Let’s act fast to address the looming child care gap

There is a looming child care gap. When it hits, this gap will threaten childhood well-being and educational progress, exacerbate the inequities in our community, and damage our economy by impairing the productivity of parent workers. The good news is this problem can be solved — but we have to act fast.

The Anchorage School District announced that, consistent with its School Start Risk Level Response Plan and in light of the 14-day average of 30 new COVID-19 cases per day, it will begin school online this coming school year. Affluent parents are busy now arranging homeschooling “pods” in order to share the responsibilities of child care for school-aged kids. But what will other working parents do with their kids? I’ve heard from more than one single parent that they can work or they can home-school their kid, but they can’t do both. Even if the ASD is able to move to a medium-high risk level, school will only be two days per week, leaving kids without care three days per week. Attendance at school is compulsory up to age 16 in Alaska, and our civic life is built around kids being in care while parents are working. To date, no one has announced a comprehensive solution for Anchorage’s younger students and those with special needs for the non-in-person school days. The child care gap is even worse for teachers, our new essential workers who will be on the front line — some of whom are also parents to younger students.

We can learn from other communities. The city of San Francisco recently announced the creation of “learning hubs,” converting recreation facilities, libraries and community centers into spaces where young students can go each day to access their digital classwork and the social interactions that virtual schooling cannot provide. San Francisco is aiming to open 40 hubs to serve 6,000 students by mid-September, a month after virtual school will begin.

Here, we cannot say we lack suitable public spaces; sadly, there are vacant public and private buildings across town that can be thoughtfully converted into child care licensed facilities. We should not lack the personnel; 70,000 Alaskans have filed for unemployment insurance and several substitute teachers will be idled as a result of the lack of in-person instruction. Now more than ever, we need great child care workers in our community to help our youth and families through these challenging times. Child care is a great career — those interested in perhaps one day being a teacher will find working in child care a great first step. The only question is, do we lack the will to provide a safe alternative for those who need it the most but may be least able to provide it for themselves?

We must meet this need, both for altruistic reasons as well as for reasons of economic self-preservation. Although learning hubs would certainly alleviate parental and student misery (parents got minimal sleep this spring as they worked and home-schooled simultaneously), they will also mitigate the damage to our flagging economy. Our economic resilience depends on the productivity of employees who come to work clear-eyed, focused and well-rested. This is simply not possible when those workers are simultaneously home schooling their kids.

Finally, and perhaps controversially, the death of George Floyd and the newfound attention paid to the implications of systemic racism make this all the more urgent. If we have learned anything, it is that a policy that disproportionately affects lower-income families likely also disproportionately affects our neighbors who are indigenous or of color. This is what systemic racism looks like. Let’s work together to mitigate this prospective harm, and let’s do it quickly.

Moira Smith is an Anchorage attorney.

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