The N.C. Department of Health & Human Services last week released $67.5 million in stopgap funding to stabilize North Carolina’s early childhood education and child-care centers, the last scheduled payment of Child Care Stabilization Grants.
Initiated in 2021, Child Care Stabilization Grants have been critical in keeping child-care centers open and improving early childhood teacher pay, according to a release from Gov. Roy Cooper’s office. Earlier this year, the Republican-led General Assembly provided the $67.5 million to continue Child Care Stabilization Grants through Dec. 31, albeit at a reduced funding level.
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“North Carolina relies on high-quality early childhood education and child care to support children’s healthy development and learning,” Cooper said. “But we need the Legislature to make real investments before more child-care centers close, more early childhood educators quit and programs become unaffordable for too many parents.”
Child Care Stabilization Grants support 3,763 early childhood education and child-care facilities across the state. A recent survey showed nearly a third of North Carolina child-care centers are at risk of closing when the federally funded grants end.
Without additional investment, survey results show that North Carolina’s child-care centers will lose quality teachers, have difficulty hiring and will have to raise fees on parents. The state has already seen a net loss of 116 child-care centers in the last year.
How bad is it? Infant care in North Carolina today costs 28% more than in-state tuition for a four-year public college, while teachers in programs like Head Start are making as little as $10-$12 per hour.
Meanwhile, the budget enacted by last year by the General Assembly expanded the private school voucher program by $250 million over the next two years, for a total of $4 billion over the next 10 years. Legislators recently voted to spend an additional $463 million on vouchers, which pay for tuition at unaccountable and unregulated private schools regardless of the parents’ wealth, which Cooper vetoed last week.
Funding for public schools drops every time a student uses a voucher to attend a private school, money counties like Cherokee with aging and outdated campuses can ill afford to lose. Experiences in other states show that expanded voucher programs don’t increase opportunity for new students at private schools, but instead subsidize the education of students from wealthy families who have never attended a public school.
North Carolina can spend its money on education much more effectively than that.
Details: Visit governor.nc.gov/nc-voucher-fact-sheet/open.
– Publisher David Brown