Alaska Insight is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers just like you.

Thank you.

Alaska families are struggling to find and afford quality child care for their kids.

It's affecting jobs, the state's economy and children.

The lack of child care options prompted the governor to form a task force to look for solutions.

We'll hear what recommendations are coming from the group right now.

Unalaska Insight.

Good evening.

It's critical that families in Alaska have access to childcare that not only keeps kids safe, but also engages them with structured, educational and social skills development.

Learning is critical to helping them develop good routines for future success.

But as you'll hear tonight, even before the pandemic, Alaska was grappling with a shortage of licensed child care facilities, and that shortage has only gotten more severe.

We'll hear from members of the governor's task Force on Child Care about potential solutions.

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

I did ride competitor Dallas Seavey told reporters he believes race officials made the right call in issuing him a two hour penalty stemming from an encounter with a moose during the first quarter of the race.

According to Seavey his team passed directly by a moose between the Skwentna and Finger Lakes checkpoints.

He says he shot and killed the moose after it began kicking his dog team.

Per race rules, Seavey was required to gut the moose so that its meat could be salvaged.

But race officials determined he did not do so adequately.

With other mushers reporting their teams ran over the carcass.

The Iditarod trail committee didn't provide specifics about what exactly was inadequate in Seaveys hasty field dressing.

The Alaska House and Senate have asked Governor Mike Dunleavy to withdraw three of the 12 executive orders he issued at the start of the legislative session and are planning up or down votes on at least six others.

The orders affect various state boards, commissions and agencies by dissolving, splitting or otherwise changing their structures, according to a draft plan shared with reporters last week.

The votes will take place March 12th during a joint session of the House and Senate.

If the governor's office doesn't withdraw, the three requested orders.

Senate President Gary Stevens said he expects those to be brought up during the joint meeting.

As of Monday, the governor's communications office said it had no information on the views of the governor's office about the legislative plan.

Alaska Republicans chose Donald Trump over Nikki Haley by an overwhelming margin during Tuesday's party run presidential preference poll.

Trump won about 88% of the vote in the contest, which saw 10,500 Republican voters cast ballots across much of the state.

The party won't finalize the numbers until next week, but preliminary results, as well as Haley's announcement that she will end her campaign after similar results in other states, all but guarantees Trump has won all 29 of the delegates Alaska will send to the Republican National Convention this summer.

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

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

We're launching directly into our discussion tonight here to describe the work that's been done to address the shortage of childcare providers and facilities is Katie Capozzi.

Katie is the president and CEO of the Alaska Chamber and a member of the Governor's Task Force on Childcare.

Also in the studio with us is Nick Moe.

Nick is the public policy manager with Thread, a childcare resource and referral network across Alaska.

Thread also has a seat on the Governor's task force.

Welcome, both of you.

Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having us.

So, Katie, I want to start with you.

Give us a quick overview of the work the task force is undertaking and your role in it.

Yeah, thank you.

So the task force was created last April by the governor and it has 12 voting members on it.

My role is serving as the broader voice for the business community across the state.

Much of the task force is comprised of childcare experts, advocates for the child care industry owners of childcare facilities, parents.

So I'm a little bit of an outcast, I guess, if you will, in that I don't know the lingo.

I've had a lot to learn, but it is a fantastic group that at the end of the day cares about increasing access to and and creating a more affordable landscape for child care.

So we have been meeting since last June and it's been pretty intense.

I'm not sure how many hundreds of hours have been dedicated to the task force, but it's an awful lot.

We had our first set of recommendations that went to the governor in December.

We're back at it.

And we were taking a deeper dive into looking at a couple of studies that the state commissioned, namely the true cost of care study.

We'll be seeing those results soon, and that's when the task force kind of has a lot of work cut out for ourselves to decide what we do with that information and what sort of recommendations we make from there from a funding standpoint.

Great.

Thank you for starting us off there.

We'll drill down a little bit more as we go forward.

