Childcare licensing bill is a real head scratcher.
by Rob Roper
Vermont is suffering from an early childcare availability crisis and affordability crisis. We are suffering under crippling state taxes, particularly but not limited to property taxes. If you want to solve these issues, a hard NO vote on S.206 – An act relating to licensure of early childhood educators by the Office of Professional Regulation should be an absolute no-brainer.
Basically, what this bill would do is require anyone who wants to get into the business of taking care of other people’s children to go through a new, expensive, time consuming, tiered (levels 1-3) licensing process. This would mean paying a $125 to $275 application fee plus biannual renewal fees and completing a 120-hour course to meet the lowest tier and for the highest level you’ll need BA degree as well.
Supporters argue that this will lead to an increase in the number of people entering the childcare profession because the job will be perceived as more prestigious. I’ll just say it here that you have to be an (expletive) idiot to believe that. Since when – ever – has making anything more expensive and complicated to obtain increased overall access to that thing? Answer: never.
You’d think that legislators would have learned this lesson based on their foray into over-regulating childcare in 2015-16 that led to a 60 percent decline in the number of home-based providers by 2023 along with skyrocketing costs. Yes, the childcare crisis that we are facing today is a Montpelier-inflicted wound that they are now insisting that they’ve fixed by raising a $100 million per year payroll tax and pouring that money into childcare subsidies. Sorry, but replacing a small percentage of the childcare slots that were being provided by taxPAYING businesses with less convenient, more expensive, taxEATING government programs is not in any way shape or form a good outcome.
And there is no evidence that these regulations improved outcomes for students. If anything, falling test scores and rising mental health issues in our youngest citizens points to the opposite conclusion.
This point was made well by Senator Randy Brock (R-Franklin) on the floor:
We looked at issues like this when we talked about the professionalization of early childhood childcare, which morphed into childhood education. And even at that time and since, there have been a number of studies that have said that as defined right now and as early education is being used, it has some problems. We heard about the studies that say that early childhood education does a great job for the three- and four-year-olds, But there’s a lot of data out there. There are a number of studies out there that say the end result of that is after two or three or four years of that early education there’s a reversion in many, many cases to the same place they would have been had they not had that early education in the first place.
Brock is correct. One of the most prominent studies comes from Tennessee where they actually track the effectiveness of their pre-k program, which is very similar to Vermont’s, and the most recent conclusions from Vanderbilt University, published in January 2022 found:
Data through sixth grade from state education records showed that the children randomly assigned to attend pre-K had lower state achievement test scores in third through sixth grades than control children, with the strongest negative effects in sixth grade. A negative effect was also found for disciplinary infractions, attendance, and receipt of special education services, with null effects on retention.
As for the need for licensing and other credentials to increase the quality of early childhood education, Vermont’s own 2019 report on universal Pre-K by the VT Agency of Education, “…did not detect a difference in child outcomes or classroom quality between teachers with a BA vs. an AA, or between teachers with and without a BA.” So, the whole premise that we need this regulation to ensure “high quality” education for our toddlers is more full of you know what than those kids’ diapers.
But for the Democrats in Montpelier, the loss of convenient, affordable, effective private childcare options is a feature of their policy agenda, not a bug. Their goal is and has been for the past two decades to facilitate the hostile takeover of birth-to-five childcare by their political allies in the public-school monopoly. Their plan is to — slowly so the frog in the pot doesn’t realize it’s being boiled to death – add five new grades to the already over-expensive, underperforming K-12 system by driving private providers out of business and raising taxes – massively — to fund public school expansion. Case in point, S.206’s regulations apply only to programs “not operated by a public school.” Hmmmm.
Senator Marnie Gulick (D-Chittenden) even admitted, “So the point of regulation is not to create more slots [greater access for families] in our childcare system. The point of regulation is to make sure that the slots that are available are safely regulated, that they have appropriate educators in the room….” By “appropriate” she means members of the VTNEA. And that means at taxpayers ever increasing expense.
So, yeah, I get why every Senate Democrat voted for this anti-affordability, anti-family, anti-small business, anti-rural, giant turd of bill. But why in the name of all that’s holy did six out of thirteen Republicans vote for it?
Thanks go to the seven who voted NO with several shout outs to the ones who spoke against it on the floor: Terry Williams (R-Rutland), David Weeks (R-Rutland), Russ Ingalls (R-Essex), Chris Mattos (R-Chittenden N), Robert Norris (R-Franklin), Randy Brock (R-Franklin), and minority leader Scott Beck (R-Caledonia), who summed the situation perfectly in his vote explanation: “We’re in the middle of a workforce shortage and affordability crisis. Increasing the requirements to enter a profession will exacerbate both of these problems and further increase the cost of early childhood education. I feel that this effect will be particularly acute in rural Vermont unless I vote no.”
Absolutely! Every legislator – but Republicans especially because you got elected on the promise that you would fight for lower taxes etcetera – should be asking three questions regarding every bill you vote on: Does it raise costs? Does it raise Taxes? Does it make life more difficult for Vermonters? If it checks any one of these boxes, vote no. S.206 checks all three.