Sb Committee Comes to order. Good afternoon. And welcome to our witnesses and audience members. Let me thank you all of you, for coming, and for participating in this subcommittee hearing. Right here. I think were all pretty familiar with this new virtual setting. But because this is our First Virtual hearing of this subcommittee, i want to take a moment to provide members with a few reminders before we begin. We will proceed in the same fashion as this committee always has. We will begin with Opening Statements by the chair and Ranking Member. Followed by testimony from our witnesses, and an opportunity for every member to inquire for five minutes. We will dispense with our practice of the given and instead go in order of seniority for questioning alternating between minority and majority members. Members are advised that the clerk may mute those who are not speaking in order to limit background noise and feedback. However, all members are responsible for unmuting themselves when they are recognized for their fiveminutes or when they otherwise seek recognition. I want to thank you all for your patience as we navigate this new technology in order to continue serving our country together in this great time of need. With that, i welcome you to the subcommittee hearing on the child care crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. Evidence events of the past week have shown the need for policies to strengthen child wellbeing, as thousands of youth all across america march, demonstrated and some even looted as they challenged our systems of social educational and economic justice. Child care powers both family economic wellbeing and our National Economic growth. Prior to the pandemic, federal funding only provided child care for one in six eligible children. Parents in communities weighed down by poverty and systemic racism experienced a shortage of highquality, affordable child care. Today we face a Global Pandemic that has disproportionately infected and killed people in these same struggling communities. And the child care crisis we had before it is now much, much worse. Now parents have lost millions of additional child care options, and providers confront new costs to keep children and workers safe. Risking financial losses for businesses already operating on the knifes edge of profitability. In illinois, nearly half of all previously available child care slots are at risk of disappearing altogether. This, due to the pandemic. And 60 of child care programs are fully closed. In chicago, i must say, we did not have much to lose. Prepandemic, five out of six chicago children lived in a child care deficit where children outnumbered child care slots by 31 or more. As states lift stayathome orders and other economic restrictions, more parents are returning to work, if they can. Our affordable child care is a cornerstone of parents ability to work and move up the economic ladder. I know essential workers who couldnt work, because they had no one to watch their children. I know parents who have lost so much income, that they cant afford child care in order to work. As a black man living in chicago, i agreed that far too many funerals for friends lost to covid19, and i know far too many parents who legitimately fear for their familys health when they return to work. And when their children go back to school. When i see the devastation caused by this pandemic and the barriers to working due to child care, i am offended by claims that people are refusing to work because of their availability of supplemental employment benefit. This is simplistic, insulting and refuted showing that lowage workers stay at work and return to work even when faced with unsafe working conditions, and inadequate wages. As our nation grapples with structural racism, policymakers need to enact policies that support workers that address the barriers they face. Taking care not to penalize communities weighed down by poverty and racism. Big challenges call for big solutions. Now is the time for this committee and this congress to take meaningful action to ensure that highquality child care is available for all who need it. I look forward to working with Ranking Member, and the members of our subcommittee. My good friend bobby scott who chairs the education and labor committee, and chairwoman nia lloyd as the operations committee, to use all levels at our disposal. To grow out of work forward, we must invest in families and in our child care infrastructure. Both the people and the we need to make sure that parents can afford quality child care. That the people who provide it earn living wages. That is the right thing for our economy, the right thing for our children, and the right way to give everyone a fair shot at america. Finally, i ask you now to submit to the record a new report by the university of illinois system about how child care is foundational for economic recovery. I will now recognize Ranking Member for an open statement. Representative . Thank you, chairman davis. I appreciate you holding this hearing today on child care and the coronavirus crisis. I share your interest in this topic and believe child care is key to making americas recovery even stronger. I want to thank you all witnesses for taking time to join us as well. Millions of americans want to return to work and in order to do so they must be able to rely on Child Care Providers to keep their children safe and healthy throughout the work day. Even before this crisis, we knew there were challenges to ensuring americans had access to affordable, highquality child