HECHINGER’S “CRISIS IN CHILD CARE” SMEAR CAMPAIGN IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY KELLOGG!

A child care press conference will be held on Monday, February 8, 2016, on the second floor of the Capitol at 10:00 AM.

HECHINGER’S “CRISIS IN CHILD CARE” SMEAR CAMPAIGN IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY KELLOGG!

The Hechinger Report knew the Mississippi Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was investigating potential Disparate Impact in Mississippi’s child care quality rating system before publishing harmful, unsubstantiated child care complaints (that should not have been disclosed because Courts have ruled no public interest exists in unsubstantiated complaints) and expressed its disdain for Constitutional Due Process of Law in Sunday’s Clarion-Ledger – its partner.

Seems to me they may as well partner with the paparazzi and the National Inquirer!

Hechinger is funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation which is actively involved in the promotion and support of Mississippi’s Pre-K Collaborative and QRIS.

Up to now, it has seemed, particularly to self-employed child care providers, that the strategy (in Mississippi) of some Pre-K Collaborative supporters (including some media outlets, public policy groups and member organizations) may be to lift up their member programs (and gainful employment through associated grants) by disparaging self-employed child care providers (the majority of which are Black and/or women owned and operated Programs) through selective reporting, adverse policy, exclusion, and marginalization.

Perhaps the idea is to bully the citizenry and working parents, over time, into agreement that child care and time spent with us is not safe or where a child should be; only six hours of public Pre-K such that they would be funded to advise/provide/report can really meet a family’s work support and early learning needs.

And such strategy would be particularly necessary when Frank Porter Graham’s recent Evaluation of Mississippi’s very costly yet unavailing QRIS and measured child outcomes in the recent legislative review of the Pre-K Collaborative are scathing!

The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review from PEER: The Mississippi Legislature’s Oversight Agency, is the only external Early Learning Collaborative evaluation available to legislators because:

  • there is no child care regulatory oversight for Pre-K classrooms such as is required in other states;
  • there is no QRIS classroom requirement such as is required for Pre-K classrooms in other states so Mississippi cannot compare Pre-K “quality”;
  • the physical standards as governed by the Early Learning Guidelines are less stringent for existing Mississippi Pre-K classrooms than they are for child care classrooms and standards have recently been weakened for new construction through July 2017.

The report does not recommend increased funding or additional staff for Pre-K.

Click here to read more.

A child care press conference will be held on Monday, February 8, 2016, on the second floor of the Capitol at 10:00 AM.

This is your opportunity to unite as the small business child care industry and present the facts.

Stand up for your small business!

Come stand with us!

A message from Carol Burnet of MLICCI:

Dear Friends of Child Care,
You may have read The Hechinger Report articles in the 1/30 issue of the Clarion Ledger. If you did, you probably feel accused of harming the wellbeing of the children enrolled in your center. We are angry that the Clarion Ledger and the Hechinger Report teamed up to promulgate such accusations that harm centers like yours that do everything possible to support children and families. We want you to know that you are doing great work on behalf of your children and families, and we know that you do this work against great odds. Instead of being insulted in the state newspaper, you should be heralded as champions for our state’s low-income working families.
This type of cheap shot gets thrown at child care periodically. For example, a couple of years ago there was a terrible article in the New Republic entitled, “The Hell of American Day Care.” I wrote a response that ran in The Nation and on the Bill Moyers national blog. You can read it here. So this diversionary tactic is not new. Unfortunately, it takes the focus off the need to finance the system we all “say” we want while at the same time tarnishing all the terrific child care champions like you and making low-income working parents feel terrible about using the child care they need. This is not a helpful contribution to the many challenges we face in Mississippi about child care. We have been standing up for child care centers a very long time, and we will continue to do that. We know what a difference you make in the lives of low-income working families and we are grateful to you.
If Hechinger and the Clarion Ledger wanted to be helpful, they would be honest, not diversionary, and promote more funding for child care services to build the system. Articles like this “say” they want to see that more low-income children can be served and more centers can afford to operate and hire staff with early childhood training and equip learning centers. Everyone likes to beat up on child care while starving child care for resources. Our nation and our state have shrunk the number of children served in the child care subsidy program to a 15-year low. To pretend this is about anything other than the nation’s failure  to finance the kind of system everyone pretends to want is just that – pretending.
Help us push Mississippi to build the robust child care system we all know families need. And thanks for all you do for Mississippi’s low-income working families!
Carol Burnett, Executive Director
MS Low Income Child Care Initiative
Child Care Matters.
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MS Low-Income Child Care Initiative | 204 Walker Street | Biloxi, MS | MS | 39533

 

 

 

 



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