The Power of Local Politics: How Vermont is revolutionizing child care

When I’m feeling particularly hopeless about the entire national discourse, I find it helpful to focus on local politics, where it often feels like things really can actually change, and where the people who are trying to make the changes feel approachable but, often, no less inspiring. That’s why I’m so excited to share my conversation with Aly Richards.

Aly is the CEO of Let’s Grow Kids, and they’re on a mission to ensure affordable access to high-quality child care for all Vermont families by 2025. They’re not just on a mission to do that, they’ve actually done a lot of it. In June of 2023, the Vermont Legislature made history by passing a child care bill into law, with overwhelming support from across the political spectrum. This is a comprehensive bill that supports child care through subsidies in both directions, to families and also to child care providers. It’s a first of its kind for Vermont and for the nation, and it provides a model for other states to hopefully follow.

In this conversation, we talk about grassroots mobilization, about clipboards at county fairs, about knocking on doors and how important that is. We talk about the economics of change. We give the cold, hard capitalist case for child care and for child care subsidies. We talk about the importance of the quality of care for kids from zero to five, and we talk about what it means for child care to pay for itself, which it actually does if you take a long enough perspective. Get ready to be inspired.

Listen to this episode of ParentData with Emily Oster

Here are three highlights from the conversation:

What is the main problem that Let’s Grow Kids solves?

Emily Oster:

Can you give us a big-picture overview of what was the problem that you thought about solving when you started Let’s Grow? Where’s the origin problem here?

Aly Richards:

Early childhood education and this infrastructure or lack thereof is one of those beautiful root-cause issues that when you make a positive impact on, it’s going to have this ripple effect. The big-picture problem is in Vermont and across this country, three out of five of Vermont’s youngest kids needed some form of child care out of the home and did not have access. And then those families who find what little child care is available, feel amazing about finding it, realize they’re paying 40% of their household income on it. So, it’s not accessible. There’s not nearly enough of it. It is not affordable.

If you want to flip over to those doing the work, early educators do not make a level wage. Honestly, $15 an hour without benefits is the average in Vermont before our work going up here. That just gives you a sense—it’s an absolute crisis in affordability, access, and quality of an essential infrastructure that we have ignored, for some reason, in this society. That is the problem.

Another thing is it’s a market failure. And the reason why it’s a market failure is because parents cannot afford to pay more. Early educators cannot afford to make less. There is a solution. It is not rocket science, and it’s working in Vermont.

Also, the solution, I’m just going to jump right to the punchline is —

Emily:

Yeah, tell me the punchline.

Aly:

— money. I’m sorry to say.

What do families do when they can’t access child care?

Emily:

We see this statistic talked about, or versions of the statistic talked about, all the time that people can’t access child care. What are people doing when they can’t have child care?

Aly:

They’re doing all sorts of things. I think that’s a funny part about this work, and I’ve been at Let’s Grow Kids for nine years now. What we are saying is this is not the thing that everyone needs to do. We’re saying young families have zero choices right now. That’s the real situation on the ground across this country. So people are dropping out of the workforce in droves, especially women. This is for women who choose to be in a career, who would like to be in a career that they trained for, who don’t want to lose their earning power. By the way, a labor shortage, especially in rural parts of this country like Vermont, that we cannot recover from without mobilizing especially women into the workforce. You’ve got people dropping out of the workforce.

There are kids then falling through the cracks. You have to juggle, split shifts. What does that do for a family? Think about that. You don’t see each other ever when your kids are young.

Kids are falling through the cracks, families are falling through the cracks, the stress level is through the roof. We’re losing them in the workforce. What we know about this time in a child’s development is one thing. And then there’s the economic opportunity and workforce development piece. This is the smart thing and the right thing to do everything on the spectrum from child development and beyond.

How can someone get involved in the fight for access to affordable child care?

Emily:

Okay, I want to end by you telling us a call to action. Imagine I’m a parent, and I want to make this happen. I’m a policymaker; I want to make this happen. How can we do that?

Aly:

Some people are afraid to play politics, especially in this arena, especially when you do deep policy work. But I am sorry, you can’t pass the law if you are not involved with politics.

Find out who in your community or your state is doing work in child care. Is there a coalition? Is there an organizing group? Is there an early educator association? Who is doing it? If no one’s doing it, then you can raise your voice — call your national and your local legislator and say, child care is essential infrastructure. We cannot afford to live without it in this country or in your state. And by the way, it pays for itself over a lifetime and immediately, so look into it.

I really think that’s what we have to do is that we need to elevate this issue in our communities and nationally to a fever pitch and then push it through. If you’re a business, become a policy advocate. I really think that businesses have a unique ability to do this. If you’re a parent, raise your voice. Write an op-ed, talk to your neighbors. It’s good old-fashioned organizing. We’re seeing this in the electoral work. It’s true for social issues as well.

This episode of ParentData was originally published by Emily Oster on October 24, 2024.