Anyone needing childcare in Washington state knows that the cost of childcare has skyrocketed during the past 10 years. The average cost of 1,000 childcare providers in Seattle is now $1500 per month – or $18,000 per year. In East King County, the cost is over $2,000 per month or $24,000 per year. The average cost in the rest of our State is $1000 per month or $12,000 per year. The average family in Washington now pays 18% of their income on childcare. This is double what families used to pay for childcare. In this article, we will look at why the cost of childcare has skyrocketed and provide a Common Sense solution to this problem.
Rising childcare costs are directly related to rising childcare regulations
Historically, State laws regarding childcare followed the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution where both parents and child care providers were presumed innocent until proven guilty. However, during the past 10 years, the laws here in Washington evolved to the point where child care providers and even parents are presumed to be abusive – allowing the State (aka Olympia bureaucrats) to regulate and essentially take over child rearing.
Beginning in 2006, Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, created an agency called the Department of Early Learning as a small office in her cabinet to license and monitor child care providers. Initially, the regulations were relatively minor. This tiny agency grew relatively slowly until about 2014 when it took off like an out-of-control rocket:
From 2008 to 2014, the Department of Early Learning budget averaged $60 million per year. As of 2022, the Department of Early Learning budget including federal funds is over $600 million per year – an increase of 1000% in just the past 10 years.
https://www.dcyf.wa.gov/sites/default/files/pubs/FB_0004.pdf
This budget pays for thousands of State Enforcement Officers (aka Child Care Gestapo) who conduct unannounced Child Care Inspections at every one of thousands of day cares in our state least once a year – with these inspections lasting an average of four hours. There are now Early Learning Enforcement Centers located all over our State:
What is it called Baby Common Core?
The reason local in-home childcare providers and other child care advocates began calling this new system “Baby Common Core” is that it mirrors the blizzard of Common Core regulations that have been imposed on and are in the process of destroying our public schools.
Over-regulation has driven thousands of local In Home Childcare providers out of business
It used to be that about half of all childcare was provided by informal local In Home Childcare providers – with the other half provided by large national chain corporations. In 2019, the Washington State Child Care Collaborative Task Force commissioned a survey of Washington parents.
https://chamber-foundation.files.svdcdn.com/production/documents/AWB_MountingCostsReport_September2019.pdf?dm=1704748795
They found that Washington state had the third highest child care cost in the nation. They also found that the number of Child Care slots had declined by 20% from 2014 to 2019 from about 220,000 to 180,000. This entire decline of 40,000 slots was due to small local In Home Childcare providers deciding that the massive regulations were simply not worth it. Put in plain English, while the national corporation childcare providers did not decline at all, there was a decline of 40% in the number of local In Home Childcare providers – from about 100,000 slots to about 60,000 slots.
As a consequence, half of all parents surveyed in 2019 stated they were unable to find any openings at any price near either their home or work. One in four said they could simply not afford child care. This has led to 135,000 parents either quitting their jobs or being fired – simply because of being unable to work because they could not find anyone to care for their child. The cost to employers of parents either quitting their jobs or missing work was over $2 billion per year.
Of course, without work, these parents can not afford to pay for their home or apartment – forcing many to live in the back of their car.
Is the real agenda to get rid of children?
The average cost of a year of childcare in King County is now greater than the cost of sending your child to the University of Washington for a year! At $20,000 per year times five years, the total cost of childcare for a single child is $100,000. This does not include the cost of food or transportation or anything else. Can it be that the real agenda of the Crazy Crowd in Olympia is to make the cost of childcare so high that families will stop having kids? This may sound crazy. But we already know that their strategy to get rid of natural gas and gasoline powered cars is to drive the prices so high that no one will be able to afford them.
Our Common Sense Solution to the Childcare Crisis
This childcare crisis was created by the assumption that all parents and all childcare providers abuse children. This assumption is not correct. The vast majority of parents and In Home Childcare providers do not abuse their children. If a parent or childcare provider does abuse a child, they can and should be reported to Child Protective Services (CPS). There is simply no need for another massive State agency whose sole function is to drive up the price of childcare. Loving parents and devoted In Home Childcare providers should not have to be driven into poverty or out of business by a few bad apples.
Our Common Sense solution is to return to the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution – that all parents and childcare providers are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Deregulating In Home Childcare providers will attract thousands of local In Home Childcare providers which will immediately bring the cost of childcare back down to where it was 10 to 20 years ago.
Of course, for this solution to become law, we need your help to elect our Common Sense candidates. How you can help us is by sharing this article and the rest of our articles with your friends and neighbors. As always, we look forward to your questions and comments.