Children and advocates rally on Ohio Statehouse steps for National Day Without Child Care

Kathryn Poe, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, speaks on the Ohio Statehouse steps for National Day Without Child Care on May 13. (Photo by Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal).

A couple hundred people donning purple — some holding babies and others watching toddlers — rallied on the Statehouse steps Monday for National Day Without Child Care as chants of “Care can’t wait” and “No child care, no workforce” filled the lawn.

The CEO Project, a division of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, planned the rally which called for an equitable child care system, higher wages for child care providers, affordable child care for families and a refundable tax credit for families with children under 18 and earning up to $85,000. 

“In the state of Ohio, child care is considered a luxury, when in reality, we know that it’s absolutely a pillar of our workforce every single day and how our families go to work,” said Kathryn Poe, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio who recently co-authored Ohio’s child care crisis report. 

“They rely on the people standing here today, in order to get that work done. The people standing here are the backbone of our workforce, and they deserve dignity and respect. And the way that our state gives them that dignity and respect is by paying them a living wage.” 

Advocates also want to see specific things in next year’s state budget around child care including: 

• Moving from a Market Rate Survey model to a Cost of Care model for evaluating the child care market in Ohio. 

• Raise child care eligibility for families from 145% to 300% of the federal poverty level. 

• Increase reimbursement rates for providers to the 75th percentile. 

• Increase the amount of general revenue fund allocation in the Department of Children and Youth’s budget. 

• Enact a State Child Tax Credit 

Trina Averette has been raising Ohio families for about 26 years as a family child care provider and she had a question for those in attendance. 

“What do we need?” she shouted. 

“Affordable, accessible child care” they cried back. 

“We also need to be paid based on enrollment, not attendance,” Averette said.

Ohio families can currently enroll in Publicly Funded Child Care if their gross monthly household is at or below 145% of the federal poverty line — $37,399 annually for a family of three, according to Ohio Policy Matters child care crisis report. 

Raising child care eligibility for families to 300% of the federal poverty level — $77,460 for a family of three — would help make child care accessible to more families. 

“We know that at that number child care will not be a luxury, it will be acceptable to all Ohio families,” Poe said. “Child care is for everyone.”

Tamra Burnett has been getting child care for her two children (ages five and two) for years at Pitter Patter Learning Center in Dayton, but they started charging her once she hit a new tax bracket. 

“That’s not fair to me,” she said. “Without my child care provider, honestly, I don’t know where I would be because it’s just me and my babies. So the fact that you guys make it so hard, is not fair to me.”

Child care crisis report

The annual cost for one infant’s child care is $9,697 in Ohio — equal to $808 a month, according to the Ohio Policy Matters child care crisis report. 

“Our young adults in this state should not have to pay between having a dual income household and only sending one parent to work because they cannot afford to do so,” Poe said. 

From 2019 to 2021, the number of children benefiting from publicly funded child care in Ohio dropped from 172,585 to 143,888 children, according to the report. 

The median hourly wage for child care workers in Ohio is $13.15, according to the report. 

“How you living on that? How are you supposed to be able to take care of your babies?” asked Domanica Ede, a child care provider in Lima. 

Full-workers in Ohio need to earn $19.09 per hour to afford a 2-bedroom apartment, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO).

“But Ohio child care system, y’all are in crisis right now,” Ede said. “And Ohio does not support educators, which we are essential. Our country can’t run even one day without child care.”

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