An Open Letter to Joe Biden on Childcare, from a Childcare Provider

Hi Joe,

I just had a chance to review your most recent proposal for childcare and I'd like to share a perspective from someone on the ground doing this work currently. I own a childcare center in Lincoln, Nebraska and, before this pandemic, had been traveling, joining podcasts, and otherwise offering professional development to other early childhood professionals, from big schools to little in-home childcare facilities, about how to provide a holistic, research-based childcare environment. I believe that perhaps your team has a view of early childhood that’s not quite in alignment with the realities faced by the sector and I’d love to take this opportunity to educate you, and them, about it.

ABC News stated your plan will “seek to accelerate the construction of newer, safer childcare facilities..." and to me, this sounds a lot like "adding pre-k and childcare as official ‘grades’ to existing public education", effectively institutionalizing the youngest, most vulnerable children and standing in the way of parents' choices to pursue the holistic pedagogies that align with their very young child and family. This is not the same as the "school choice" argument applied to strip funds from Public Schools in later years. I am an avid supporter, albeit sometimes critical, of public schools. The idea of applying public school’s norms and conventions to our nation's youngest children seems to be antithetical to everything we know about the very children your campaign is aiming to support.

Donald Trump has used public education to politicize the lives and futures of children for political clout, especially in the face of the pandemic. I don’t know if many families are willing to bring the youngest and most vulnerable into that equation for future administrations, but I believe your plan would force them to choose between what’s “free” and what’s “best for my child”.

Sir, it is projected there will be over 850,000 childcare operators in this nation in 2021. I’d be willing to guess most of them have been waiting for a Democratic candidate's plan to include the expansion of existing subsidies. But what we're hearing is that your administration would rather slap a brand new industry over an existing one, like a Band-Aid, making their operations completely obsolete. This news, especially right after this industry has been asked to sacrifice so much during this pandemic to prop up the economy, leaves a bad taste in our mouths. Why should we continue to sacrifice ourselves for the good of the U.S. economy, knowing that you intend to catapult our careers into obsolescence or strip our businesses from us when you become president?

This may or may not be news to you, but this industry is propped up by mostly women--specifically women of color--whose vast experience comes from generations of doing this work. It's commercial, yes, but it's also a culture-driven trade. We can't just decide now that those same women are suddenly unqualified to do this work because they don't have the right degree to please this newly manufactured industry that decimated theirs. We can't just decide now that the work these women do is somehow frivolous and less-than, compared to the kind of unnecessarily engineered academic pushdown we can expect from institutionalizing the trade entirely. They’re professionals. They’re experts. Their experience and willingness to self-educate outshine the most advanced degrees tenfold.

For my part, as I'm neither a woman nor a woman of color, and still have a personal stake here as well, I had admired Elizabeth Warren's plan. It would have created a partnership between the government and existing nonprofit childcare providers, incentivizing quality and community outreach in return for federal funding. "Quality" remained undefined, which could be good or bad given that a lot of what we think "quality" means when we think of "school" is antithetical to everything we know scientifically about child development to protect and sustain the factory model of modern American schooling. What matters about that plan, though, is it left room for this industry to rise and meet the occasion, rather than looking down on it—underfunded and undervalued as it is to this day—and deciding it can’t, or won’t, so now the government must replace it.

I'm not a nonprofit but would gladly become one. I already operate like one. The only reason I (and many other childcare providers) haven't yet is that we're so underfunded the idea of spending the $1,000 filing for one seems like a misuse of funds that could be better used elsewhere. Change, to be clear, is not the issue. Change is what we’re all in this for. We want change for the better, not just for the “different". We want this industry to be valued for what it is, not streamlined into something else. We want change that positively impacts children at an individual and deeply personal level. Not just what impacts their parents or the United States government at an economic level.

Childcare and Early Childhood Education (hereafter referred to as just “childcare”) isn’t, and shouldn't be, "mini" school or "play-school". Childcare shouldn’t be “preparatory” to school. Childcare isn't just one thing. It's supposed to be a holistic fostering of child development, not just academic achievement. It’s supposed to be about meeting children where they are and providing them with tools and information to live a full life—not just pass a test or get into a college 13 years from now. Childcare is supposed to feel like an extension of the home, not like what we think of when we think "school"--big, imposing buildings with state-of-the-art commercial-grade finishing, décor children aren’t permitted to touch, or engaging and developmentally supportive toys and materials children can only play with as a reward or special treat. Childcare is supposed to teach children how to think and learn, not necessarily what. It's supposed to be a place to grow--not just exist, absorb, test, and repeat.

I know what I’m describing is akin to “individualized education”. I know that the kind of environment I’m describing could require a lot more money to operate than an environment where 20-40 young children are inappropriately expected to sit still at a designated spot and absorb as one now-moderately-paid teacher regurgitates a predetermined, standardized curriculum at them. But that’s the thing: I’m already doing it. I’m already doing it while accepting the existing subsidy because that’s the job, and that’s what it’s been for decades. When I think of what I could do for my community if more families qualified for assistance rather than struggling to pay me, and that assistance was sufficient to allow better wages for my staff, it seems like implementation would be far more streamlined from the government’s perspective than the investment required to shoehorn and construct a new sector over mine.

Increasing pay for teachers and education workers, and providing legislation that would expand those workers' right to collectively bargain, even as a business owner myself, is something we’ve been pursuing for years—not fighting. Will collective bargaining matter, though, when the government or major government contractors monopolize the existing sector entirely? With barely any competition for federal funding, how has collective bargaining benefitted the fight for truly commiserate wages for teachers in public schools lately? How has it promoted their wellness during this pandemic beyond condemning public schools choosing to open at normal capacity? Already, a nationwide teacher shortage hasn’t shifted the leverage in favor of educators, because the existing school systems are broken. Why add a whole new age group to that mess?

I’m hoping this is just the kind of misstep we in this job have come to expect from our leaders, where ideas about early childhood education are centered around “schools” since we politically think “schools” when we think “education”. I’m hoping this is just the kind of misstep we’ve come to expect from our leaders where the actual lived experience and wellbeing of children is overshadowed by the perceptions adults project upon the services they receive. I’m hoping you’ll reconsider and open a dialogue with real-life childcare providers, big and small, about the value they bring to their communities and their right to not only exist but excel within your vision of America.

Always ready for a phone call with your team,
Travis Manley