Before flying out to the East Coast to raise money this week, Governor Kristi Noem cheered newly approved rules that will lower the standards for child care licensing.
That move won’t do much to improve South Dakota’s rank in child well-being. In its latest Kids Count Data Book, the Annie E. Casey Foundation says South Dakota gives kids the 23rd-best place in the nation to live and grow. We rank best on economic well-being for kids—9th in the nation—but we rank 23rd for family and community, 24th for education, and 36th for health.
The Kids Count report says a lot about what states and the feds need to do to fix the “broken child care market”. Its recommendations do not include saddling child care workers with more kids, as South Dakota’s new rules will do. Rather, the Annie E. Casey Foundation says we need to catch up with the rest of the world in offering families real support—i.e., money:
What is missing on both the supply and demand sides of the child care equation is a long-term commitment to stabilizing this critical infrastructure. As we have seen, an infusion of resources from the federal government had a direct and measurable effect on the health of the sector. The United States is distinct among advanced economies for its paltry support of early childhood care: $500 per child per year compared to a $14,000 average across countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development whose data were available. The gap is attributable in large part to a lack of guaranteed paid family leave in the United States.
Transitioning from a faltering child care system to a flourishing one will take new thinking and investment at the local, state and national levels. These ideas should be informed by listening to parents and providers themselves to learn which improvements to the system would be most beneficial to them. An executive order issued by President Biden in April 2023, aimed at expanding access, lowering costs and raising wages, could prove to be a helpful framework, but more is needed.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation encourages policymakers to take action:
Federal, state and local governments should invest more money in child care. State and local governments should maximize remaining ARPA dollars to fund needed child care services and capacity, enabling all parents to work. Congress should reauthorize and strengthen the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act and increase funding for public prekindergarten and Head Start. Agencies at every level should streamline and simplify the process of qualifying for and receiving subsidies.
Public and private leaders should work together to improve the infrastructure for home-based child care, beginning by increasing access to startup and expansion capital for new providers. Governments should review regulations to make sure they are not erecting unnecessary obstacles to opening home child care businesses and look for ways to better support those already in operation. Policymakers can also encourage the development of staffed family child care networks, which bring providers together to reduce isolation, take advantage of professional development and find help navigating complicated bureaucracies.
To help young parents, Congress should expand the federal Child Care Access Means Parents in School program, which serves student parents. Governments also can encourage the higher education and business communities to take steps such as co-locating child care at work and learning sites to reduce transportation challenges [Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kids Count Data Book, 2023.06.14, pp. 8–9].
The market isn’t helping our kids be better off. Maybe getting some unnecessary rules out of the way will help a bit, but good child-worker ratios are unnecessary; they are crucial to making sure all kids in child care get the love they need. The solution is obvious and hard: invest more money in taking care of kids.
The newest movement among staunch conservatives.
The term “trad-wife” refers to a traditional housewife who identifies as someone who prioritizes traditional gender roles, where the husband is the primary breadwinner while the wife is in charge of household chores, child-rearing, and taking care of her husband.
The trad-wife movement is a social and cultural phenomenon where women consciously choose to embrace these traditional values and live them out in their daily lives. Supporters of the movement argue that traditional gender roles lead to a healthier and more stable family dynamic, which benefits both spouses and any children in the household.
However, detractors of the trad-wife movement argue that the traditional gender roles perpetuate gender inequality and limits women’s potential. They argue that women should have the choice to decide whether they want to stay at home and be a homemaker, or pursue a career outside the home.
The percentage of “High School students not graduating on time” is 16% or one in eight students. These are all students with a high risk of dropping out of school and not completing a secondary education. Some will, at some future date, return to school and complete, some will pursue and successfully complete a GED, some will complete while in the service. The percentage who do so is Unknown. (at least I’ve never seen a number). It is a small percentage of students in this category. The 16% percentage has remarkably stayed about the same for at least 40 years. The first time I remember South Dakota launched a program to seriously address this issue, George H.W. Bush was President. The Clinton Administration collected the best practices found around the country and launched “A Nation at Risk” providing states with resources to put the practices into effect. George H. Bush got distracted and promoted the ill considered, but well intentioned, “No Child Left Behind”, which never had the required financial support. Since then, not much has happened as “School Choice” has sucked up all the oxygen.
We are 50th in this report from last year. Improvements made by the New Mexico Legislature and signed by the governor are expected to show up in the next survey. There are 23 tribal entities in New Mexico.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/education/new-mexico-again-last-in-kids-count-report-but-state-advocate-sees-progress/article_2279e0cc-09f9-11ee-b7c4-43f9756b9f96.html
Way back in 2015 I covered how researchers learned that the consumption of sugary drinks fattened and killed some 25,000 people in the United States every year.
