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Safe, reliable and affordable child care has become an enormous problem for families across Alaska.

My best advice for people who are just finding out that they're pregnant is literally like celebrate with your family and then start looking for childcare, like really getting on waitlists as early as you can.

What's being done to address the shortage of facilities and staff?

And is there a way to ensure child care is more affordable?

We'll discuss it right now on Alaska.

INSIGHT.

Good evening all across Alaska.

Families are struggling to find available and affordable care for their children.

As we'll discuss tonight, this crisis of care has far reaching effects on families, childhood development and the overall economy.

But before we get to that discussion, we'll start off with some of the top stories of the week from Alaska Public Media's collaborative statewide news Network.

Two climbers last heard from as they prepared to scale a peak in Denali National Park and Preserve last week are now presumed dead.

Officials with the park say leaders of the search efforts concluded that survival was not possible, citing the rocky terrain, the climbers limited supplies and the dangerously low temperatures overnight.

The climbers have been identified as 34 year old Eli Michel of Columbia City, Indiana, and 32 year old Nafiun Awal, a wall of Seattle.

Two major tribal groups announced this week that they will withdraw from the Alaska Federation of Natives.

The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the Tanana Chiefs Conference will both no longer be part of the Federation, which is the largest statewide Alaska native organization.

Tlingit and Haidas President Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson said the membership doesn't feel as necessary as it did in the past.

Citing Tlingit and Haidas capacity to advocate for their own regional causes.

Meanwhile, TCC pointed to what they say is a lack of significant action on salmon and subsistence protection as a major reason for their departure.

Offends longtime President Julie Kitka says she's withholding comment until the AFN board meets next week.

The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection has sent resource, including firefighters, to the Canadian province of Alberta, which is dealing with an unusually intense early wildfire season.

Division spokesperson Lily Coyle says Alberta had more than 100 wildfires spreading out of control over the weekend and a state of emergency has been declared.

While Alaska Fire wildfire fighting agencies often send people and equipment to work outside the state in the fall, Coyle says the spring deployment is very unusual.

You can find the full versions of these stories and many more on our website.

AlaskaPublic .org, or by downloading the Alaska Public Media app on your phone.

Now on to our discussion for the evening.

Between lengthy wait lists and rising costs, it's difficult for families in Alaska to find available and affordable child care.

Alaska Public Media's Wesley Earley has more on the strain the tight child care market is putting on Anchorage families.

Amanda Dale is a mother of two in Anchorage.

She's been over a year trying to find childcare for her first child, three year old Ethan.

After months of waiting, she was emotional when they finally got a spot last August.

So a woman from the preschool called and said, We have a full time spot for your son.

And I started crying and I apologize to her.

You know, like, gosh, I must seem like very weird that I'm crying about this.

And she said, Oh, no, it happens all the time.

Like, people are so relieved to get a call from me.

I know you're the best legs in the world.

I'm aware.

Across the state, Alaska families are having a harder and harder time finding available and affordable child care.

Bryan Honeyman Keya is the family services manager at Thread Alaska, a nonprofit that works to connect families to child care and advocate for early education.

She says finding childcare has always been a problem, but the pandemic strained the already tight system.

There has definitely been a decrease in providers.

Some have left the state, some have retired.

Some have just decided to find another career during this time.

With fewer providers and high demand wandering Chaos says childcare openings fill up almost immediately, making them hard to track.

My best advice for people who are just finding out that they're pregnant is literally like celebrate with your family and then start looking for childcare.

Like really getting on waitlist as early as you can since there's such a tight market.

Childcare has become increasingly expensive for families.

Dale says she and her husband pay more than 1400 dollars a month for their son, and now she's thinking about when her seven month old daughter Lena will need childcare, too.

When we first enrolled him, it was two months upfront and startup fees, so we paid over $3,000 that first month, which is nuts.

And when she starts, there's a small discount, which is great for siblings, but it'll centrally be about 2700 a month.

I was just like other families are just starting the search.

Jamie Smith is pregnant and is due in October.

She already has her baby on several wait lists.

Smith says she plans to go back to work in February when her baby is about four months old.

But she wonders what if they never get into daycare?

We have to kind of think of like, does my husband quit his job?

Do I quit my job Do is what does one of us go part time?

If we can only find part time childcare and we don't have family in the state.

So then you have to think of, well, we really can't find anywhere.

Do we have to leave the state and move?

And then you have to sell the house.

