How to Fix Crumbling Child Care Infrastructure
These US cities and states are starting think about early childhood facilities the same way they plan for schools and public transportation.
Child care programs rarely generate enough revenue to cover the steep cost of securing and maintaining facilities.
Photographer: Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post via Getty Images
President Joe Biden last week signed an executive order meant to chip away at two major problems with US child care: unaffordability for parents and low wages for care workers. Largely missing was a meaningful bid to address a third challenge, one that has gotten far less attention but is quite literally at the sector’s foundation: a lack of decent infrastructure.
Child care programs rarely generate enough revenue to cover the steep cost of securing and maintaining facilities. This drives down the low wages of workers while driving up the cost of tuition. It also means that to stay financially afloat, many programs do facility upkeep on a strictly as-needed basis, said Linda Smith, director of the early childhood initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank.