Childcare Desert: local leaders gather to make change
(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Around 100 different organizations came together at the first-ever Family Friendly City Summit to address the large need for early childhood education. Together, they brainstormed realistic solutions to ensure that El Paso County no longer suffers from being a child-care desert.
“This is the first Family Friendly City Summit that we’ve had and it’s amazing to feel this energy in this room and so much shared investment around the critical nature of this work,” said President and CEO of Early Connections Learning Centers, Liz Denson.
Throughout the room, local leaders collaborated with each other to discuss not only potential solutions but also the challenges faced by the southern Colorado community in accessing childcare.
“We have a workforce issue where we have a lack of teachers and teacher’s assistants for pre-K and then childcare,” Sherrylynn Boyles, President and CEO of Joint Initiatives, said. “We have a funding issue where we don’t really have enough public investments and we have behavioral health kind of challenges where programs tell us that some of their turnover is because of behavioral or mental health issues. So, there’s a lot of areas for us to focus on.”
Throughout the morning, local leaders explained the critical need for early childhood care, highlighting the significant number of families who are without access to essential services.
“In El Paso County, we have 46,000 children under the age of five,” Denson shared. “We need an additional 16,000 slots in order to begin to even meet the need of what we think most families would want.”
To help best address the childcare crisis, it took a wide variety of local leaders to come together to share their perspectives, from government officials, nonprofits, and religious organizations, all working together.
“So, we see this is the future of our community and we want a community where everyone can thrive, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive, where no one’s turned away from services when they need them,” said CEO of Dream Centers, Matthew Ayers.
In 2022, Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program passed, where families could apply for up to 15 hours of free preschool in their year before kindergarten. However, summit leaders described how this does not solve the problem at hand.
“Universal preschool is amazing, but it’s only a certain amount of time during the day,” Denson said. “It’s not all year long. Most working families need care for longer than just a few hours a day, nine months out of the year.”
Ultimately, these eventgoers understand this is a challenging issue in the community and recognize the significance of investing both time and brainpower to enhance the future of southern Colorado.
“Early childhood is so important because it is the foundation of our lives,” Josie Watters, VP of Home Operations for Early Connections Learning Centers, said. “It’s the foundation of our future, our children are going to be the next leaders and that’s where it starts.”
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