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Tara Williams is the executive director of the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children and a former early childhood teacher. Deborah Arcaro is the chair of the Family Child Care Association of Maine and a former child care business owner.
Everyone we talk to understands the importance of child care. We have reached a moment of public awareness and public consensus, where we see the inherent value of child care, and there is a feeling of excitement and possibility. For the first time, we might truly value our child care infrastructure with substantial public investment and transformative systems change.
Here’s the rub. Most people don’t understand how the child care sector works and don’t have training in child development. With the best of intentions, we can implement services that are not best for children and not supportive of the adults who care for them. As we expand our early childhood programming, let’s start with an agreement to not make changes that have detrimental effects on children, their families or early childhood professionals.
There are three key ways to ensure that we first do no harm.
First, make sure all types of care are equitably valued for their importance in children’s healthy development and learning. This includes family child care programs, Head Starts, child care centers, YMCAs, before- and after-school programs and family, friend and neighbor care. We need to know that whether a program is called a child care, day care, preschool or nursery school, it is a place of both care and learning. We also need to understand that child care programs are sole-proprietorships, LLCs and for-profit and nonprofit corporations. We have more than 1,500 small businesses and organizations providing child care services across Maine.
Second, make sure that child care owners, directors, teachers and staff lead decision making in local and state policy changes. Child care professionals have always partnered with families in the places where infants, toddlers and preschoolers learn and grow. We must lean into and center their expertise and lived experience. Our child care entrepreneurs, small-business owners and early educators are the workforce behind the workforce in Maine. They can guide us in shaping the best path forward for early learning and care in our communities.
Third, utilize knowledge of child development to structure early childhood programming. This is about knowing how children learn and grow and what is best for children at each age and stage. For example, we know that young children need to develop strong attachments with caring adults to thrive. We can support this by minimizing transitions during their day and providing consistency in who cares for them and supports their early learning. We also know that young children learn best through hands-on activities, exploration, and nurturing interactions. We can support this by weaving together literacy, math, science, social studies and the arts with long blocks of time for them to play, move and discover. The art of early childhood education is in observing, documenting and guiding the learning that takes place when we follow the children’s lead.
These three tenets, equitably valuing all types of child care, centering the expertise of early childhood professionals and utilizing knowledge of child development, are of particular importance in the expansion of public prekindergarten. In all the excitement around growing public options for families in the U.S., we haven’t been prioritizing the programs where preschoolers already are before creating new locations. Some states have built an entire new preschool infrastructure in school districts, leaving out the programs where preschool had always existed. Elementary schools make great partners and we benefit from working together. We can create a universal publicly funded preschool system through family child care, Head Starts, YMCAs and child care centers, who can welcome elementary schools as their new partners in providing care and education for young children.
There is an urgent need for sustainable, substantial federal and state investments to support children, families, child care businesses and early educators. The proposed federal investments in child care and prek will allow us to create transformational change. Together, we can develop a world class early care and education system in Maine.