Forty percent of cancers are caused by obesity so Coca Cola, Archer Daniels Midland, Nestle, American Crystal Sugar and Pepsico are all part of an ethnic cleansing campaign especially on reservations. Even Mexico does more for her population by taxing sugary drinks and doctors in the United Kingdom urge increased taxes on bottled sugar, too.
On the Navajo Nation a third of the people don’t have access to clean drinking water so sugared drinks purchased from dollar stores and obesity are an epidemic comorbidity.
No more government welfare, stop this silly behavior. Just relax all the rules on daycares, and allow more Home Daycare Services, allowing women to start their own home daycare like my mom did in the 1980s when she had 15 kids at her peak. She charged $60/week per child with 50% discount per each additional kid (per family). She was amazingly popular in our nieghborhood.
South Duhkota, along with every other red ruined state depend on gubmint handouts to balance budgets and finance taxcuts for the wealthy. That’s the only kind of socialism magats like.
Don’t magats molest enough little children without making it easier by relaxing standards. Do you plan to allow molesters to operate daycare centers?
$20 says South Dakota will be lower in the Kid’s Count survey next year.
Mr. Zitterich calls for killing them all and letting God sort them out. That should frighten every South Dakotan.
larry kurtz
“Forty percent of cancers are caused by obesity…”
No, the cancers were linked with, not caused by, obesity. Correlation is not causation.
What was your degree field in college?
Are you fat, Dave?
Good one, Interested party 🎈
Obesity is an issue if gender dysphoria is an issue. Pick a lane, people.
larry kurtz
Am I fat? Oh, how you project.
“Obesity is an issue if gender dysphoria is an issue. Pick a lane, people.”
Duh??
In the meantime PAL IV continues to medicate himself with his obsequious positive affirmations–and foist them on the rest of us— in his never-never land of Disneyland make-believe (not at all unlike Kristi Noem in hers, for all that), to the extent of pulling in All Mammal–much to PAL’s narcissistic satisfaction, no doubt—who on one hand invokes Noem to call in the National Guard to Rapid City and then who suddenly withdraws to a YouTube fantasyland. All documented in DFP for anyone to read.
A cast of characters drawing attention to glorify only themselves, but in fact which are mere side-show distractions from the meat of Cory’s really excellent and appreciated posts.
DaveFU ~ Are you OK?
You know who should spend more on child care? Parents.
I had a dream last night that Mr. Kurtz sent for me to NM and we built Earthships.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wgUkjbMhF18
Try boogyin down on the astral. It’s a hoot. It’s the best way to get the issues Mr. H reports here solved. Glory be to Gaia. Very well. That is all. Piss off(: jj
Good one, All Mammal ~ Thanks for being here. :0)
The high cost of daycare services has skyrocketed since 1990 when the state and local govt’s began to over regulate the industry, essentially ending Home Daycare Services provided my community group of mothers who chose to open their homes to nieghborhood children.
My mother, who had operated a home daycare from 1983 to 1989 – at one point had 15 children in our home on any given day of the week.
Growing up as a young lad myself, I can remember young Casey, Sara and Justin, Nick and Jessica, Robby and his two younger siblings, there was Jaimie, Brent, and Tracy, and a few more…
I was taught early on in life, to become a positive role model for young kids, from infants, to toddlers, to older children. At an early age, I learned how to change a diaper, feed little ones, to spending time reading to them, simply put – being that mentor all children need early in life.
One of the things my mother took pride in, was the fact she did not want to be just any ordinary daycare where parents just dropped off their children. She invested her own income into providing to the children basic understanding of Math, Reading, Writing, to Exploring Activities around town, she spent time with those children teaching them the basics of life, and that is what ‘we’ need more of today…Community Activism.
If we simply allowed Neighborhood Daycares, led my Mothers and Families in our communities, the ‘costs’ would drop incredibly low. My mother never charged more than $60/week for one child, she would discount that fee to $40 dollars if they had 2 or more children. Take that x 15 kids, and you have a weekly gross income of $750 dollars a week, couple that with the fathers gross income from his full time job, and you have yourelf a nice little ‘income level’.
My often told me, nearly 40% of her gross income remained invested back into the ‘daycare service’ itself – meaning she invested in Food, Books, Literature, Supplies, and Learning Materials.
I even remember during the summer months, my mom would get together with the other mothers, and plan for, and take the children to places like McDonalds giving them a tour of the under-goings of the business itself, that is when I discovered that the 41st Street McDonalds had a basement, and that was a excellent experience for the kids as well…they got to see a whole other side of how a business was ran.
