(Georgia Recorder) — Getting someone to watch your kid is expensive, but it could be getting cheaper in Georgia. The state Senate’s Committee on Affordable Childcare heard its final testimony in a hearing at the state Capitol Monday and is expected to release its findings for next year’s session later this month.
The federal measure of affordable child care is 7% or less of one’s income, but caring for an infant costs more than 7% of median income in 142 of Georgia’s 159 counties, according to numbers from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. That can mean young moms staying out of employment or education during their children’s early years and kids missing out on socialization and learning.
If someone’s getting rich from day care centers, it’s not the teachers watching the kids, said Jana Fox, owner and director of the Learning Treehouse in Rincon. She said her staff is all highly trained and passionate about teaching and caring for youngsters, but the work is hard and it’s hard to offer pay competitive with other sectors.
“The truth is that childcare small business owners like me are struggling,” she said. “Our staff are working harder than ever, but we are constantly at the risk of losing them to higher paying jobs in other fields, and finding new qualified teachers to replace them has become almost impossible. We need flexible funding to continue supporting our teachers, not just to retain the incredible staff we have, but to recruit and train new teachers who are just as passionate about early childhood education as our current team.”
GBPI’s Director of Economic Justice, Ife Finch Floyd, told senators the state’s share of the cost for childcare services has been mostly flat for the past couple of decades. In the current fiscal year, the state’s share is $72 million, while the federal share is $268 million.
Floyd recommended the state use a chunk of its $11 billion-plus surplus to create a child care trust fund like other states, including New Mexico, have done.
“In New Mexico, they were able to expand eligibility to 400% of the federal poverty line,” she said. “That’s about $99,000 for a family of three. So they are trying to reach not just those families with low levels of income but families with middle levels of income as well. They are also doing things like reducing the co-payments for families and also improving the reimbursement rates to providers through a new cost model that assumes a minimum wage for providers of $15 an hour.”
According to GBPI’s figures, which assume a 7.9% annual return and a 6% yearly payout, a $1.5 billion initial investment could pay out $1 billion in the first ten years, while a $4 billion initial investment would yield nearly $2.8 billion.
But the plan would require amending the state constitution, which would mean two-thirds majorities in the state House and Senate and then approval by Georgia voters in a ballot referendum.
“I recognize this is not an easy lift, no constitutional amendment is, but if the legislature can get it done, it would be a generational investment in child care, and really the type of investment that the state requires to meet the need,” Floyd said.
Buzz Brockway of the Georgia Center for Opportunity said government involvement with childcare has caused prices to rise dramatically.
“Over the past 30 years, daycare inflation has outpaced general inflation by 88% as measured by the consumer price index,” said the former state lawmaker, elected as a Republican. “No other price level or safety net program has increased this much. As you can see, it’s increased more than the cost of rent, more than the cost of medical care.”
Brockway said the configuration of the state’s Child and Parent Services Program, or CAPS, which helps low-income families with childcare costs, can influence people not to seek higher-paying jobs or to get married because a boost in income could be canceled out by less assistance with pricey childcare.
Brockway suggested solutions, including reexamining regulations, prioritizing informal daycare and instituting a child support requirement for CAPS similar to the one that is already in place for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
That could mean the state taking part in the CAPS payment from a noncustodial parent.
“Under TANF, a single parent must seek child support from the noncustodial parent,” Brockway said. “There are certainly circumstances where it’s not possible to collect child support, and the program notes those exceptions, but there must be a good faith effort to support it. This would reduce costs for the single parent, but also weaken the disincentive against marriage.”
Atlanta Democratic Sen. Elena Parent questioned whether that could leave custodial parents with less money for other child-rearing costs.
“I get that, except the child support has to cover all the costs related to raising the child,” she said. “How do you say it can only be for that one thing when there’s so much, as we know, so many things involved in raising a child?”
“It wouldn’t have to use it all, but I think using some of that money, at least, could help,” Brockway said. “If it’s going into the household budget, this is just allocating it differently, prioritizing it differently so that the CAPS dollars go farther.”
Parent also expressed skepticism of prioritizing informal child care, which could include anything from professional nannies to neighbors who watch multiple young children in their home for money.
“This informal care, I feel like we would need to know a lot more about what exactly you have in mind, and then how that dovetails with our knowledge of trying to get kids ready for school, which we already have some pretty big challenges with,” Parent said. “With brain development being so critical at birth to five, I just would have a lot of questions about what exactly that means.”
Committee Chair Brian Strickland, a McDonough Republican, expressed optimism that the Legislature will take action to help struggling parents in the new session, set to start Jan. 13.
“What we’ve done is started a very serious conversation about this with our friends up here at the state Capitol, and I hope you’ll see some substantial policy moves in the coming year, some investments in the state budget for child care, affordable child care in our state,” he said.
