WRITE ALL THE STATE OF MISSOURI LEGISLATORS

Dear Honorable Representatives/Senators,

Here are some of my thoughts on the Amendment Jill Schupp inserted into this bill. In the future I would like to see Committee's put together to come up with solutions in daycare that exist of REAL Daycare Operators throughout the State of Missouri, as we have the best understanding of the needs to police our own profession. Schupp has been trying to get her Bill on this passed for a decade, to no avail as it has many issues that affect Family and Taxes that go unresolved.

Please see the following ideas to work for the betterment of childcare.

Typically, Family Home Daycares sprout up for several reasons.

• Parents fear the public daycares but cannot afford to stay at home with their kids, so they take on a few others for revenue to supplement the family budget. College loans are a huge issue for today’s young adults.

• There are health needs within the immediate family or elderly care is needed and they must stop working but need income.

• Parents kids are being kicked out of public daycares, (this typically surrounds the hard to handle children). So, they start their own or seek home daycares.

• Previous Teachers fed up with the system – decide to get out of teaching however income needs prevent them from going backwards in salary (public childcare employees are poorly paid) so they start their own daycare.

• Some choose daycare as a career.

• Consistency in care is important for children and public daycares do not offer One childcare individual for the term of their child’s infant to kindergarten needs.

• Or they have more kids needing daycare than they can afford themselves.

The Cons of Schupp’s Amendment:

1. Punishes all Licensed included, for the failures of the few typically non-licensed.

2. Has government interfering in the family unit.

3. Forces grandparents to charge their children for daycare or lose income.

4. Eliminates hard sought out, trusted daycare for families, strains the infant sitters even further as a result.

5. Eliminates revenue from daycare family budgets with only 3 weeks’ notice. Ex: I charge $120/week, with 21 weeks of lost revenue due to the loss of one already licensed spot, immediately my family loses $2520. That cannot be recouped but is needed to pay bills. $6000.00 lost to the budget for a year, and this is only for One grandchild.

6. Increases daycare costs to daycare customer families, giving them less money to spend on family needs, thus increases the cost to family budgets as well. Ex: If cost of daycare goes up $30 to recoup losses, then parents will lose an additional $1530.00 out of their yearly budgets. So much for tax reforms, huh?

7. Does not consider affordability of daycare for parents in varying diverse regions. A Ladue daycare may charge $500/ week, St Charles daycare $250, a North City Daycare $50-$75 to avoid need for state subsidies.

8. Thus, Forces Daycare costs and pricing to increase, to recoup future losses

9. Ultimately costs ALL of the taxpayer’s additional money as State Subsidies are based on the average costs of daycare in the state.

10. In cases of Non-Licensed Daycares, it limits the number of children families can give birth to, and care for as well as limits their grandparents from watching more than 6 of their grandkids. Sure, it doesn’t say that but - (you see if your neighbor calls you into the state for watching too many kids…they will have to investigate and act accordingly) how embarrassing would that be?

11. Gives Non-licensed daycares 2 additional children to care for, without licensing/training.

12. Because this amendment was hidden into your sex trafficking bill, it was not on anyone’s radar to even have a chance to use our voices.

13. Here is the REAL kicker – When the State Subsidies go up and the available monies for this program do not – the levels of income to qualify will be raised so that less parents will qualify and needy parents will be kicked off of the program… not because they did anything wrong or different, but because a Bill 397 passed with an amendment that was not thought out thoroughly.

14. If one of the greater causes of accidental death is due to unlicensed, under trained daycare workers do you really give them 2 extra kids to care for? And again, the understaffed caseworker issue is still not addressed, need more eyes on this.

15. This I was just made aware of, as I do not employ people: Staff is being terminated to make up for the revenue losses as well. What else will be sacrificed by daycare centers to make up the revenue losses?

Suggestions for amending the amendment:

1. Licensed Daycare’s – put the language back in about related not counting in the numbers allowed, reducing it to children in the home (to include adopted/step) and whatever other words may be necessary to cover the parent’s children and grandparents. So, no 9th degree relationships just parents and grandparents. Evidenced through Birth Certificates/Adoption etc./gov paperwork to be accepted.

2. Unlicensed Daycares- Limit set at their own kids/grandkids (same proof needed) plus SPACE LIMITATION. Ex: licensed gets one kid per 35sq ft inside and 75sq ft outside. So, if you had space for 10 and 8 are your own kids, they could watch 2. Or put a max of 4 nonfamily members that they could watch. Right now, they are rewarded with 2 extra kids. If the purpose is to discourage non-licensed, then it should be reduced to 2 nonfamily members.

3. Add a hefty fine for failure to license, if found above these numbers to deter. But unless you find a way to ensure every person is informed, I suggest a warning fine 1st, then a heftier one.

4. You could set this as a state standard that all smaller governments within, must follow and update their codes to. This would put more eyes on the solution to the original problem of unlicensed daycares through code enforcement of muni’s and county’s, etc. as well as give law enforcement a law to enforce that is not currently on their radar as a responsibility. Currently only the understaffed State workers have eyes on this issue and there are not enough of them to make a difference. The smaller governments of our state - are the eyes of the state for law enforcement and should be utilized as such.

The ratio on Daycare Inspectors to Providers is NOT enough.

Amy Poelker 10/9/19

http://www.stlmuni.org/contact-state-representatives/

http://www.stlmuni.org/contact-state-senators/