By the time I was in 6th Grade @ Lowell Elementary School, the school that my neighborhood attended from the southside of 57th Street – for some reason, ‘we’ were not allowed to be in the J.F.K district, we had to take a bus to Lowell — however, in 6th Grade, I took a Baby Sitting Class. Yes boys did take these classes, to better learn how to take care of children. It also helped that my mom had a daycare, but it taught me so much more…
From that point, I began my own little business as a young lad, thanks to my moms connections, I began offering to babysit infants, toddlers, to children once or twice a week, and that fact alone, grounded me as a person to what I became today…a very respectful person in the community.
I guess, I am fortunate that both my parents owned small businesses, cause early on in my life, I learned how to work, and help with daily chores around the house, to helping within our businesses, that my work ethic was second to none, by the time I graduated highschool.
Yes, if you want to lower daycare costs, we need more home, family owned daycares front center.
South Dakota needs more boarding schools operated by nuns financed by Rome.
MN ranks 5th best in the nation for children. Our highest rankings are health and economic well-being. Kids here are less obese than in SD and because of MNSURE, far more have health insurance than SD kids. There are also fewer teen births here per capita in MN than SD. It’s sad to see the death rate so high for kids and teens in SD. What’s with that? Suicide?
https://assets.aecf.org/m/databook/2023-KCDB-profile-MN.pdf
MN ranks 5th best in the nation for children. Our highest rankings are health and economic well-being. Kids here are less obese than in SD because of MNSURE, far more have health insurance than SD kids. There are also fewer teen births here per capita in MN than SD. It’s sad to see the death rate so high for kids and teens in SD. What’s with that? Suicide?
https://assets.aecf.org/m/databook/2023-KCDB-profile-MN.pdf
Oh, P. Aitch- Cross your eyes a bit and SD is on the way between FL and CO….. would love to rap widjaÜ
Mr. Zitterich- I loved working for my best friend’s mom’s daycare when I turned 14. Luckily, she sounds very similar to your mom and was devoted to the quality of care we provided. She pushed me to get my CDA and continued professional credits. Home daycare is a win/win/win. Not only does it provide self employment and help alleviate affordable childcare needs, it also enables mothers of young children to actually get to raise their own children, while caring for other children at the same time. I totally agree that neighborhood daycare ladies and men provide a hub for community, safety, and fond childhood memories.
Mike Zitterich asserts, “If we simply allowed Neighborhood Daycares, like my mothers and Families in our communities, the ‘costs’ would drop incredibly low. My mother never charged more than $60/week for one child.’
However, Mike Zitterich that $60 bucks a week is $732.00 a month for one child, in today’s dollars. Is that “incredibly low”, Mike Zitterich?
Home daycare is a wonderful side hustle for some “trad-wifes”. But … the cost will never be incredibly low, Mr. Zitterich.
I worked in a large day care for 2+ years in Sioux Falls in the early 1970s. We were regulated then. Regulation is needed to ensure safe care for children. There is always an argument about how stringent regulation should be, but if it’s your kid in a daycare, you want good regulation.
I should have disclosed that I wouldn’t trust any daycare unless I was present. I had to be a hardaiss for the rules at every facility I worked in because the owners only showed up to snatch the deposit. Over 10 years ago, one child was a flat rate of $135/wk. Parents both had to work because the mother’s salary was allocated to pay for childcare and doctor’s office visits….. That $135 was just to hold your kid’s spot, regardless of hours spent at the center. Additional siblings were given a 10% discount..staff was payed less than the high school boy who mowed the grass… Come to think of it, working for daycare owners was good practice on getting screwed by an employer, now that the nostalgic memories have worn off.
If I were to create a home daycare out of my home, I would still to this day, only charge $60/week for one child, or $80/week for two children. I would then still do what my mom taught me, Invest in my ability to help take care of those children, providing basic math, reading, writing, and activities for them to learn. No funny business, no extra costs, just flat out being a mentor, role model, and a positive influence for our youth tomorrow. I am contemplating doing just that. $260/mth or $346/mth. What a steal.
There are still people like left today, just wanting to help our families tomorrow. ty
And, Mike, what full-time employment would you maintain on the side to avoid going broke?
Operating a home daycare does not cost that much sir, and maintaining no less than 15 kids at one time would generate $1,050/week. It is how you invest that money, utilizing it to expand the income that counts. Not even that, but keeping the payments at $60 or $80 per week, allows people to pay you in CASH, which has extra benefits alone….
Keep your grandchildren away from Mike Zitterich. The idea he’s using to bolster his own self esteem makes him appear like a full-blown kook.
Daycare flies in the face of family values magats who want the little lady to stay at home and raise the kids, economics be damned.
MTG spent on e afternoon showing Hunter Biden dic pics in a congressional hearing. She later sent out newsletter with same pics and no age resteriction to constituents, including children. Isn’t that a federal crime?