Smith says she's thrilled about becoming a mother for the first time and even the daunting and frustrating search for childcare won't take that away.

In Anchorage and Wesley Earley joining me tonight to discuss the state of child care in Alaska and the potential to improve it are Stephanie Berglund and State Senator Lukey Tobin.

Stephanie is the CEO of Thread Alaska, which connects families with child care and early education opportunities around the state.

And Senator Tobin is set to be a member of Governor Mike Dunleavy's recently announced Child Care Task Force.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you for having us.

Thanks.

Senator Tobin, I know you're really busy down there, so thanks for joining us as well.

Stephanie, start us off with an overview of the need across the state.

We just saw the story about some Anchorage families, but how much capacity versus number of children are you getting a sense of?

Yeah, the need is really great and there's lots of concern across the state right now for really parents as we just saw, really desperate, looking for child care.

And the frustration is high, the stress is high and it's really expensive.

So thread estimates that there are only about half of the licensed and regulated child care spaces that are needed for families right now across the state.

Half and of those that are open of of that half.

Unfortunately, not all of them are fully able to utilize all of their spaces and serve all of the children that they're licensed for because they are having a staff shortage.

AM finding it difficult to recruit and retain the staff that they need to fully serve all the children that they are able to.

That is staggering to consider that half has left.

What do they tell you about how they're trying to put it together so that they can still work but have adequate care for their kids?

You know, we hear really difficult stories.

The families that we just saw are really no different than what we hear every day.

So we provide free child care referrals for families.

And so we're providing services to families and hearing for them the difficult choices that they're making, the they're not able to be productive and focused at work because they're struggling with childcare.

They're not able to maybe keep the steady employment or the job that they want or the hours of their choice they're having too.

Like Jamie mentioned in the video, you know, having to make tough choices of with their partner, our spouse, maybe figuring out how to juggle schedules.

One person may have to leave their job.

And we are hearing some people not able to stay here and live and grow and support their families in Anchorage or across the state.

So they're making really tough choices and that's certainly not what we want to see for the direction of the state.

Senator Tobin, what has the task force been tasked with doing?

Tell us about this.

Well, I think we are going to take some time to figure that out.

I know there has been many conversations about the fiscal cliff that many of our sectors are about to experience with the ending of COVID relief funds and the fiscal climate in the state of Alaska being so tenuous, so volatile with high inflation and other pressures really forcing us into a situation where Alaskans are leaving their going away to seek more economic opportunity In the lower 48 and other locations, we are experiencing attrition of our workforce and labor force.

And so the state needs to make some really key investments in areas that help bolster up our economic opportunities and state.

And one of those is child care.

I am very elated to see that the Senate budget that was produced yesterday includes 15 million for our child care sector, along with an additional $5 million for Head Start programs.

I don't think this is enough and I hope the task force will take time to really consider what it looks like to put resources into early education and child care opportunities so that Alaskans can get back to work and that we can entice more folks to come to our state because we care about our kiddos.

Why is the task force needed?

As we heard in Leslie's story and just heard from Stephanie, the need is quite clear.

We know that there is a huge lack of quality child care in the state.

What can the task force do to help move that needle?

Well, I am hopeful that the task force will take the opportunity to really tell the story.

There are so much information and data points that are swirling.

And I know folks here in this building have to make really difficult decisions and oftentimes they are overindebted by info.

And we have the facts and the data and the information about what is happening in our child care sector.

But what we really need is a cohesive story about what policy choices are before us and having the right people in the room to help coalesce that information, to be able to thread it together and be very orchestrated.

And here are the correct steps that our legislature needs to take to help stabilize the sector and help grow.

It is what I think the key focus of the task force task force should be.

Thank you.

Stephanie, talk about the sort of cascade of events that led to such a huge loss of the already limited capacity that was here.

It was sort of a convergence of issues, was it not?

Well, it was in many ways.

Unfortunately, child care has been not something we've been investing in as a state or frankly, as a as a society.

And it's often a profession that is not looked at as a profession and deserves a lot more respect.

And so for years and actually decades, it's been a sector that's been under supported.

What is hap what has happened is it's been really built on on the backs of parents.

Parents are paying for the majority of the tuition and little subsidy is available for supporting the small businesses across Alaska, you know, providing this important care and services and supporting the families.

So the sector was already struggling.

And then with the pandemic, we just saw that get worse.

We saw, of course, families, you know, keeping their children home and not being able to afford childcare because some lost their job or had reduced hours.

