Lori Fascilla is the executive director of Giraffe Laugh, a non-profit child care center that opened in Boise in 1989. She knows that child care organizations need to pay teachers and workers a livable wage, but she also knows they can’t ask families to pay more than the “astronomical” prices they’re already paying.
“We’re an industry in crisis, and that makes a crisis for families searching for child care,” Fascilla said in an interview with City Cast Boise.
Fueled by the Treasure Valley’s population growth and left in limbo by the expiration of federal COVID-19 response funds, there’s no quick fix for the child care crisis. But one major party has been inactive on this economic front: the Idaho Legislature.
Fascilla points out that Idaho is one of only four states that doesn’t fund early childhood education programs. In 2021, lawmakers approved the use of a $6 million federal grant for preschool education by one vote, torn over claims that the money would be used to indoctrinate children.
Just last year, a budget committee cut $38 million from a state budget that would have gone to care providers and child abuse prevention. Later in the session, the same committee approved the use of $28 million in federal grants, but only after one legislator commented: “We don’t help crack addicts by giving them more crack.”
Parents paying for child care are forking over costs equivalent to state school tuition, and in some cases even more. To avoid paying those college-like costs, 10% of Idaho families sacrificed a job opportunity or had to quit a job in 2020 and 2021. All the while, the people providing care — 95% of them being women — are making an average of less than $14 an hour.
Ten years ago, Idaho was one of ten states that didn’t budget for early childhood programs. Now it’s one of four, and it might eventually be the last.
