Testimony of Joanna Blotner, Government Affairs Director, Regarding B25-954, the Childcare for First Responders Act of 2024, before the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety

Good Morning Committee Chair Pinto and members of the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety. My name is Joanna Blotner and I serve as the Government Affairs Director of DC Action. DC Action uses research, data, and a racial equity lens to break down barriers that stand in the way of all kids reaching their full potential. And we know that improving access to child care and high-quality early education are foundational to achieving this mission. Reliable, affordable, convenient, and high-quality early childhood education is also essential for a thriving workforce in the District.¹ It is clear that the Childcare for First Responders Act seeks to remove barriers to child care for essential District government personnel such as 911-call takers and paramedics. 

There are a number of nuanced issues that must be considered when designing parent-centered, place-based solutions to child care that this bill must explore further if it is to deliver meaningful results. Further, there are systems-level child care opportunities that this bill should consider so as to not re-invent wheels and to complement the District’s existing equity-oriented approach to child care and early education. 

Workplace-based child care design considerations: 

• This legislation seems to take a one-size-fits-all approach to first responders’ child care needs. However child care needs will vary widely based on the age of a parent’s children (infant care vs preK after care vs elementary school-age). Does the legislation envision a singular site at each agency providing care for all age range needs, or only for infant-toddler? Is there sufficient demand for care at each age band per agency? It is important for very young children, in particular, to be around children of the same age to successfully develop their social-emotional skills and be motivated toward age-appropriate developmental milestones.
  • Depending on the intended ages or age spans of care needed, there will be different staffing, curriculum/enrichment, physical classroom and outdoor play area space, nutrition, suitability and safety of neighborhood location for off-campus walks, pick-up/dropoff design needs, ground floor needs (for facilities serving infants), and other considerations that must be accounted for.

• Non-traditional hours child care remains a critical gap for families across the District and it is reasonable to assume that first responder parents have a particularly acute need for overnight care hours for children of all ages. If this assumption is true, then does this legislation contemplate the specific sleeping arrangement needs of infants versus eight year olds, for example? Infant-toddler child care settings can be expected to have cribs and cots on site but overnight sleeping needs may require more proper bed structures and sleep rooms for toddler through middle-school age children. If this bill is implemented with an eye toward building child care systems that serve all families, this legislation could serve as a useful pilot for expanding the availability of non-traditional hours care by investing in community-based child care providers near first responder worksites so they can expand their hours of operation and modernize their facilities to add proper overnight sleep rooms thereby expanding seats for both first responders and neighborhood families (more in systems-based solutions). 
• Is a singular child care site per agency convenient to parents? While OUC call-takers and dispatchers may all be centrally located, our firefighters, paramedics, and police work Districtwide. Establishing a firefighter’s child care facility at FEMS headquarters in the 4th battalion is likely not going to be convenient for workers assigned to battalion 2 in NE, especially if DC firefighters are commuting in from out of state. 
• Is it physically safe and calm to have child care services co-located at first responder worksites? The frequent loud noises of sirens could be extremely disruptive and unsettling to very young children, making classroom management more difficult for educators. 
• Does the legislation envision the District operating these child care facilities or contracting with private-community-based child care businesses? If the former, does the District have the expertise necessary to successfully operate high-quality early learning and child care programs? If the latter, what quality-rating² and contract provisions will be considered when selecting a child care operator? 
• How will the District fund expanding child care for first responders? DC Action is concerned about how this legislation might create a zero-sum-game in early education where either existing child care funds (subsidy, pay equity, etc) are diverted for first responder needs or where new or additional funds are prioritized for first responders ahead of long standing sector needs to further improve early educator compensation, increase subsidy reimbursement rates, or expand subsidy eligibility to additional lower-middle income families currently earning less than some of our more tenured first responders. 

If the demand the Council is hearing from first responders is for child care to be provided on site at their agency or station, then a necessary first step is to gain a more precise understanding of the specific needs of first responder families so services can be tailored accordingly. Do they need infant-care, toddler-care, PK-5 after school care, all of the above? What hours do they need care – overnight, afternoon/evening shift, weekend hours? And will these be consistent hours or is care needed on a more ad-hoc basis? How many hours of child care do parents need (relative to a partner’s schedule, aftercare for school-age kids, etc.), is care needed year round, or is summer the missing gap? The legislation begins to contemplate various worksite-based considerations but the nuances of child care require a more in-depth analysis. Early learning policy experts at DC Action would be happy to help the District design a comprehensive survey to better assess the child care needs of first responders. 

