November 25, 2024 Start Strong PA Urges Advocates to Add Their Name to Child Care Staffing Crisis Petition Start Strong PA is calling on Pennsylvania residents to add their names to a petition that calls on the state to take action regarding its ongoing child care staffing crisis. Currently, a total of 3,100 people have signed the petition. Start Strong PA is aiming to get 3,500 signatures before the petition closes on Friday, Nov. 29. Learn More As Gov. Josh Shapiro and state legislators begin to consider funding for the 2025-26 state budget, Start Strong PA is urging the governor’s administration to invest $284 million in new and recurring state funding for early child care. The organization is calling for funding to implement a child care teacher recruitment and retention initiative to fix the state’s child care staffing crisis. Pennsylvania currently has tens of thousands of parents struggling to find the care they need to work and support their families. As more child care classrooms close due to a lack of staffing, the number of families without reliable child care will increase. Start Strong PA argues that the crisis can be fixed by addressing the industry’s unlivable wages. Child care staff are so low that they do not meet the cost of living in any Pennsylvania county. Advocates are asked to add their names to a petition by filling out an online form. Start Strong PA is an advocacy campaign that is part of Early Learning Pennsylvania (ELPA), a statewide coalition of advocates focused on supporting young Pennsylvanians from birth to age five.
October 7, 2024 Report Finds That PA Early Learning Shortage Poses Risk to Economy A report from Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children notes that the state faces an historic early learning workforce shortage. Learn More A coordinated early care and education system ensures that infants, toddlers, and preschoolers succeed in school and allows parents to work while knowing their children are safe and learning in high-quality care. But Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children’s 2024 State of Early Care and Education report found that this coordinated system that is vital to the economy could be threatened by the early learning workforce shortage. The report uses data and research to show that without new investments in the child care workforce, Pre-K Counts, or the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program, early learning providers will continue to lose teachers and close classrooms. Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children worked with Early Learning Pennsylvania (ELPA), a statewide coalition of advocates that includes Pre-K for PA and Start Strong PA, on the report. Inadequate Funding The report shows that inadequate funding for the early care and education system has led to supply-side issues affecting families’ abilities to find affordable, high-quality care. It has also impacted providers’ abilities to be compensated fairly to pay teachers and maintain business expenses. Without direct investment in the child care sector’s workforce, the crisis will continue, likely resulting in more classroom closures and more working parents struggling to find care for their children, the report noted. The report recommends implementing and funding a recruitment and retention model to increase the child care workforce and ensure that providers have the staff needed to operate at full capacity. It also suggests increasing state investments in the Pre-K Counts and Head Start Supplemental Assistance programs as well as developing and funding a pay parity policy for pre-K teachers that reflects wages provided to teachers in the K-12 system. Other Findings Other findings in the report include: Only 46% of eligible 3- and 4-year-olds participate in high-quality, publicly funded pre-K, leaving more than 78,000 without access to a high-quality program. Unlivable wages of less than $15.15 per hour are causing an historic workforce shortage, closing classrooms and driving up waitlists for working parents. Child care providers can’t raise teacher wages because families are already struggling to afford care costs. On average, costs for infant child care comprise about 17% of the Pennsylvania median family income. Only 25% of eligible children under age three are served by Child Care Works, leaving more than 73,000 eligible infants and toddlers unserved. The full report is available on Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children’s website.
April 16, 2024 Early Learning PA Coalition Advocates for 2024-25 State Budget Priorities The principal partners of Early Learning Pennsylvania (ELPA) are calling on state policymakers to support investments in evidence-based, high-quality early care, education, and health services. ELPA is focused on supporting young Pennsylvanians from birth to age five. Trying Together is a partner of the statewide coalition of advocates. The coalition is urging state policymakers to make investments in child care, pre-k, and early intervention. Learn More From birth to age five, children’s brains make millions of neural connections every second, forming brain architecture for life. At no other time in a human’s life will the brain develop at this speed or with such intricacy. This period is the foundation upon which all later learning, behavior, and health depend. Pittsburgh-based early childhood nonprofit Trying Together and their ELPA partners are calling for state policymakers to maximize the potential of these first five years through investments in early care and education programs in the 2024-2025 budget. Budget Requests The budget priorities from ELPA for the 2024-25 final state budget include: Supporting the Shapiro administration’s proposal to increase subsidy rates to the 75th percentile of the current price families pay for child care services. This will help alleviate rising facility, food, utility, and supply costs for providers participating in Child Care Works. Investing $284 million in new and recurring state funding to implement a child care teacher recruitment and retention initiative. This will help alleviate an ongoing staffing crisis that is causing classrooms and entire programs to close and leave working families without access to child care. The funding would provide monthly payments to providers maintaining a subsidy agreement with the state. It would be restricted for initiatives that would help retain and recruit staff such as monthly wage increases, hiring bonuses, benefit packages, or retention bonuses for staff staying for a certain length of time or achieving credentials or degrees. Supporting a proposed investment of $30 million in Pre-K Counts to increase the per-child rate to help address workforce challenges and inflationary pressures. For the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program, a proposed $2.7 million investment to the per-child rate should be examined so that it has parity to the Pre-K Counts rate increase. To achieve this, the needed investment should be $8.8 million in the Head Start Supplemental Assistance line. Supporting, at minimum, the administration’s proposed $16.6 million increase that will serve an additional 3,000 children and their families. This is a first step in a broader solution that includes a long-needed rate adjustment for early intervention providers and that would serve additional children. Additional support would help to address such issues as workforce shortages and achieving equitable enrollment as well as moving to the coaching model and addressing the growing needs of families across the state. Trying Together and other partners of ELPA will continue to advocate for these investments as the budget process continues through June 20. Stay up-to-date on how to advocate for these issues by signing-up to get public policy updates from Trying Together.
