I am primarily a stay-at-home-dad, but during the school year I teach a few telecommunications classes at Champlain College.  This semester is the first we've needed daycare, and we're very fortunate to have found a provider about four hundred yards down the road from us whose schedule fits our needs of a few hours a week while I'm on campus.

Though this is actually a new operation, the owner has been involved with child care for a long time and previously ran another type of business.  In her current capacity, she really represents a “perfect storm” of elements that are key to Vermont's economic fortunes: startup, small biz, daycare.

As I've observed before, startups and small businesses are our real jobs engines.  And finding people to watch over their precious ones is hugely important for parents who are trying to provide for their families: the absence of reliable and affordable child care is a barrier for many employees entering the workforce.

From the business perspective, there are benefits as well:

Many companies…believe that there are substantial benefits from offering child care services: 62% of respondents reported higher morale, 54% reported reduced absenteeism, 52% reported increased productivity, and 37% reported lower turnover.

That all sounds like providing childcare is a Good Thing all around.  It also turns out to have an average multiplier of 1.91 across the 50 states (Vermont is smack dab in the middle), so is clearly an economic contributer.

So I support universal access to childcare and agree with those who recommend we expand our provider licensing capacity. That, along with perhaps some sort of childcare subsidies, is an investment that will have fairly immediate positive impact by enabling the establishment of new small businesses and allowing more people to be able to work as jobs are created thanks to increased demand.

In a related vein, I like the idea of universal pre-k education for similar reasons.  Studies have shown that every dollar we invest ultimately gets us a return if anywhere between 4 and 17 dollars.  It carries myriad health, education and other social benefits and contributes greatly to economic growth.

It might seem counterintuitive since we've been bombarded with overly-simplistic analysis and rhetoric about the economy and budget, but it's clear that we must increase spending where we get the biggest bang for our buck.  It generates economic activity now and prevents more costly spending down the road.  Business people know you have to spend money to make money, and childcare/early ed is a great investment opportunity that will help us out of our current slump and secure a more prosperous future for Vermont.

todd

(x-posted at Todd for Vermont House)