Many parts of Nevada are child care deserts.
The recent 2023 Kids Count Data Book listed Nevada as 47th in child well-being, with the lack of affordable and accessible child care a main factor for this terrible ranking.
Our lawmakers aren’t helping.
Bills which would have created an “Office of Early Childhood Systems within the governor’s office” and another which would have given tax credits to businesses offering child care benefits to workers both fizzled.
Parents scramble, missing shifts due to child care challenges, or quit their jobs altogether. Child care providers aren’t paid enough, creating less than ideal centers for those that do operate.
Our lawmakers needed to go even bolder, and introduce universal preschool attached to our existing public schools but sadly that wasn’t even in the cards.
It’s not even a blue state / red state issue anymore either as West Virginia, Alabama and Oklahoma are among the many states currently looking to provide universal preschool programs to serve all of their states’ 4-year-olds. Mississippi and Arkansas are looking to expand their early childhood education programs.
In blue states, California, Illinois and Michigan are all working aggressively toward universal pre-k for 4-year-olds as well.
Preschool scholarships do exist in Nevada, but so far it’s for families with incomes 200 percent below the poverty level. That needs to be expanded up to our middle class.
Studies show investing in early childhood education provide benefits which far outweigh costs. It also needs to be done correctly, with college educated teachers, as well as small class sizes and teaching assistants.
The federal Build Back Better Plan wanted to pick up the tab for the first three years of funding pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds but that didn’t make it out of Congress. This even though public spending on preschool hasn’t increased in two decades when inflation is factored in.
If the federal government and state both fail to deliver, the city could step in.
In Massachusetts, Cambridge is allocating $20 million by shifting funds in its budget to offer free preschool to all 4-year-olds in the city starting in the fall of 2024, by using a combination of public schools, private child care centers and in-home family child care providers.
Washington, D.C. has been building the country’s most comprehensive universal pre-K for years now, and it’s paid off with much higher test scores for students in K-12, an outcome Nevada and Reno could also benefit from. What say you Reno elected officials and voters?