The “No One is Coming to Save Us” Rundown - Episode 1: “You’re Not Crazy, Child Care is Crazy”
“The reality of it started to sit with me – is this what it’s going to be like? Is this the secret thing that it’s like for everyone? You take some pictures for Instagram to pretend everything is okay, but this is the reality every day? Is this what we are asking of women? I’m going to get through this, but I didn’t realize it’s going to be a battle.” – Sarah Muncey, Co-Founder of Neighborhood Villages
Child care in America has always been broken – it’s never been adequately valued, funded, or even understood. The pandemic made it clear that this can’t continue. It’s time for change and change needs to happen now. That’s why Neighborhood Villages conceived and funded No One is Coming to Save Us, a podcast created and produced with Lemonada Media. No One is Coming to Save Us tells the story of the child care crisis in America and sheds light on the challenges faced not only by parents, but by providers and early educators, too. Most importantly, it spotlights solutions for how, together, we build a child care system that actually works – for everyone.
Hosted by ABC News’ Gloria Riviera, the podcast explores how the current child care system is failing everyone in it – children, families, providers, and educators; it goes back in time to document the history of child care in America over the last hundred or so years; and it shows where (and how!) child care is actually working – and what parents, educators, activists, and advocates had to do to make that change happen. Over four episodes, Gloria speaks to families, providers and early childhood educators to put their stories front and center and provide a unique, raw, and no-holds-barred look into our early education and care system.
Throughout the series, Gloria is joined by actress Kristen Bell – the podcast’s “Call It Like It Is” Special Correspondent – to help break down some of the more complex issues in a way that’s, frankly, a whole lot more fun than listening to us do it!
In The Rundown, we’ll be breaking down each episode of No One is Coming to Save Us – and spotlighting different opportunities to take what you heard and turn it into action. Make sure to check-back each week for new episode recaps! Now let’s get to it:
Episode 1: You’re Not Crazy, Child Care is Crazy
In “You’re Not Crazy, Child Care is Crazy”, Sarah Muncey, Co-Founder of Neighborhood Villages, kicks off the first of this four-part series by asking the question that virtually every parent has asked when it’s time to confront the realities of their child care situation: Is this what it’s going to be like?
To get a first-hand look at the impossible challenges of child care (for, literally, everyone), this episode highlights the Ellis Early Learning Center in Boston, a local partner center of Neighborhood Villages and a member of its Neighborhood network. Ellis is doing its best to provide incredible, high-quality programming within the system as it operates now. Just like Ellis parents are doing their best to afford the care solutions that they need for their families – parents like Chris Shumate.
“I moved my kids over to Ellis so they could be in that child care facility with diversity, and a great strong program… My wife got pregnant with our third child. We were going to have one child in preschool, one child in toddler and one child in the infant classroom with a price tag of almost $4,600 a month. That math really did not work out for us. Organized early education is incredibly valuable to my children, but at $50,000 dollars a year, it just didn’t make sense.”
But it’s not just parents struggling to afford accessing child care: providers struggle to afford the cost of providing that care. As Lauren Cook, CEO of Ellis, explains, the early education and care system is so drastically underfunded that providers are left scrambling to cover their operating costs. She’d like to lower tuition rates – but she can’t; if she did, she wouldn’t have sufficient revenue to keep Ellis’ doors open.
“I wish we could help but literally we have no money to do it. We have no money.”
With an operating budget of $5 million per year, Ellis still has to fundraise $1 million annually just to maintain their current operations – tuition alone, as high as it is, doesn’t come close.
Due to the lack of public funding in the early education and care system, most early education and care programs rely on tuition from enrollment as their sole source of revenue – and because parents can only pay so much, providers are forced to limit expenses. Which, unfortunately, often means having to keep salaries low for their staff. Just ask Kiya Savannah, a teacher at Ellis. When she had her first child, she found that she couldn’t afford child care for her own child, on the salary she was making to care for and education other people’s kids. Despite having a passion for the work and a college degree in early education, she has been forced to reconsider whether she can stay in the field.
“You know, this field, sadly does not give you enough to have a family. It's where my heart is at, but it's not going to help me to help [my daughter].”
The child care system as we know it today cannot continue. Fixing the child care crisis is one of the biggest social justice issues of our time – it’s about education equity, racial equity, gender equity and so much more. The time for change is now.
“I don’t want to hear anymore the lamenting of whether women can have it all and the plight of the American family,” says Neighborhood Villages Co-Founder Lauren Birchfield Kennedy, at the conclusion of the podcast. “We set families up to struggle, we put every barrier in their way, and when they do need assistance, we demonize them for doing something wrong. We’re the ones who built an impossible system… Families don’t have time to wait. If we wait three years, five years, 10 years – that’s an entire generation who is losing out.”
So if nobody is coming to save us – how do we save ourselves? Listen and find out.
And don’t forget to check back in at The Rundown each week for episode recaps and resources to learn more!