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Dear Friends of Child Care,
You may have read The Hechinger Report articles in the 1/30 issue of the Clarion Ledger. If you did, you probably feel accused of harming the wellbeing of the children enrolled in your center. We are angry that the Clarion Ledger and the Hechinger Report teamed up to promulgate such accusations that harm centers like yours that do everything possible to support children and families. We want you to know that you are doing great work on behalf of your children and families, and we know that you do this work against great odds. Instead of being insulted in the state newspaper, you should be heralded as champions for our state's low-income working families.
This type of cheap shot gets thrown at child care periodically. For example, a couple years ago there was a terrible article in the New Republic entitled, "The Hell of American Day Care." I wrote a response that ran in The Nation and on the Bill Moyers national blog. You can read it here. So this diversionary tactic is not new. Unfortunately, it takes the focus off the need to finance the system we all "say" we want while at the same time tarnishing all the terrific child care champions like you and making low-income working parents feel terrible about using the child care they need. This is not a helpful contribution to the many challenges we face in Mississippi about child care. We have been standing up for child care centers a very long time, and we will continue to do that. We know what a difference you make in the lives of low-income working families and we are grateful to you.
If Hechinger and the Clarion Ledger wanted to be helpful, they would be honest, not diversionary, and promote more funding for child care services to build the system. Articles like this "say" they want to see that more low-income children can be served and more centers can afford to operate and hire staff with early childhood training and equip learning centers. Everyone likes to beat up on child care while starving child care for resources. Our nation and our state have shrunk the number of children served in the child care subsidy program to a 15-year low. To pretend this is about anything other than the nation's failure to finance the kind of system everyone pretends to want is just that - pretending.
Help us push Mississippi to build the robust child care system we all know families need. And thanks for all you do for Mississippi's low-income working families!
Carol Burnett, Executive Director
MS Low Income Child Care Initiative
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