care. The pandemic is only exacerbated concerns with the child Care Industry hit hard by this crisis. Many providers which largely operate on breakeven margins couldnt remain closed making it even harder for families to find child care. Democrats and republicans have consistently worked together to address these issues. In the last five Years Congress doubled funding for the child care and Development Block grant that included billions of dollars in muchneeded support to providers and essential workers in the c. A. R. E. S. Act. With states safely reopening, Child Care Providers now face many new challenges. These include restrictions on group and class sizes. Social distancing guidelines and other health and safety protocols that are necessary to prevent the spread of covid19. These new requirements and ongoing concerns the pandemic presents are making it hard for providers to recover and maintain a business. Yesterday i had the privilege talking to four Child Care Center directors in my district in ind. Child care is deemed an essential service. All providers i caulked ed tta gone above and beyond to keep their businesses afloat so their children and teachers are in a safe environment. One provider spent 20,000 to stock her two centers with face masks, cleaning materials and individual sets of learning materials for children. Another provider needed to put in a new handwashing sink and another was hiring a cleaning service to take some of the burden off of her own staff. They talked about the need to hire quality teachers so they can have smaller class sizes and Consumer Education so parents can feel comfortable bringing their kids back. In my district the Manufacturing Industry relies heavily on these providers and its a battle every day to keep their doors open. Thankfully these and many other Child Care Providers in indiana are receiving extra support through grant awards from Early Learning indiana as part of its, quote unquote, come back stronger campaign, which was launched in early may with the support of a 15 million grant from the lily endowment. Since then early indiana was awarde award ed 155 workers in hiring teachers. From the beginning of this crisis indiana acted to support working families using funds from the c. A. R. E. S. Act to provide Rapid Response grants directly to Child Care Providers. I have tremendous respect for those that stepped up and worked hard for the pandemic and thrilled to have dr. Sullivan here with us today to talk about those initiatives. Traditionally in these discussions the needs of Child Care Centers take center stage but i also want to highlight small homebased providers. Many Family Child Care homes played and Important Role throughout the crisis remaining open to provide child care for essential workers, particularly those working nontraditional hours. Family child care arrangements are often more affordable and provide flexibility for working parents. Many parents prefer Family Child Care because it offers smaller scale, mixed age care, that allows for close and Lasting Bonds with the caregiver. As we continue to deal with this Public Health emergency, we should ensure the availability of child care settings that serve small groups of children, which can be a reassuring for parents concerned about covid19 exposure. These Family Child Care providers also, i have just that Small Business that our economic recovery will depend on. I hope we can Work Together to find ways to support and strengthen child care for working families. If a large portion of our nations providers are forced to permanently shut down, parents and all industries will be unable to go back to work, significantly slowing our own economic recovery. Child care is exactly the type of smart investment we should be prioritizing as we safely reopen and rebuild americas economy. I look forward to our discussion, mr. Chairman, and with that i yield back. Thank you, representative mularsky. Without objection, all Opening Statements will be made a part of the record. And now we turn to our witnesses. Let me thank you to our distinguished witnesses for taking the time to appear before us today to discuss this very important issue. First, i have the honor of welcoming mr. Rasheed malimalic senior policy analyst at the center for American Progress who focused on child care. Next we have ms. Regina mckristen, an essential worker and a chicago area at a chicago area hospital and mother of a 2 1 2yearold daughter. Thank you, ms. Mckristen. Dr. Aaliyah samuel, who is executive Vice President for Government Affairs and partnership at the northwest evaluation association, and is an expert in race equity and child development. And finally, i would recognize the Ranking Member, ms. Mulosky, to introduce our fourth witness. Thank you again, mr. Chairman. Im pleased to introduce dr. Jennifer sullivan served secretary of indiana social Family Administration since january 2017. Also held positions of Deputy State Health commissioner and director for Health Outcomes at the Indiana State Department of health and also a professor of clinical emergency medicine and pediatrics at Indiana University school of medicine. Shes been dedicated to building effective and efficient delivery of health care and social services to hoosiers and is committed to Strategic Alignment across government and the private sector to improve Health Outcomes and fill unmet social needs. I think we will benefit from her unique perspective on these challenges. Dr. Sullivan, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, representative mularsky. Thank