But Nick Thread is represented on the task force by your CEO, Stephanie Berglund.

Describe Threads priorities for the task force, what you'd like to see coming out of it.

Yeah, well, a few things.

Well, Thread is Alaska's resource and referral organization for child care.

It means we provide direct services to child care providers, to programs all over the state, including parents connecting them with care and resources.

Threads been operating for more than 39 years.

And we know intimately the challenges and opportunities that we have to help kind of solve this child care crisis that we're in.

And I think, you know, we look at it through the main three buckets of access, affordability and quality.

We want to see all of those three things and our child care system.

And if you if you take a look, we're seeing programs closing.

We're seeing programs not being able to keep staff.

We're seeing parents unable to afford child care.

And that's why it's incredibly important that we, you know, help work with the task force and our amazing partners like Katie, who are absolutely champions of child care and know that from a business perspective, to help move the needle on some of this good public policy we're trying to fix.

Katie, you mentioned this briefly, that the first set of recommendations are out.

What are they?

there's a lot.

I think we have more than 35, but we kind of broke them into some bucket.

So we have a workforce bucket licensing, background checks and some tribal recommendations so they can be found on the Department of Health's website.

But they cover everything from what I will call easy button type regulatory changes that can be made all the way to some heavier lifts, which include something like recommending subsidized wages for child care workers and everything in between.

We talk about tax credits for businesses.

We had an amazing we have an amazing task force member who really made some strong recommendations on the tribal piece to try to get tribal and the state just aligned to be able to become licensed and have some exceptions where it's appropriate.

So we we have a lot, but that kind of covers the main buckets.

Would you like to add?

Yeah.

You know, another task force member that I'm very appreciative of is Representative Julie Klemm, who has is the sponsor of House Bill 89, which would make child care more affordable for thousands of Alaskan families.

And I think having that kind of combination of expertise and at one table fleshing that all of these things out, 33 recommendations is a lot.

But I think there's a lot of agreement that more needs to be done at the state level.

All right.

And Katie, you are representing, as you noted, the business interests in Alaska through the chamber.

You're working with the chamber.

What do you hear from them about the impact of employees and folks not being able to have reliable child care for their kids?

Yeah, thanks for the question.

And I guess I should back up a little bit.

I heard Nick start to describe it threat as I shouldn't assume that everyone knows what the Alaska Chamber is, but we are the state's largest business advocacy organization.

Our mission is to promote a healthy business environment in Alaska.

We have over 700 members, big companies, small businesses located all over the state of Alaska.

So really a varying degree of interest.

But something I'm hearing from the large majority of them is that child care is an issue.

I hadn't really heard that from them until COVID hit.

And so kind of the assumption, I think, honestly, for a lot of employers, too, is that this is a COVID problem and we went along with that kind of theory until suddenly, you know, business was back open.

We were in recovery mode, but the crisis still existed.

And so that's when they really I think, you know, the business community kind of started looking around going, okay, like this is a business issue.

We need to start leading in this area and talking about a lot more.

So the crisis hasn't gone away.

In fact, it's in many cases gotten worse.

And so that's that's when they asked the chamber to kind of step in and start talking about this from a business issue.

They're losing employees.

They're having a hard time recruiting employees, retaining employees.

And I think the most interesting thing that we've seen across the membership is this is not just an income issue.

You know, there's a lot of big members that have who who pay very good salaries.

And those people still can't find childcare because there's just an access issue.

There's not enough slots for kids that need daycare.

So the mission I have from from my board in my membership is to help try to be part of the solution here.

Do you think that that might be one of the few bright things that came out of the pandemic is that this shift in thinking for business owners that, hey, it's not just the the parents social issue.

Yeah, it's much larger that children need good support, you know, to keep them safe, as we said.

And but also so that they're learning and so that they can be more successful in the future.

We know there's plenty of studies that show that early development helps.

Do you think that this shift in thinking for businesses could really have a big impact on potential policy changes and things like that because of of newer thinking about these things?