So that meant, you know, some childcare programs reduced staff and had to change their business model.

At the same time, they're operating costs were increasing, so they had a larger gap than normal, which made the business really tenuous and extremely fragile.

So we saw, unfortunately, the sector struggle even more and they're still working to get back.

And we don't want it just to come back to what it was.

We want to strengthen the sector so we have a really a thriving childcare field perhaps.

Senator, the task force that Senator Tobin is part of will unpack some of this.

But you mentioned and I want to get to some of the state and federal potential funding a bit further into the program.

But you mentioned the fact that we haven't invested in a very long time, both in the state or in the nation.

What's known about why when we can see a very direct line from dollars invested in early education to much better outcomes and less expense societally in the future.

Why is this so hard to get right?

Yeah, well, I think as the senator said, you know that we have to make really hard choices of where we invest in our limited dollars.

And we're really hopeful at thread, you know, to see some changes being made at the federal, state and local level to invest in our families and we have heard the governor and many people say, you know, that we want to make Alaska the best place for families to live and for all of us to be so investing in child care is is a great way we can do that.

In another aspect of quality.

Early care is for screening for potential challenges that children may have.

Talk about the importance of this for child development.

Yeah, quality, early learning, any any way we can provide it is super critical for young children.

We see child care and early learning programs is really part of the larger continuum of education in our state.

And so the more we can give children a strong start, the more they will be successful and ready when they enter kindergarten and then have more success throughout the trajectory in school and beyond.

So that includes developmental screening.

So the earlier that we can provide supports for a family or recognize when one of our youngest learners needs some assistance and maybe some additional services to support their learning and development, the earlier that we can help them be on that road for success.

So we know that when children are in high quality early learning programs or their and their families have strong supports for that early childhood development, that they're entering school more prepared.

We're seeing higher third grade reading scores and eighth grade math.

We're seeing stronger graduation rates.

You know, and ultimately a stronger economy when when we all can be more successful.

Absolutely.

Senator, when will the task force start meeting and be working?

And do you see the budget item as the main priority right now for the task force?

The governor is not supportive of the 15 million that is in the Senate budget.

Well, I had a text message from our newly confirmed commissioner of health today, and I know there's a lot of folks talking about this and we want to figure out how we get to.

Yes.

And I think it really is again, back to telling the story oftentimes, and we have relied on the market to provide these very critical and absolutely necessary pieces of our economic infrastructure we don't really advocate for include the relevance of those when it comes down to the time we need to make the difficult fiscal decisions and they get pushed aside and right now we have a real opportunity to be very clear and concise in what the message is.

Child care is a critical component of our economic vitality and viability as a state.

It needs to be a part of every conversation for every community member, not just those who have children, but for those who rely on the surrounding labor force that do have children.

I also think it's a question of what is the minimum that we should be doing, but what is the best practice that we can ensure and provide for our young ones?

And it really comes down to that, that reality of high quality of care, of high quality, of early learning opportunities.

I'm excited that legislation passed last year that included an expansion of the parents of teacher program.

It didn't include a funding source.

I'm excited that we are talking about high quality early learning like pre-K programs, but not every parent is going to take advantage of those opportunities.

We need to create a mix delivery system that meets every parent where they are and provides all the opportunities for them to get their kiddos into safe quality cared.

And I think the task force has a lot of advocates that will be included in the conversation that would be pushing for legislative policy and the fiscal components that make that happen next year.

Well, Senator, following up there, the Biden administration wants to raise the salaries of preschool and Head Start teachers.

There's a plan for paying for care so parents can attend school and the president's that they would pay for care while parents attend school.

The president's 2024 budget seeks to invest 600 billion over a decade to expand childcare and preschool access.

The White House note says this would add capacity for about 16 million children across the country.

Right now, Republicans are seeking budget cuts over the debt ceiling and at least some of these programs are in the crosshairs.

How transformative would this level of investment be, do you think?

I think we it would be unmeasurable.

To tell you how transformative and how transformative it would be.

We know that early learning for every dollar we invest comes back to us at the very least seven fold.

And in some cases, research showcases a 31 rate of return.

So for those single dollars that we're putting into our early education streams, into our high quality child care, we as a society see a benefit that's 31 times that initial investment.

That is incredible.

And it really will create a growth in our GDP.

It will create a growth in our labor force.

It will create a growth in the opportunities that are afforded to our young people.