you to all of you. Each of your statements will be made a part of the record in its entirety, and i would ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes or less to help you with that time, please keep an eye on the clock. That shouldi isbe pinned to you screen. I will notify you when your time has expired, and its my pleasure now to ask mr. Malicic if you would proceed. Thank you, chairman davis. Ranking member, and members of the sb committee. Thank you for inviting me to testify today. Im here to discuss our nations child care infrastructure i believe determining whether our country can successfully recover from this unprecedented economic and Public Health crisis. The u. S. Invests a small ax are gdp sorry. In child care than almost every other developed economy in the world. Perhaps it should not surprise us, then, licensed child care in this country is often prohibitively expensive and supply shortages resulting in long waiting lists. Over the past years my colleagues and i studied these shortages by constructing the first and only National Database of licensed Child Care Providers. By combining statelevel data gathered from Public Record requests and publicly available databases our team identified the location and capacity of more than 235,000 Child Care Providers. Including both homebased child care and Child Care Centers. By comparing these child care locations with the nearby population of Young Children, weve been able to study what we call child care deserts, area where is there is not enough near by licensed child care to serve the families that may need it. Based on our analysis of child care supply across every u. S. Krens intract census tract, 51 of every child live in a child care desert. This week we lost and important update to our website which features interactive maps show at the neighborhood level where these childhood deserts existed prior to the pandemic. After studying these came to the conclusions. Child care deserts primarily impact low and middleincome families. Predominantly hispanic neighborhoods are very likely to be child care deserts, many, not all, predominantly black neighborhoods lack sufficient child care. Also, rural areas have very little licensed child care and tend to rely more on homebased providers, whose numbers have been in decline over of the past decade. Finally, its vitally important to highlight effects child care deserts can have on gender equity in the labor force. The availability of child care is closely tied to Maternal Labor force participation. In fact, our polling has found mothers say access to more reliable, affordable child care would allow them to take steps to increase their earnings and advance their careers. The signs we see from the industry are worrying. Onethird lost their jobs in april and those jobs may not come back without a public investment. Revenues have been decimated due to lower enrollment rile operating costs associated with reopening increased dramatically. Without new federal funds to support the physical infrastructure of child care facilities, we should expect diminished child care supply, which could inhibit our economic recovery. To this point, the center for American Progress just yesterday published and open letter to policymakers signed by 100 prominent economists who stated that an effective government response to the child care crisis will play a vital role in the reopening of workplaces. My sincere concern is that without major, immediate and ongoing investments in our child care infrastructure we could very well lose as much as half of our countrys child Care Capacity. Ultimately, we could be left with a child care system that is only accessible for the privileged, limiting access for children to whom the benefits of child care are the greatest. We risk economically disastrous outcomes as women take on more and more unpaid child care duties and put their careers on hold or reduce hours worked. An immediate influx of dedicated Child Care Funding is needed to stabilize the industry. But the coronavirus pandemic exposed longstanding issues in. Child care market. A longTerm Investment such as an increase in mandatory funding for the child care entitlement to states would allow states to make much needed improvements and moving forward we need policies that do three things. One increase compensation and provide professional development for early child hood educators. Two build a supply of quality child care options available near home or work that provide care when families need it. And three reduce costs for families so that all children can access Early Learning opportunities regardless of their households. Thank you again for inviting me to this hearing and i look forward to answering your questions. Thank you very much, mr. Malick, and now id like to ask ms. Mckristen, what i call an essential worker, and they have been so much a part of our effort to navigate the pandemic that we all face. Ms. Mckristen, would you proceed . You need to be unmuted. Okay. Can you hear me . Yes. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you, chairman davis as well as Ranking Member for holding this important hearing. My name is regina mckristin and i am a c. T. Technologist at a hospital just outside of chicago. Im also the primary caregiver for my 2 1 2yearold daughter. Start of the pandemic i was forced between working my full schedule and caring for my child. My employer actually had hours for me to work but high to reduce my schedule down to just one day per week because of the lack of child care. Day care, chil