to go potty. And I’m just trying to keep my cool. And, of course, you know, just trying to change my oldest and like trying to just be as chill as possible. And it’s like, I just kind of stopped. And I remember I just started crying. And just kept thinking like, I don’t know if I could do this. This is hard. But hey, we got through it. We survived.

Speaker 4 

Hi there. My name is Kristen, and I’m in Cleveland, Ohio. It is about 2AM, right now, I can’t really sleep. I’m starting a new childcare job in the morning. And I know that I’ll be fine. But I’m nervous how my son will adjust. He’s been going to work with me since he was about six weeks old. And this will be our third center together. And we really loved the last place but we weren’t able to stay because the teachers had to stay an hour later than the children for some COVID cleaning and I just could not find that extra hour of childcare every day. So tomorrow we’re starting somewhere new. And he will be five at the end of this month. So kindergartens coming and that brings, you know, the excitement and the struggles with that. But I really wanted to thank you guys for doing this podcast. It’s so relevant and relatable, and honest and I really appreciate it. Thanks.

Gloria Riviera  52:44

It is so good to know we are not alone in this. We are all on this journey together. I’d love you to be a part of our community of caregivers. All you have to do it’s so easy. Just whip out your phone, record a short voice memo, and then just email it to me at gloria@lemonadamedia.com. I cannot wait to hear about your struggles, your triumphs and everything in between. All right, we’ve got some amazing shows coming up in the next few weeks. Next Thursday. I’ll be speaking with an incredible woman. I mean, she is a force her name is Deb VanderGaast and she’s a childcare director in Iowa who is running for office on a childcare platform. How exciting is that? We’ll hear all about her backstory and why she decided now was the time to act. Then the following week, I get to sit down with my old friend, the actress Sara Gilbert. You know her from shows like Roseanne the talk and the Conners. We’re going to talk about what it was like for her as a working mom in Hollywood. I can’t wait for you to hear it. All right over and out for now. I’m really enjoying this. I hope you are too. I will see you back here next week.

CREDITS

NO ONE IS COMING TO SAVE US is a Lemonada media original presented by and created with Neighborhood Villages. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease and Alex McOwen, Veronica Rodriguez is our engineer music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me Gloria Riviera. If you like the show, and you believe what we’re doing is important. Please help others find us by leaving us a rating and writing us a review. Do you have your own experiences and frustrations with the childcare system? Do you have ideas for what we could do to make it better? Join the no one is coming to save us Facebook group where we can continue the conversation together. You can also follow us and other Lemonada podcasts at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back next week. Until then hang in there. You can do it.