This blog post is part of the On Your Mind series featuring local leaders and early childhood champions across the country. NLC’s Early Childhood Success team supports members so every city, town, and village has healthy babies and happy families, and all children are thriving by 3, ready at 5, and on their way by 8, So All Children Thrive.
Across the country, city leaders are recognizing the importance of early childhood success as a key strategy to a thriving community. The City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska has been working to directly support the early childhood workforce through their new apprenticeship program and by providing direct funding to the sector. NLC reached out to Deputy City Manager Robert Barr to ask about their work and what is on his mind around early childhood success.
NLC: What is one thing keeping you up at night when you think about the young children and families in your community?
I’m keenly aware that Juneau, like a lot of communities, is on the edge of a demographic cliff: aging population, lower school enrollment, fewer births, and a housing situation that makes in-migration challenging. Good, accessible childcare is one of the most important aspects to turning that cliff into a trend that we can manage rather than one that harms our residents and our economy. There are many elements to unpack here, but fundamentally, we know that childcare is a major factor that people consider when deciding where to live, raise children, and contribute to a community. At the end of the day, childcare is one of those things that is mostly about the economics – the majority of parents can’t afford to pay the actual cost of care and the majority of people in childrearing ages need to work full time. We have to make it possible for those two scenarios to coexist if we want demographically healthy communities.
NLC: How is the City and Borough of Juneau supporting childcare providers as businesses?
At the City and Borough of Juneau, our local Assembly (City Council) created a Childcare Task Force in 2018 to determine if childcare should be part of the core municipal budget – and, if so, what exactly we ought to be doing. It didn’t take long for the Task Force to say yes. They had a few recommendations we’ve been working on since. The big one involves providing direct cash infusions into the sector, focused on improving access and quality. Today, CBJ provides per-child and per-employee stipends to most licensed childcare facilities – including home providers – in our community. Our spending amounts to about $70 per capita annually, with funding coming from a mix of property taxes, sales taxes, and grants.
NLC: The City and Borough of Juneau also recently began an apprenticeship program. How does that program work to train and retain childcare providers?
Yes! We recently funded an apprenticeship program through our local Association for the Education of Young Children (AEYC) partner, who also administers our stipend programs. When talking about apprenticeship programs, the thing I think we need to think about first is: what is the apprentice going to do when they’re done? And what is going to attract them to do that? We need an environment that supports business opportunities for those apprentices once they’re trained. That’s why we started with directly supporting the sector – that has resulted in a much more realistic and predictable financial environment, enabling existing businesses to stabilize and creating opportunity for new ones.
NLC: What advice would you offer your colleagues in cities across the country as they commit to prioritizing the needs of children, families, and providers within local policies?
The first thing that comes to mind: work on getting a meaningful and sustainable funding source first. That might mean some community engagement work to demonstrate that a new funding stream is needed. Not every municipal problem requires new funding to solve, but – and I think this is nearly universally true – childcare does. The math simply doesn’t work without public support. Hopefully increased federal support for childcare materializes soon, but until then, it’s up to state and local communities to find it on our own.
Contact NLC’s Early Childhood Success team at ECteam@nlc.org and sign up for the quarterly newsletter.
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