How can early education and child care become more accessible for Arizona families?

PHOENIX — Child care and early education are essential to Arizona families for a variety of reasons, from preparing kids for school to stabilizing parents’ job situations.

However, educational programs for kids below kindergarten age can be both expensive and scarce, putting them out of reach for many.

As a result, the puzzle of preschool accessibility is high on the priority list of child development experts and policymakers who want to solve it.

Children under the age of 5 make up 5.3% of Arizona’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s approximately 379,000 kids who need some form of care during the day if their parents work.

Preschool and early child care prepares kids for the next steps in learning. Without that early boost, learning could be harder in the future, something Lori Masseur with early learning initiative Read On Arizona explained.

“We know that children who are enrolled in high-quality early learning programs have the benefit of having rich meaningful conversations with their peers … so those who are having those rich language experiences are more than likely prepared for kindergarten, they’re more than likely going to be reading on grade level by third grade,” she said.

Cost is key factor of early child care inaccessibility

The preschool inaccessibility issue is far-reaching in its impact, and when looking at the source, the conversation often begins with money.

The average cost of child care in Arizona is $15,625 dollars a year, or $1,300 dollars a month, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs says that’s something that needs to change.

“Arizonans are paying more for child care than you would pay for tuition at our state universities and state tuition, and that’s a huge burden on so many families across the state,” she said.

Angela Rabago with First Things First, an early childhood education advocacy group, added that a lack of affordable child care impacts parents, employers and the state’s economy.

“We’ve seen about 35% of working families that we’ve surveyed had to leave a job because of child care challenges. Eighty-two percent of working families report missing work at some point because of child care issues,” she said.

During the 2023-2024 school year, 6,323 Arizona children were enrolled in preschool. That’s less than 5% enrollment, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.

Rabago explained that the low enrollment numbers are due to more than just high tuition costs.

“That’s about 304,000 children in Arizona who may need child care in some form, but only about 230,000 slots exist. So right there we have a demand versus supply problem,” she said.

What are some preschool and child care accessibility solutions?

The 2023-2024 preschool enrollment data does not include children in federal Head Start programs, which are one possible solution to the child care crisis in the state. The program provides free, federally funded child care for kids up to 5 years old.

Other pre-K options with financial aid are available through certain school districts, such as Tempe Elementary School District’s Tempe PRE program for kids ages 3 and 4.

Mary Mezey, a Tempe official, said the city invests $1.5 million dollars into the program each year, with different levels of financial aid made available based on families’ income.

But the programs with financial aid have supply issues, too. Rabago explained that the free programs are funded by local and federal grants, with awards based on income. As a result, not all families qualify, and and sometimes the amount of funding doesn’t completely cover the child care services.

“We are only able to serve about 12% of the eligible children because we do not have … a regular state investment in our child care assistance program, unlike in other states where they do,” she said about Arizona’s Head Start program.

Rabago added that even when the funding does cover tuition, it only covers a small number of spots, which is why programs like Tempe PRE only have 200 seats open each year.

Hobbs said when it comes to solutions, dropping the price of child care must be in the cards.

“We also have funding proposed to cut the child care wait list, and we need to do more to build the workforce so that there’s more quality child care available around the state,” she explained.

How financial assistance makes a difference

Though free and assistance-based programs have supply issues, having options that already provide financial assistance does help with affordability. Mezey said 80% of the families in the Tempe PRE program are receiving financial help.

“In a recent survey, 53% of parents reported that they were able to go back to work as a result of Tempe PRE. Thirty-five percent of families noted that they’ve been able to work additional hours because their child is in that full-day preschool option,” she said.

Masseur says the solution comes down to money any way you look at it, whether its lowering costs or increasing funding. She said increasing government spending for child care would be a critical investment for future workers, the current economy and the expansion of existing programs.

“We’ve seen investments come into the state through the preschool development grant or the … (surge) of federal relief dollars that really allowed us to increase access to quality early learning programs here in the state, but without ongoing significant investments in that area, moving that needle on the number of programs that are able to access those quality efforts becomes difficult,” she said.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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