Absolutely, without question.

And we see that happen in Alaska.

We see it happening across the country where the business community is certainly, I think, felt comfortable in this space because they realized it.

And we've all kind of looked around and realized that this is a problem that all businesses are sharing.

And so we've jumped in and frankly, you know, in the business community speaks of, you know, we are the revenue creators in Alaska, We're the job creators.

And so we need a healthy economy.

And so I think we're able to get a little bit more attention from maybe some unlikely allies in Juneau and in Washington, D.C.

So it's been it's been refreshing.

And I think we certainly have surprised some people coming down to Juneau, especially to say, hey, we're the chamber and we care about child care.

And they just kind of look around like, you do?

So it's been it's been a good discussion.

Nick Thread reports that more than 60% of Alaskans live in areas considered child care deserts.

Tell us how a childcare desert is defined and how the provider landscape has changed since the pandemic.

You know, excuse me, I just wanted to add Katie, Katie's comment real quick.

I was so heartened to see your legislative priorities list out childcare right on the brochure.

And that is so huge and I can't speak enough to the situation we're in.

I mean, there's 148 programs that have closed down in the last three years that represents one quarter of all child care programs in the state.

And more are teetering on the edge at the same time that our COVID relief funds are running out this year.

And at the same time, through our partnership with Alaska Chamber, we have an economic impact report that just came out this fall that showed 51% of parents could either enter the workforce or take on more hours if they had access to childcare.

And then if we look at the Department of Labor saying there are two job openings for every one Alaskan looking for work, we have to work to connect these dots.

And that's where it's such a strength to have the Alaska Chamber of Commerce and Katie out here, you know, help in helping to address this crisis because we can't do it alone.

This affects the whole community in that economic report, it shows that $4.6 billion of payroll is allowed to be generated because of child care.

So every single program that closes represents less payroll going to our state represents more families that might need to move out of the state.

And so we have to do whatever we can to help keep businesses open.

It's so much easier to keep a business open than to start a new one.

And we have programs right now that are working incredible hours, doing the best they can, and the math is just not adding up for them.

You know, one of the things that we talked about earlier this week on Talk of Alaska was the fact that childcare workers were not considered essential workers during the pandemic, which is such a huge disconnect.

Is that being addressed adequately now so that if hopefully we don't have future crises, but if we do that, they will have that designation?

Yes, that was also a surprise to us during the pandemic.

That was one of the recommendations that came out of the task force.

And to my knowledge, that is being corrected.

That is, again, one of those easy button fixes that the state can do without.

We don't need a legislative power to do that.

But that's something that can happen from a from a regulation standpoint.

So it is my understanding that is being addressed.

Good.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

And Nick, turning back to you, that affordability is of course a big factor per the percent of household income use for childcare ranged from 12 to 34%.

The highest percentage is for single moms.

Talk about the risk for families facing that kind of financial vulnerability and what some possible solutions might be.

It's it's huge.

It's a huge issue.

And I think any parent knows the cost and the patchwork of childcare that you have to put together to make things work.

When I have two kiddos, I have a four year old and an eight year old and when my wife went back to school, we were on one income trying to afford childcare for two kids.

And it was incredibly hard.

And I know that it's getting worse just because programs can't afford to keep the lights on with what parents can pay, it's just not enough right now.

And so what we really need to do is a few things.

And I think I mentioned House Bill 89, sponsored by Representative Clem.

That does a huge amount of progress to make childcare more affordable by changing the eligibility for who qualifies for public assistance, by capping some of the costs for the co-pays.

And so more families would be able to qualify for those programs.

And, as Katie said, acknowledging the cost of care, which is being looked at by the child care task force and socializing and education are important parts of child quality child care.

As we know, thread numbers cited last year in a news miner article said only 23% of kids are able to access early child care childhood programs.

During the State of the Union speech, the president mentioned the impact to future success for children who can attend Head Start.

