Child Care: The Crisis Tennessee Can Solve

Policymakers who are closest to their people – whether in Washington or Tennessee – know best that the most important issues today are those that beset young families.

And the broadest manifestation of this – the need that is most savagely unaddressed with policy and funding – is the cluster of conditions we can fairly call “the child care crisis.” It’s real - as real across Tennessee as it is anywhere in America. And it has many faces…

·      Child care providers in great numbers have been closing their doors, going out of business. This is happening for a number of economic and/or regulatory reasons, but no one in authority at the state government level seems willing or capable of connecting the dots and of devising a better (read “more coordinated”) policy.

·      In this void, young parents especially in single-parent households therefore genuinely struggle to find and hold jobs, because those departed providers were essential parts of their daily domestic support systems. It can be devastating when the floor falls through like that. Frankly, I wonder if anyone in the Governor’s office, or the legislative staffs, or at the Department of Human Services even knows the true magnitude of this policy failure.

·      And the cities where this silent catastrophe is most concentrated, in turn, eventually see their broader foundations weakened. And this is happening not only in the populous cities.

All of this constitutes a daily, cynical loop - a cycle of despair - that should not be happening in any county in this time of prosperity. Yet too many of our policymakers ignore it all.

In Tennessee, as we all now clearly understand, nearly a billion dollars has either been ignored, rejected or returned in the face of this silent catastrophe. And never with a satisfying explanation for this confounding, backwards condition: this domestic disaster in thousands of Tennessee homes, on the one hand, and the availability of billions in federal dollars on the other.

This most urgent set of issues seems to get the least attention from the reigning supermajorities. Not just in broken, distracted Washington, but at our state capitol, too. The best they can do is mouth Washington talking points. Which help nobody, not even in Washington. No wonder government is so despised.

Young parents, who wake up every morning in the grip of this crisis, despair because the thing is largely silent. The legislative majorities seems to prefer ignoring it. Tennessee news media are telling the story. See this recent piece: https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2019/09/14/childcare-tennessee-workforce-child-care-needs-cost-revenue-families/2266422001/ (Note how that piece is dated last September, and realize how this child care issue is not a new one. It’s only the baffling reality of all that available funding that’s arguably new - how it sits idle as families need help.)

This is an outrageous condition across our state. Young families who struggle deserve much better than this sort of lackadaisical government.

Can no one in authority connect the dots? Do they not see the need nor hear the despair?

This is the one crisis that Tennessee can solve, if our leaders will.