Ivanka Trump has waded into the child care debate again with vocal support for a proposed one-time influx of $1 billion to the federal Child Care Development Fund, which provides states with money for subsidizing care. The money, which is listed in addition to the $5.3 billion for child care also included in the White House’s proposed budget, would be available to states willing to compete for it in part by eliminating requirements or regulations that can make it harder to run child care businesses or that drive up the cost for parents.
The likelihood that the president’s proposed budget passes the House is essentially zero. Still, the idea that child care’s woes — low pay, lack of facilities, decreasing availability of infant and toddler spots, rising costs for parents — could be addressed by weakening state regulations still managed to create a bit of an uproar in early education circles.
“Asking states to dilute [regulatory] protections as a requirement of a competitive grant program jeopardizes the safety and well-being of children,” wrote Catherine White, the director of child care and early learning at the National Women’s Law Center. “It creates a race to the bottom by incentivizing states to permanently remove the greatest number of basic protections for children in exchange for temporary new funding.”
[For more on this story by LILLIAN MONGEAU, go to https://hechingerreport.org/re...e-there-arent-many/?]
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