What does your research say about that impact on formal education?

If they start school without access to either Head Start or some other, you know, preschool type, educational, structured setting, it's it's astounding.

Children that go through a quality child care setting are more prepared for kindergarten by double percentage points.

They are more likely to graduate high school.

They're less likely to be incarcerated for a crime when they're older and they have they're able to build those skills of that they'll need for being a student and for life, having a positive relationship with an adult and having, you know, a consistent, warm place to go that offers a meal and socialization.

It's incredibly important for children.

And that's something that, you know, we talk about the economic benefits, but, you know, this is all about Alaska's future.

And if we can figure this out, this will this will have a huge return on investment in the future.

And, of course, pay is another issue that needs addressing.

A recent Associated Press article noted 70% of Head Start teachers have bachelor's degrees, but they're making less than $40,000 a year.

That was a stunning number to me.

What needs to happen to fix this disconnect between the need to have well-educated people in these roles and helping them provide high quality care, but also getting their pay so that they can make a living wage and possibly pay off student debt that they have.

Exactly.

Right now, the men and women, mostly women who are caring for Alaska's children, are not paid enough.

And that's that's apparent in our economic impact report.

It showed that the average wage was $14 an hour less than a gas station attendant.

And how we fix that is to is to provide a basic level of support to programs similar to how the city and borough of Juneau did.

They provided a basic level of support to programs using local dollars.

They were able to raise their wages from $12 an hour to more than $18 an hour.

And if you give these business owners extra financial support, they put it towards the workforce.

They know that that's the most bang for their buck to retain quality employees and maintain that consistency for the kids that are very that's very important.

And we also have a program at THREAD called the Roots Award, Retaining our Outstanding Teachers.

That's another way we can show we appreciation to give our teachers and early educators a annual stipend to encourage more training to help reward them for getting more education.

That increases the quality of care.

Katie, you talked a little about this earlier.

The next assignment is to identify the true cost of care.

What does that mean and what will you be looking at as part of the task force?

How how will the task force look at capturing that true cost?

You know, Nick might actually have a little bit more information on that.

But to my understanding, you know, we're waiting for the report to come out, but we're looking at the subsidies that are currently out there.

What people who aren't on sets aren't on subsidy paying.

I think the last time we did a true cost of care study, Nick, you might know, but it's been decades.

I think so just with inflation and everything else that goes along with it and the costs of rent and everything, we just don't have a good grip on what the true cost of care is across the state.

The other thing that, you know, I've encouraged the group to look at is also what it's going to cost the state to administer all these programs too, because that is going to factor into what the true cost of care for child care is.

So there are so many bits and pieces that go into the true cost of care.

I do want to say that I think a lot of people, especially a lot of parents who are looking at their child care bills that might be $2,000 a month or 20 $400 a month are paying more than their mortgage.

They might have it in their mind that these folks are running the child care facilities are running around driving Porsches, because if I'm paying 2400 a month and everyone else is paying like how is this not an affordable model?

But that's the other thing that we kind of want to show is when you do the breakdown, there's just not a lot of margin for error for these child care owners is a very delicate business model.

Some people call it a broken business model.

And so we're looking at opportunities to help.

You know, Nick covered a lot of the discussion in terms of what kind of some government programs can do.

But we're also hoping that the private sector can be part of the solution, too.

So offering space that's available, you know, tax credits to offer to their employees, to, you know, access child care, the consideration of maybe chipping in on wages for childcare workers versus that coming as a subsidy through the state.

So this is definitely an all hands on deck problem and it's going to take everybody to figure this out.

You did a survey called the Unmapped Potential.

What did you find?

The untapped potential?

Yes, Yes.

No, that's okay.

Untapped potential, That is that's I can say that's actually kind of what I think really helped push the Alaska Chamber into this space is we partnered with the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and they've done these reports in a handful of states across the country to try to find what our economy was missing out on by people choosing not to enter the workforce because of lack of access or affordability.

