No One is Coming to Save Us: Pushing change forward in D.C.

In this episode of No One is Coming to Save Us, veteran reporter Gloria Riviera and Neighborhood Villages’ Senior Director of Advocacy Latoya Gayle visit our nation’s capital to speak with local advocates about their successful, years-long campaign to pass universal pre-K in D.C. They explore how cities can better retain early childhood educators and how to garner lawmaker support for improving child care.

Gloria sits down with Marica Cox Mitchell, vice president of early childhood at the Bainum Family Foundation; LaShada Ham-Campbell, founder and director of Petit Schools, a network of child care centers in D.C, and Beatriz “BB” Otero, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Policy.

With their unique roles in the child care system, these three have fought together in support of universal pre-K in order to correct the historical mistreatment and undervaluing of caregivers – many of whom are people of color and women.

The working conditions, low wages, and lack of professional recognition given to our caregivers have pushed many to pursue other employment opportunities, especially during the pandemic. Marica shares the perspective felt by so many other early educators. “The salary is so low that I’m actually going to go to Chick-Fil-A instead to be paid by higher rates, less stressful, and you get a meal,” she says.

Through our work at Neighborhood Villages, we’ve also seen a mass exodus of early educators leaving the field to go to higher paying jobs at fast food chains, warehouses, and retail establishments. The early education workforce is paid little more than minimum wage: in Massachusetts and nationally, early educators often earn salaries as low as $14 or $15 an hour.

More than 15% of child care workers in Massachusetts live below the poverty line. The low wages that are being paid to a workforce that is majority female and disproportionately people of color, reveals troubling, systemically racist social attitudes about whose work is valuable and what’s considered to be a professional career.

This is only one side of the issue, as Lashada points out. Families struggle with the high cost and low availability of spots, emphasizing the amount of planning that goes into the process for expecting parents. “Unfortunately, you have to get on a list in the first trimester, and then you have to give birth at a time where you’re looking for care from August to October, because there is no care,” says Lashada.

According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, Massachusetts has the country’s second most-expensive child care, behind D.C., with an annual cost of $20,913, taking up 22.7% of a median family’s income in Massachusetts.

To begin addressing these issues, local D.C. advocates joined forces and pushed for the passage of universal pre-K, understanding that convincing lawmakers to include our littlest learners in that policy would be a challenge. And they succeeded.

“What you see here reflects decades of dynamic advocacy at all levels bringing in the business community, diversifying who the advocates are, and including families as well,” Marica reflects on the passage of universal pre-K in D.C.

“We were able to negotiate a tri-sector pre-K which was community-based settings, charter schools, and the D.C. public schools to make sure that piece of legislation gave parents the options for where they wanted their children,” adds BB.

Later in the episode, Latoya discusses the importance of including ages zero to three years old in child care solutions. “A child lives a whole life before they’re three years old,” she says. “In those three years, so much brain development is happening and we need to invest in them in those three years.”

Here at Neighborhood Villages, we applaud the progress in D.C. and the many advocates that made it a reality. And it gives us hope that we can work towards comprehensive child care reform across our nation so that all children and families have access to high-quality, affordable early education regardless of zip code.

To hear more, listen to NOICSTU available everywhere you get your podcasts.