Melanie Burkholder – Candidate for California State Assembly District 76
Childcare facilities and the support services which have been provided by heroic childcare workers literally have allowed vital sectors of our county to continue functioning during this unprecedented pandemic. Desperate parents who are essential workers, relied upon the partnerships they had built with their childcare provider to keep their children safe and healthy. This allowed them to keep their focus on sustaining vital sectors of our communities and permitted everyone to endure the COVID-19 challenge in much better
condition than would have been the case, had all providers closed our doors.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors took an incredible step in the right direction when deciding to distribute $25M directly to providers within the county. This harkens to my platform of increasing local control of our county funding and budget, instead of from Sacramento. Similar to other important issues such as homelessness and housing, our local elected officials are better positioned to make these decisions, eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy which comes with additional costs of time and money that fail to serve our constituents. Yet there is still more work to be done.
Public school districts who are now also providing Pre-K childcare as a service are not subject to the same licensing requirements as private providers. The real problem with the removal of Licensing from School Districts is that now there is only accountability within the inside organizations. Community Care Licensing, which is a branch of the County Department of Social Services, in the past routinely cited these school district programs and moved to shut many of them down. This double standard is not in the best interest of our children. All providers should be held to the same set of standards to ensure they are all following the same rules. Additionally, under normal circumstances, there are numerous child care assistance plans which families can take advantage of through a preschool. However, navigating this maze of differing qualifications, paperwork requirements, and other standards is extremely cumbersome. When coupled with other issues
such as disparities in reimbursement rates from these plans between public and private providers, serves as a disincentive for highly qualified individuals to enter and stay within the profession.
Local control of funding and solving these other issues in childcare are central pillars to a solid foundation of the vital services provided by these providers. I promise these issues will be central to my legislative priorities when I am elected to the state Assembly this November.
