Title
Committing to strengthening families, education, and the workforce through the exploration of early care and education accessibility for all Saint Paul families via an advisory committee.
Body
WHEREAS, Saint Paul families with young children face an inequitable and often unsolvable crisis in finding quality and affordable early care and education programs; and
WHEREAS, Minnesota is the fourth-most expensive state for child care, putting a strain on Saint Paul families and sometimes forcing parents out of the workforce; and
WHEREAS, research has shown that equitable and accessible early care and education programs are critical to addressing racial inequities and providing greater short- and long-term economic opportunity for communities of color; and
WHEREAS, 1 in 3 of Saint Paul’s 3 and 4-year-olds lives below the Federal Poverty Line; and
WHEREAS, early care and education encourages early brain development, eliminates opportunity and educational inequities, and decreases the poverty rate by making it possible for parents to participate in the workforce; and
WHEREAS, children who do not receive the critical early care and education they need to show up ready for kindergarten continue to struggle academically throughout their educational careers, exacerbating Minnesota’s worst-in-the-nation educational opportunity gap; and
WHEREAS, without options for care, many Saint Paul parents are forced to make hard decisions about work, whether it's leaving the workforce or being unable to build long-term careers; and
WHEREAS, our education systems have been historically underfunded by state and federal governments and a lack of readiness for kindergarten is a major contributor to the fact that St. Paul Public Schools spent $42 million more than it received in 2018 to fund special education programs; and
WHEREAS, American businesses lose an estimated $12.7 billion annually because of their employees' child care challenges and nationally, the cost of lost ea...
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