Hello, Mr. Chairman and members of the DC Council. My name is Martine Sadarangani Gordon. I am a Ward 3 resident and a parent of two DC Public Schools students. I am also the Coalition Director for Under 3 DC.
Under 3 DC is a coalition of parents with young children, early educators, home visitors, pediatricians, and other community members who are working together toward a high quality and equitable early childhood system for DC.
My asks on behalf of DC’s working families with young children include: 1) to increase the child care subsidy budget by at least $20 million to ensure the families currently enrolled can continue to receive their child care subsidy at their current rate; 2) to increase funding for the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund and HealthCare4ChildCare program by $10 million to account for program growth and ensure DC can retain the very high return on our investment in the program; 3) protect full funding for Home Visiting grants administered by DC Health, Children and Families Services Administration, and the Department of Health Care Finance; 4) to restore the District’s paid leave insurance program and universal paid leave (UPL) tax that funds it in full; and 5) that DC take more time to plan any potential changes to public health insurance coverage including Medicaid, CHIP, the Immigrant Children’s Program, and the Alliance to ensure no residents lose critical healthcare services.
In my testimony that follows, I will address the needs of families with young children in DC to outline how each of these requests are critical to ensure families can continue to live and work in the District.
Child Care and Related Family Support Needs
As you know, the cost of child care is expensive throughout the country. The U.S. Department of Labor has even called child care an “almost prohibitive expensive” (Source: https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense#:~:text=NEW%20DATA%3A%20Childcare%20costs%20remain%20an%20almost%20prohibitive%20expense,-Filed%20in&text=U.S.%20families%20spend%20between%208.9,for%20which%20data%20are%20available.), and in DC that is most certainly true. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute found that in DC, child care is more expensive than rent for many families, costing those paying for infant care more than $25,000 per year. (Source: https://www.epi.org/press/updated-resource-calculates-the-cost-of-child-care-in-every-state-child-care-is-more-expensive-than-public-college-tuition-in-38-states-and-washington-d-c/#:~:text=Child%20care%20for%20one%20infant,offered%20in%20the%20fact%20sheets.)
At the same time, we know that working families need access to quality and affordable child care so that they can continue to live and work in the District, and the District economy needs child care to ensure a stable and productive workforce. Under 3 DC’s own research shows that a lack of access to affordable child care costs DC parents $252 million per year in lost wages, DC employers $79 million in lost productivity and turnover, and the District government $64 million per year in lost tax revenue. (Source: https://under3dc.org/wp-content/uploads/Child-Care-Economic-Impact-Report-U3DC-2024.pdf) And the national organization First Five Years Fund estimates the economic impact of infant-toddler child care challenges on DC’s economy each year is more than $769 million. (Source: https://www.ffyf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/2024-District-of-Columbia-State-Fact-Sheet.pdf)
That is hundreds of millions of dollars that we are collectively missing out on. But, the good news is that we have programs that allow DC to invest in families and early care and education programs. These programs allow us to keep money in working parents’ wallets and create multiplier impacts across the District’s economy. Two of those programs are child care subsidies and the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund.
The child care subsidy program reduces child care costs for working families who need it most – families with household incomes below 300% of the federal poverty line (which is about $90,000/year for a family of four). By ensuring that the close to 6,800 families currently enrolled in the program are able to continue to receive that benefit, we also ensure stronger financial stability for the entire child care system in DC.
Child care providers, including centers and family child care programs rely on a mix of private pay tuition, child care subsidy payments, and other public and private investments just to stay afloat. Any cut to child care subsidies, therefore, will have dire ripple effects throughout DC’s entire child care ecosystem. Of course, families who need subsidies but cannot get it will be personally impacted with financial hardships and potentially locked out of the workforce Additionally, if early learning programs see cuts to their child care subsidy reimbursements, they ultimately will have to choose between raising private pay tuition rates or closing all together. As I noted above, the cost of private pay tuition for child care is already too high. The system cannot handle further increases in costs or a reduction of supply.
Similarly, full funding for the Pay Equity Fund and HealthCare4ChildCare also stabilize the supply of quality early care and education services for DC. DC is currently the envy of the rest of the country as the United States continues to see a nation-wide child care workforce shortage. Anecdotally, advocates in Virginia and Maryland have expressed that they wish their states had a similar fund because they are losing qualified early educators to DC. That is reinforced by the impressive returns DC has seen from this program.