DC Action would also be happy to support the Council in assessing the early childhood education and child care workforce considerations that must be addressed before proceeding with plans to expand child care access for first responders. Similar to staffing challenges across the District’s first responder agencies, the early education workforce is also limited; to protect and promote hiring and retention, educators must be able to rely on competitive, stable wages that grow with the cost of living. That is why the District must commit to fully funding the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund and ensuring the Fund keeps pace with inflation, educators’ growing credentials and degrees, and compensates for experience. Without a commitment to the pay equity fund and a larger plan to aggressively recruit additional child care professionals to the District, this legislation offers an empty promise of care facilities that will go unstaffed. How first-responder child care needs could fit into the District’s existing infrastructure: 

• The child care subsidy program: Currently, District residents whose household income is less than 300% of federal poverty guidelines – equivalent to $74,580 for a family of three or $90,000 for a family of four³– are eligible for subsidized child care. Many junior staff in first responder agencies may be unaware that they qualify for vouchers for subsidized child care. Expanding awareness and working with DHS to expedite processing time for subsidy applications could help more first responders take advantage of free or deeply affordable early childhood education opportunities that are convenient to where they work or live. Additional considerations with expanding or layering onto the subsidy program:
  • To make the subsidy program more accessible to District residents who are first responders, the Council might want to consider waiving parent (covering) co-payments, exempting income earned from work as a first responder from household income calculations for subsidy eligibility, or creating categorical eligibility for the subsidy program for first responders. I will caution that all these options require additional annual appropriations for the subsidy program. Without additional funds, low income families currently participating in or eligible for the subsidy program will be displaced, and lower-middle income families will be forced to wait even longer to access the subsidy system, creating further inequities in the District’s education system.
  • Should the Council be interested in exploring expanding eligibility for the child care subsidy program to help meet the needs of first responders, it will simultaneously need to incentivize more child care providers to accept subsidy vouchers and to expand their facility capacity, where possible. Paying child care providers for the true cost of care⁴, ensuring all facilities are able to participate in both the pay equity fund and health care for child care programs (enrollment currently paused for FY25), and investing in more early education career pipeline services and scholarships will help ensure the need for additional seats is solved alongside common financial and workforce challenges providers face when scaling up.

• Access to Quality: The Office of the State Superintendent of Education currently operates a grant program to provide resources to child development facilities and out-of-school time (OST) programs to create and operate child care slots designed to meet the needs of infants, toddlers, and school-age children with disabilities. Access to Quality in the past has also provided facilities with funding for capital and operating needs to raise their quality rating. The District could use this avenue of contracting with or granting to community-based child care and OST providers to scale up their capacity to serve first responders – as well as neighborhood families – during both traditional and non-traditional hours. By investing directly in trusted community providers with child development expertise, the District could catalyze a growth in the supply of child care in every neighborhood where first responders work, which is everywhere. Like all considerations lifted up in this testimony, expanding the Access to Quality model will require additional financial investments, and the child care workforce in particular. 
• Out-of-School-Time (OST) programming: For first-responders in need of child care for older children (grades PreK-8), expanding out-of-school-time programs may be a part of the solution. Currently, there is a gap of 39,528 PreK-8 seats for afterschool programming.⁵ This number does not take into account potential seat need for non-District resident children such as those who may need to accompany a first responder parent into the city afterschool. By investing more into the grants the District provides to OST community-based organizations, we can help expand the seat capacity of our OST system to ensure working parents like first responders have more options for engaging, enriching, and free (or affordable) after school opportunities. Alternatively, the District could offer scholarships or vouchers to first responders to enroll their children in after school or weekend activities to ensure the family has enriching supervision when a parent is working.
  • Should the Council be interested in expanding OST-style programming to meet the needs of first responder families, it should start by surveying the needs and interests of parents and children to ensure resources are strategically deployed and do not create displacement effects in the District’s larger OST system. DC Action OST policy experts would be happy to assist in developing an OST interest survey for first responder families and to make connections to program providers in our DC OST Coalition.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to answering any questions.