So we were really focused on these parents who wanted to work but couldn't because of no access or it were just too expensive.

And we found out that the Alaska economy is there's $237 million missing from the economy each year because of parents not able to enter the workforce.

And then the piece that I've really kind of driven home with my membership is of that to 37, I think it's around $50 million is what it's costing employers to, you know, because they're losing people or not able to retain employees for to get new folks through the door.

And who knows how long you're able to keep employees that way.

So $50 million just to employers because you're losing people due to lack of access or affordability.

And as you noted, it's going to take everyone.

And you've got a good example of a business that really thought this through and designed for that very purpose.

Tell us about that.

Yeah.

So Credit Union one has a facility here in Anchorage.

The former president CEO is a true visionary, in my opinion, and recognize that, you know, childcare is part of the business expense of of running a business.

And so they they were very fortunate.

And from the get go, they knew they were building a new facility and they decided to build a child care facility right into the headquarters there.

Those employees are credit Union one employees.

They are they are treated with the same benefits package as a regular, you know, a bank teller or all the way up to the president and CEO.

And it's been a enormously successful program for credit Union one and a fun story that the current president CEO likes to tell is one of the first kids that they had go through the program as an infant, now works at the bank.

So, you know, we always joke about how that's like true workforce development visionary program.

So in my opinion, what credit union one is doing is kind of the gold standard for employers.

Not every employer can do that, particularly for small businesses.

That's just unrealistic for them to do something like that.

But but what a what a gold star.

I mean.

Yeah, Amazing.

Well, we only have a few minutes left, but Nick, what are there are other benefits of having highly trained providers caring for children, such as identifying signs of trauma or neglect.

Talk a little bit about how important that is in in that regard.

Yeah, that's not my personal area of expertise, but I know just from working at Thread, that's incredibly important to focus on and that we have a generation of children that went through the pandemic that are expressing issues in different ways that are challenging the child providers.

So any additional support that we can give programs could could go to the mental health and well-being of children as well.

I think that's one of the top priorities for a lot of folks.

And we've been discussing child care, but our preschool is part of the consideration here, too.

Or are there provisions that would help more parents afford Head Start and preschool?

Yeah, I think there's absolutely you know, what Katie was saying, that we need everything.

You know, we need all hands on deck and some of the challenge with pre-K programs is it's only part time or it's not an annual program.

It's only during school years.

And so you still have to figure out, you know, summer plans or morning plans for parents.

And what would be ideal is if there's more programs that could offer that consistency that complement the pre-K options.

And I'd point out that, you know, Alaska is not alone in dealing with this challenge.

Other states have been going through this.

And we just saw a report from one of our national partners that talked about some of the statistics and showed Alaska lagging behind the rest of the country in program closures and the rate of program openings.

And I look at a state like North Dakota State that has similar population, similar economy.

They just put $66 million into their child care system of multiyear funding, doing the similar things that we're talking about here of increase in quality, giving stipends to teachers and providing programs that extra support.

And that's why THREAD has partnered with eight other early education and child care nonprofits around the state to for our legislative ask this year beyond what the child care task force is dealing with, which is on the policy side, we're asking for an increase to the operating budget to help support programs.

Thank you.

We'll have to leave it there.

Thanks so much to both you for being here this evening and also for the work that you're doing on behalf of all of us to help this situation.

Thanks for having us.

There's plenty of research and evidence that shows how quality preschool care for children makes a huge difference for future successful outcomes.

The Annie Casey Foundation reported last fall that more than 50% of the nation's preschool children were not in a structured learning environment.

And kids who most benefit from early learning programs are the least likely to have access to them.

Children who enter kindergarten behind their peers could struggle for years to catch up.

This isn't just a concern for families.

It's a problem for all of us who want to see healthy, happy children thrive in school life and future employment.

That's it for this edition of Alaska INSIGHT.

Visit our website, Alaska Public Forum 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 Laurie Townsend.

Good night.