In the committee’s first meeting of the 2024 regular session, chairman Senator Danny Carroll affirmed that childcare is infrastructure, and though Universal pre-K is “not viable," state investment is part of the solution.
On the agenda were two guests — Sarah Vanover, the policy and research director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, and Eric Friedlander, secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Though both spoke on the successes of Kentucky’s existing public-private partnerships in the child care industry, they also acknowledged the difficult reality of limited capacity, rising costs, and the flight of workers away from the field.
During Vanover’s presentation, she focused on the shortage of child care workers, which she attributed to low wages driving would-be providers into retail and hospitality industries.
"You hear kids say things like, 'When I grow up I want to work with children' or 'I want to be a teacher,' but the problem is when they get to this role and they want to be a teacher of young children, they cannot support their families on the wage that they're making," she testified.
Vanover said, though wages are a continuing concern, Kentucky does offer support to child care workers through scholarship opportunities and free child care through the Child Care Assistance Program — an initiative which has drawn the attention of other states seeking to retain workers.
Though both Vanover and Friedlander brought up Universal Pre-K as a potential solution to availability and affordability, Senator Carroll says it would “destroy” the child care industry.
"Based simply on the fact that preschool, that's the only age group child care centers generate any revenue," he said. "Babies and toddler usually lose money."
Carroll is CEO of a nonprofit which operates a child care center. He says the organization pays child care workers a good wage, with benefits — which, minus the federal funding, lost twelve-thousand dollars last quarter.