And I can't imagine what new and creative innovations and technologies that the young minds that are going through early learning programs today are going to produce when they graduate from high school and university and go off into the great White World.

It is very exciting to me to see our current presidential administration make a real strong push for our young kids and for our families that need to hear that they matter and that they are a key part of our economic success.

Stephanie, your thoughts here.

Have you talked to the congressional delegation about this particular measure?

Yes, actually, Thread was just in Washington earlier this week.

And so we had a chance to visit with our with the delegation at the Capitol, which was wonderful.

And, you know, it's it's again, a tough budget cycle where, you know, you're saying that we're looking at, you budget cuts.

There's been a lot of spending at the federal level related to COVID, but also a recognition of what's needed to invest in the people across the country.

So we were able to share the message of how the COVID stimulus dollars have impacted Alaskans, how they made a difference.

Those investments in child care showed that they worked and they helped to keep childcare open and help offset the expenses that they had, you know, during that critical time.

So we were able to share those stories and talk about how we need to, as a country, continue to invest.

Mm hmm.

Well, that's good that you were there and making that case, Senator Tobin, the story we saw at the start of tonight's program featured parents in Anchorage.

The need is greater, as we know, in rural Alaska.

What do rural lawmakers or task force members, if there are some from rural parts of the state, say, about the situation in remote regions, areas that are known as child care deserts?

Well, we recently had one of those very infamous lunch and learns here in the legislature where an advocate came and showcased a documentary filmed in rural Alaska entitled At Home In-Home.

And I think many lawmakers just did not know the story.

They didn't understand the regulatory barriers, the infrastructure barriers, the challenges to licensure that many folks are experiencing in our more remote areas.

It really highlighted again that a task force that is focused narrowly on making sure that folks understand the climate, they understand the challenges and barriers that many folks are experiencing.

And they understand the rate of return that we receive as a state when we invest in high quality child care and early learning opportunities will help us really smooth a pathway to establishing not only in statute, but also just in the hearts, in the minds of those who are in this building, who need to know that their communities are being significantly impacted by the lack of child care access in their communities.

So many folks want to get to work and they can because they need to know that their little young ones are going to be safe and secure in a licensed facility.

Absolutely.

The senator, the legislature still hasn't resolved the big budget snarls over the permanent fund dividend and new potential revenue sources.

A special session may be imminent.

And against that backdrop, how confident are you that state investment in these very critical areas of child car Well, I know it is a key component of many of the conversations I have been having in the Alaska Senate majority.

There are many advocates in the room who remind us all why child care is so critical and how important it is.

We as a caucus have been talking about defined benefits and other systems of support to help keep Alaskans in the workforce.

We just made the most significant increase to the based in allocation the state has ever seen.

And that's because the folks in the room understand how critical and important these young minds are for the future success of Alaska.

I have no doubt that the folks in my caucus will be continuing to champion the 15 million that was added into the Senate side for child care, the 5 million that we also added in for Head Start.

And these are just the beginnings of the conversation.

There are many in the room who know and value our child care labor force and want to make sure that they have the resources and the tools and a support that they need to not only continue to do the work, but also to flourish and to expand it.

So every family has access to the child care option that is right for them.

Thank you so much.

And Stephanie, my last question for you would be you mentioned in a previous interview about some creative partnerships with businesses.

Describe what that might provide for families.

Yeah, well, in addition to the opportunities at the federal, state and local level for government to be investing in child care, you know, we're really excited about where there's opportunity for businesses to partner and engage.

So there are opportunities for businesses across the country to provide employer sponsored childcare and sometimes that's difficult with the infrastructure to, you know, house a child care program in a business or in their building.

But there's other creative ways that they we see businesses partnering.

So we're looking at how they can, you know, be partnering with other local childcare programs and other businesses for creative solutions.

All right.

Well, thank you both so much for the work that you're doing that's so important for the future of Alaska and Alaska's children.

Thank you.

It cannot be overstated that quality care for children is critical for the immediate daily needs for children, but also for the longer term needs socializing, learning and creative development that comes through imaginative play.

It's an investment for a brighter future for Alaska's kids and families.

Good childcare and early learning today leads to better outcomes for young people in the future, and that's important for all of us.

That's it for this edition of Alaska Insight.

Visit our website Alaska public that org for breaking news and reports from our partner stations across the state.

While you're there, sign up for our free daily Digest so you won't miss any of Alaska's top stories of the day.

Thanks for joining us this evening.

I'm Lori Townsend.

Good night.