Berglund is the director of Thread, a statewide nonprofit dedicated to child care referral and resources. She recently told the Sitka Chamber of Commerce that the discussion around the child care shortage was evolving. It’s well understood that quality early childhood education had a pronounced effect on a child’s development – so it was time to find solutions.
“I think we are at a tipping point,” she said. “I was saying earlier, where I feel like I no longer have to talk about brain development and why early childhood is important. We don’t have to convince people that child care is a problem. In fact, I think people are aware that it is still in crisis, but people are looking for solutions. What is the action? What do we do? How much money do we need? Where do we start? And people are ready to dig in. So the true cost of care is going to really help us with that. It’s going to give us a number. It’s going to be able to help us build more concrete solutions and a path forward.”
Listen to Stephanie Berglund’s entire presentation to the Sitka Chamber of Commerce.
Berglund said those solutions were primarily local. Although state and federal governments were beginning to address the problem, Berglund argued that momentum for change had to come from the ground up.
“It’s no secret that this is an expensive service,” said Berglund. “It’s not something we can outsource. It has to be local, it needs to be available to us – that we can walk down the street and receive the service. It’s critical infrastructure to the economy. We need investment at the local, state, and federal level, and it’s going to take all of it to make this work. And I think some people – I think you’re getting at this notion of ‘Who’s responsibility is it?’ It’s all of our responsibility. Why it’s so expensive is that parents pay the bulk of child care costs in our state, and that’s what needs to change. It’s a private pay service. We need to cover the true cost of child care, and make the business model work.”
Berglund pointed to success at the local level in communities like Juneau and Seward, where local investment was supporting the salaries of child care workers, and subsidizing the expenses of some facilities. The “true cost” of child care, she explained, wasn’t simply the price parents paid for care, but the sum total economic impact of a workforce that was strained at the seams.
At $1,000 per month per child on average, Berglund noted that child care cost more than college.
“If you think about it, we kind of have this notion that we should be saving money for college, you know, and thinking of a college savings fund,” said Berglund. “And instead, childcare is actually costing more than college, and It’s a time when families are typically at their beginning earning potential in their careers.”
Stephanie Berglund is the director Thread, statewide child care resource agency. Thread has almost completed work with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska to help develop that organization’s efforts to support child care.
Berglund spoke as part of the Sitka Chamber’s Fall Speaker Series on Sitka’s Childcare Crisis. You can find a link to Berglund’s entire presentation on our website, kcaw.org.
