A Parent Speaks about Rep Morelle’s Childcare Affordability Agenda

My name is Jhalysa Johnson. I’m a parent leader and a mother of three. I have spent years making sure parent voices are represented in the spaces where decisions about our families are made.

When we talk about childcare, we often talk about it as a family expense. But for working parents, childcare is directly tied to our ability to earn an income in the first place.

We tell parents to work, build careers, go back to school, increase their income and create stability for their children, while sometimes ignoring how much it actually costs to make those things possible.

Without the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), at current local center-based rates, I could easily be looking at close to $1,000 a week for childcare during the summer. School closes for the summer, but our jobs don’t. I’ll spare you all of my mom rants about summer childcare and just give you the numbers: that’s around $4,000 a month. Over the course of the summer, we’re talking $9,000 or more.

So, when we talk about the cost of childcare, I need policymakers to understand that we’re not talking about an optional expense that parents can cut from the budget when things get tight. For me, paying for childcare HAS to come before rent and putting food on the table because, without it, there is no job for me to clock into.

Unfortunately, this is what it costs for many of us to remain in the workforce. Childcare is essentially our cost of admission to employment or the cover charge for having a career.

I work in mental health, supporting families and helping parents navigate systems and build stability in their homes. There is something deeply frustrating about spending my career helping other families find stability while knowing that something as simple as a childcare shortage could destabilize my own.

I’ve had mornings where I’m supposed to be getting myself ready for work and getting three kids out the door, but instead I’m on my phone trying to figure out who can take them. And when it happens enough, the worry changes. You stop just thinking, “What am I going to do today?” and start worrying, “How many times can this happen before my job stops understanding?”.

That is a very real fear for working parents. For myself. You can love your job, be good at your job and do everything you’re supposed to do, but if you don’t have reliable childcare, eventually that instability follows you into your workplace.

A childcare crisis can very quickly become an employment crisis.

We’re trusting childcare professionals with our babies. We’re asking them to educate them, feed them, nurture them, protect them and keep them safe for eight or nine hours a day so that the rest of us can participate in the workforce. Yet the system isn’t adequately supporting the very workforce that makes all of that possible. That’s not just a staffing issue. That’s a policy issue.

And that is why CCAP has been so important to mothers like me. Childcare assistance doesn’t remove my responsibility to provide for my children. It gives me the ability to do exactly that.

For me, CCAP has never represented dependence. It has helped make my independence possible.

And I also think it’s incredibly important, especially when we’re standing here asking for more investments, to acknowledge what our leaders have already gotten right.

We are incredibly blessed in Monroe County. We have local leaders and leaders across New York State who have listened to parents, who have invested in childcare assistance and who have been willing to look at this issue differently. Now, with the universal childcare pilot, we have an opportunity that families in many other communities simply don’t have.

As a parent who has personally utilized CCAP and as a parent leader who now gets to participate in policy conversations, I understand the significance of that from both sides. I am incredibly grateful for what is happening here.

But I also don’t want Monroe County to simply be the place that got lucky. I want Monroe County to be the place that proves what is possible.

Let’s look at what happens when childcare becomes truly accessible. Look at workforce retention. Look at absenteeism. Look at whether parents can accept promotions, finish degrees and increase their income. Look at family stability. Look at provider capacity and workforce retention. And look at what happens to children when their care can remain consistent. Then take that information and use it.

Because if we know something works for families in Monroe County, families shouldn’t have to cross their fingers and hope their ZIP code eventually catches up.

And I know there are more parents who would be standing here today saying exactly that. There are parents who would love the opportunity to tell Congressman Morelle and other policymakers what childcare assistance has meant for their families and where the gaps still exist. But it’s a weekday. They’re working.

I’m standing here today on my lunch hour because I’m fortunate enough to have an employer that gives me that flexibility. And there is some irony in the fact that some parents probably couldn’t make it to a press conference about childcare because they didn’t have childcare.

So, when parents aren’t in these rooms, please don’t mistake our absence for a lack of interest, ideas or support. Sometimes the people most impacted by a policy are also the people who have the least flexibility to come stand behind a microphone and talk about it.

That brings me back to what I hope happens after today:

• Continue listening to parents.
• Protect and expand childcare assistance.
• Invest in providers so they can keep their doors open. Invest in childcare professionals so they can afford to stay in this work.
• Expand capacity so assistance actually comes with an available seat.
• And remove the cliffs that can make earning more feel like a financial penalty.
• Then take what we’re learning through Monroe County’s universal childcare pilot and scale what works.

Parents have already given you our stories. We’re giving you the data. And now our community has an opportunity to give you even more evidence.

Don’t let Monroe County be the exception. Let us be the example.

And once we’ve shown what is possible, don’t make families spend another decade proving that they deserve it. Act on it.

Thank you.

Author Jhalysa Johnson, FPA-P, is a member of the Very Invested Parents (VIP) group at The Children’s Agenda. Jhalysa spoke at Congressman Joe Morelle’s 8/11 press conference announcing his Childcare Affordability Agenda.