Advocates say inaction on child care will hinder economic growth
Josephine Moore, The Register-Herald, Beckley, W.Va.
5 min read
May 3—Child care advocates are frustrated by the state's lack of action in addressing child care concerns, despite many public declarations from state officials acknowledging it as a problem hindering economic growth.
"We don't have enough child care opportunities," Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday while at New River Community and Technical College's Beaver campus to present the college with checks for $3.5 million to enhance aviation, tourism and hospitality programs.
"We've got to recognize that if we want to recruit young people to this state and everything, we have to have a better way to implement something that is outrageously expensive," Justice said.
During the event at New River CTC, Justice and other state officials boasted about how the funds would provide training for the state's future workforce.
State Tourism Secretary Chelsea Ruby said the state would have 21,000 annual job openings for the next five years in the hospitality and tourism sector.
"We've been working hard to make sure that we have a pipeline of talent, that we have students who are excited about these opportunities, and that we have the training in place and an affordable way for students to get it," Ruby said.
When asked how child care inaccessibility would play into the state's ability to retain its residents for the positions or attract outsiders for the roles, Justice simply acknowledged the gravity of the issue.
"I mean, really and truly, we got a problem, and we got to address it," Justice said. "This is Houston, we got a problem. Let's do something about it. That's what we built the surpluses for."
At an event Tuesday in Oak Hill, part of a series across West Virginia to raise awareness about the state's child care crisis, West Virginia Association for Young Children Executive Director Kristy Ritz said 42 percent of children in West Virginia under the age of 6 cannot access child care due to a lack of availability.
In Raleigh County, this amounts to 1,074 children under 6 without access to child care, or about 40 percent.
This is because the county's 92 child care providers (69 family child care programs, 12 child care centers, eight school-age programs and three Head Start programs) only have the capacity to serve 1,589 of the 2,663 in that age group.
This information is from a site called Child Care Access in West Virginia: Mapping the Gap, created by Child Care Aware of America, TEAM for West Virginia Children and Alliance for Early Success. The map can be found at teamwv.org/mapping-the-gap-child-care-access-in-west-virginia.
Ritz said the number of children without access to child care in West Virginia is sure to increase without action from state legislators to continue funding for enrollment-based payments for child care subsidies, which run out Aug. 30.
Ritz said the enrollment-based payments create stability for child care providers, as opposed to the pre-COVID model, which was based on attendance.
To fund the program to the end of the '24-25 fiscal year, which runs July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, Ritz said the legislature would need to allocate $23 million.
Ritz said the Association for Young Children has planned gatherings throughout the state to highlight the realities of the child care industry and spur legislators to act.
Justice pointed his finger at legislators when asked about the inaction in addressing the child care problem.
"I sent up to the Legislature a child care tax credit that could have helped," Justice said. "Was it the answer to everything? No. And we just shot it down."
Justice's proposed child tax credit was one of 13 bills related to child care presented during West Virginia legislators' latest session. None of those bills passed, and many did not even make it out of committee.
Justice said he intends to bring back his proposed child care credit at an upcoming special session, though the date and agenda have yet to be announced.
Ritz said tax credits will do nothing for families or child care providers.
"It's really a drop in the bucket, and our fear is that they're gonna assume that that's helping and solving the problem when it's really not," Ritz said. "It's not even a Band-Aid."
Del. Eric Brooks, R-Raleigh, attended the West Virginia Association for Young Children's event in Oak Hill and said he was not surprised by anything he heard.
"It's a dire situation," Brooks said. "... We want to grow as a state, and just to not address this in a substantial way is disheartening. To me, it's the missing link as far as our economic growth goes."
Those sentiments were echoed by Jina Belcher, executive director of the New River Gorge Regional Development Authority, who spoke at the child care town hall.
She said she's seen firsthand how the lack of child care drives companies away from West Virginia.
Since 2019, Belcher said four companies that would have employed 75 or more people passed on locating to West Virginia despite being presented with an available site, investment support and a workforce, all because the child care infrastructure wasn't there.
"We lost those companies when we hit the metric of how many open, available, affordable child care spots do you have for our employees," she said. "They walked away to another state."
