Portside

Child care is both hard to find and increasingly expensive for families. The average price of licensed child care for a U.S. family is nearly $11,000 per year, which is 33 percent of the median household income for single-parent families.

As the pandemic has underscored, the practice of calling on families to pay unaffordable sums for child care while paying early educators poverty-level wages was never really sustainable, and it’s time for that to change.

We share a national ideal that everyone should have the opportunity for prosperity and success. Reclaiming this vision for our children begins with ensuring that all children start school on equal footing.