TKW Consulting

If a college graduate will earn $1 million more than a high school drop out, back up the clock and estimate how much more a pre-school graduate will earn over the course of his or her lifetime if they excel in education and go to college with scholarships or no college debt. Can you imagine?! I can hear the shackles of poverty breaking now. There could be an end of the cradles to prison pipeline. Children would be given unprecedented opportunities if quality early care and education were made available to everyone.

I am painfully familiar with the hard realities of funding early care and education. Every child care provider I know forfeits living wages in an effort to pass those savings onto parents, while ensuring the children have the best care available. I work for below poverty wages despite being highly educated because I believe in the value that this form of education offers not just our children, but everyone. Therefore, it seems to me that everyone should make an effort to ensure our children are not only safe, but receiving an early education as well. Newspapers should require advertisers of child care services to supply a license (a safety standard) in order to advertise. Schools should be
familiar with the local child care providers in the school feeders so the prior-to-school education pipeline is flowing in the right direction (a quality standard).

Parents should talk with other parents about what forms of child care are offering the best services for their children. And last but not least, our state Legislature should start to practice what they preach. I don’t sit on babies, and neither should you. It’s about time we stopped holding our children down and give them the best opportunities possible.