Today, Governor Roy Cooper toured The Learning Center of Perquimans County to emphasize the urgent need for meaningful investments in child care and early childhood education and called on the legislature to return from vacation, get to work, start Medicaid expansion and pass a budget that invests in our public schools, teachers and early childhood education.
“Early childhood education serves as the foundation for North Carolina’s success by helping young children to grow and learn while allowing parents to work and boosting our economy,” said Governor Cooper. “It’s past time for legislators to pass a budget that includes investments in high-quality child care and early childhood education to support our children, families and workforce.”
“I would like to thank Governor Cooper for understanding the importance of early childhood education,” said The Learning Center of Perquimans County CEO Arlene Yates. “The stabilization grant helped me keep highly qualified staff to maintain high-quality childcare and keep our child care facility open during the pandemic.”
“Brain development in a child’s first five years sets the stage for future success in school and life, and that is why every child needs access to high quality early care and learning teachers,” said Theresa Roedersheimer, Senior Early Childhood Policy Advisory for the DHHS Division of Child Development and Early Education. “The emergency funding that has kept our child care network standing will soon end. Now is the time to invest in strengthening our state’s early care and learning network and supporting early care and learning teachers.”
As of August 1, 2023, the NC Department of Health and Human Services has distributed a total of $932 million to more than 4,400 child care centers across the state. The Learning Center of Perquimans County received NCDHHS child care stabilization grants that provided teaching staff with wage increases, bonuses and professional development and provided needed upgrades and repairs to the center facility and equipment. Without additional funding, stabilization grants will expire in December 2023.
Republican legislators have gone weeks without passing a new state budget or allowing Medicaid expansion to begin. Every day that legislative budget negotiations stretch on past the end of the fiscal year on June 30 costs taxpayers approximately $42,000.
Both the Senate and House budgets provide no meaningful support for critical early childhood education and child care. The Senate budget fails early learners, their families and businesses by providing no state funding for child care stabilization grants or the expansion of Smart Start or NC Pre-K. The House budget proposes only minimal funds to increase the child care subsidy rate and for Smart Start.
This month, about 9,000 people will lose their Medicaid coverage who would have been able to keep it under expansion. Working North Carolinians, including many early childhood educators, fall in the coverage gap.
Established in 2007, the Learning Center of Perquimans County is a four-star child care and learning facility in Hertford.
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