Child care is essential. Any working parent of young children could have told you this before the coronavirus pandemic came to Colorado. They would have been able to tell you about the panic created by an unexpected child care closure for a day, the deep affection and respect they felt for their child’s early childhood educator, their child’s notable academic and social growth as a result of their time in care, and how having had access to quality early care and education allowed them to go to work every day.   

Parent testimonials about the importance of child care, however, have largely not been met with a public policy response that treats child care as urgently necessary. For parents, providers and our economy, child care is essential. For policymakers, child care has historically been secondary to many other priorities.  

With just a couple of notable exceptions, our public investments and policy responses tell parents that they are largely on their own to find, vet, and pay for child care. Colorado is 39th among the states for per-child expenditures on preschool. And this is in a country that ranks 32nd among 37 developed countries for investment in young children. The early care and education sector relies on the sophisticated, specialized work of teachers who are overwhelmingly women, disproportionately women of color, and who are inadequately compensated for their work.  

Colorado has creatively used a combination of tax credits, child care subsidy funding, and targeted preschool dollars to support children, parents, and providers in the early care and education sector. Despite the importance of these investments (and associated need to preserve them during upcoming budget negotiations), only 28 cents of every dollar of revenue to the early care and education sector in Colorado is from public funding. In short, parents and children rely on early care and education to support both family economic prosperity and children’s school readiness, but Colorado lags in ensuring families are able to access what they need.  

There is reason to hope, however, that the coronavirus pandemic will change policy makers’ views of early care and education. Our state and national leaders have recognized what parents and providers have been saying: Without safe, accessible, high quality, affordable early care and education, our economy and our systems cannot function.  

Colorado’s initial emergency response, as well as subsequent public health executive orders by Gov. Jared Polis, recognized that child care is an essential part of our economy and is vitally important to our survival and recovery from the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and FEMA have made clear that the viability of child care programs is a precondition to opening larger segments of the economy. Congress included a modest increase in block grant funds and additional flexibility in the use of the funds in response to the crisis. Because of these actions, thousands of essential workers have been able to keep our loved ones alive, provide the nourishing food on which we all rely, and ensure our communities are healthy and safe because they have had access to child care.  

The public agrees that child care is essential to our country’s emergency and economic response to coronavirus. An amazing 82 percent of Republicans and 94 percent of Democrats support providing enough federal assistance during the crisis to ensure current child care providers are able to make payroll and pay other expenses, such as rent and utilities. It’s clear that caregiving in all sectors of society is easily taken for granted in times of stability but is vitally necessary to our ability to thrive. It’s time that the caregivers in the early care and education sector are recognized and compensated as essential. State and federal governments must prioritize policies and regulatory reforms that will ensure child care providers have the support necessary to recover stronger than before the pandemic.  

Gov. Polis and the Colorado General Assembly are about to debate a very difficult budget. They will be forced to answer a difficult question for everything: “Is this critical to our emergency response and economic recovery from COVID?” As any of the thousands of nurses, grocery workers, or other essential professionals who participated in the Emergency Child Care Collaborative can tell you: “Yes, access to child care is essential.” Any parent of young children who eagerly wants to return to work and jump-start our economy will answer the same.  

Colorado has a strong braid of services that parents need to get to work and kids need to get ready for school: Access to child care assistance, preschool slots, full-day kindergarten, and tax credits that support early care and education affordability and accessibility. We urge state and federal policy makers to stand by these existing investments and recognize early care and education services as the backbone of our economy that they are. 

Bill Jaeger is vice president of early childhood and policy initiatives, and Melissa Mares is early childhood policy fellow at the Colorado Children’s Campaign.