Since the Pay Equity Fund’s launch in 2022, higher pay for DC’s early educators – pay that is commensurate with their credentials – has generated a 23% return on investment to the District, boosted the early educator workforce by 7%, and improved the quality rating of early learning programs by 30% according to agency oversight responses. Notably, the Pay Equity Fund has accomplished all this without passing on costs to parents. (Source: https://www.mathematica.org/projects/washington-dc-early-childhood-educator-pay-equity-fund-impact-and-cost-effectiveness-study). A program that is successfully growing the size and caliber of the very workforce that makes all other work possible deserves growing investments.
Finally, while not part of Under 3 DC’s official policy platform, I would be remiss if I did not point out the critical interplay among child care access, healthy early childhood development, and paid leave benefits. Like child care access, paid leave does not only benefit individual DC working parents, it also supports DC’s economy as a whole. Together, DC’s child care system and paid leave benefit program attract families to live and work in the District. These programs work together to support families with young children. When parents lack sufficient time to recover from medical issues or lack time to be home with a new child, they are less likely to re-enter the workforce altogether. If they do return to their jobs before they are healthy enough to do so, they put their own health at risk and hurt their employer’s bottomline through diminished productivity. I support the testimony of individuals from Jews United for Justice, First Shift Justice Project, and others who have provided more detailed recommendations on restoring paid leave in the budget.
Family Health Needs
The Under 3 DC coalition is working toward an equitable early childhood system. That includes family supports, early education and health supports. To this end, I’d like to also note the needs of critical family health supports, specifically home visiting and healthcare investments.
Despite its many proven benefits, local funding for home visiting has long been insufficient, uneven, and vulnerable to arbitrary cuts, such as the $118,000 cut to DC Health’s programs this year and the $400,000 removal of recurring grant funds from the Child and Family Services Administration’s budget. This unpredictability for home visiting operators has fostered workforce retention challenges and undermined programmatic stability and quality for DC families with some of the greatest needs.
Home visiting is a relatively small investment compared to the District’s larger budget, but it has an outsized impact. Home visiting services are proven to help prevent low-weight and preterm births, interactions with the child welfare system, K-12 grade repetition and special education intervention, criminal justice system involvement, and intimate partner violence.
At the same time, and as you know, when children have access to Medicaid and/or the Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) they are less likely to develop a chronic health condition, they go to the hospital less frequently, and their education benefits. (Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5034870/). For adults, including parents, Medicaid expansion over the years has decreased mortality by 6% and reduced emergency room visits. (Source: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1162/ajhe_a_00080). Research also shows that access to Medicaid and/or CHIP reduces medical debt and keeps families out of poverty. (Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5034870/). The health and home visiting services providers who are members of the Under 3 DC Coalition see these impacts first hand with their patients and families they serve every day.
It is stating the obvious, but I will say it anyway: when parents are healthy, they can better provide for their families, and when children are healthy, they are more likely to grow up into healthy adults. That is why DC has a long history of supporting its residents to ensure they have access to health insurance. I will admit to being confused as to the full impacts of the changes to health program funding proposed in the current budget under consideration, but I am not the only one. Given the level of confusion and the potential for DC residents to lose some or all levels of their health insurance benefits, either during a transition from Medicaid coverage to a Basic Health Program, transitioning the nearly 6,000 children currently enrolled in the Immigrant Children’s Program to the Alliance, and/or moving adults off of the Alliance, these decisions and how to implement them need more planning and public transparency before being codified into law.
I know the Council does not take the health of our residents lightly, and I implore you to remove these proposed changes at this time so that you and others have the appropriate ability to plan together and avoid the loss of health coverage for thousands of residents.
Recommended Solutions
I will close by recognizing the difficult situation we all find ourselves in this budget season. I have heard individual DC leaders remind us that, given our current revenue projections, we need to prioritize what we “need to have” and not what would be “nice to have”. I think you would agree that everything I have outlined above – child care, paid leave, and healthcare access – are things that DC families need.
I would refer you to testimony submissions by my colleagues with the Just Recovery Campaign, of which Under 3 DC is a member, for recommendations on how DC could responsibly raise revenue during this time to help better meet DC’s needs.