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Sen. Casey discusses skyrocketing costs of child care during local visit

Beaver County Times - 4/23/2019

April 22-- Apr. 22--CENTER TWP. -- U.S. Sen. Bob Casey visited with students and families Monday at Todd Lane Elementary School in an effort to bring awareness to the skyrocketing costs of child care.

Specifically, Casey, D-Scranton, came to talk about two bills he supports in the Senate.

The first bill, of which he is a co-sponsor, is called the Child Care for Working Families Act. It would ensure that no family pays more than 7 percent of their household income for child care if that family earns less than 150 percent of their state's median income.

That's a big deal, Casey said, because the average cost of full-time, center-based day care in Pennsylvania is $11,560 for an infant and $8,712 for a 4-year-old. Those numbers represent about 12 percent of the annual income for married couples in Pennsylvania, and nearly 46 percent of annual income for single parents.

"That's only the average," Casey said about child-care costs. "That means some are paying a hell of a lot higher than that."

Particularly alarming for the three-term senator is the fact that a single parent could be spending nearly half of his or her income on child care, Casey said.

"You can't expect a parent to pay half their income and expect it to work," he said.

The second Senate bill Casey came to promote is called the Child Care and Dependent Credit Enhancement Act, of which he is the primary sponsor. The bill would make the Child Care Tax Credit available to families with incomes under $120,000.

During the 60-minute roundtable discussion, Casey was joined at Todd Lane by local child-care professionals and working mothers who discussed their struggles within the current system. During the discussion, he heard how child-care costs have increased by 25 percent over the past decade, which is having very real ramifications today.

For Carla Kosanovich, the principal of Center Grange Primary School, children coming into kindergarten are less prepared than they used to be, and she thinks it's due in part because parents can't afford preschool and other early learning programs for their children.

"That puts a tax on our system," she said about students who are not prepared for kindergarten.

The senator also heard from people like Shannon Carroll, a local parent who used to make slightly above minimum wage, but still didn't qualify for financial assistance for her two boys. She said child-care costs per month were more than $740, which was significantly more than her rent, and that she nearly had to move back in with her mother to make ends meet.

Tami Ozegovich, director of Head Start/Early Head Start of Beaver County, said she has heard similar stories time and again, and called it a "catch-22" for parents who want to work, but can't afford child care to be able to work.

After the brief roundtable discussion, Casey took time to read to children at Todd Lane, before meeting with the three Beaver County Commissioners, all of whom were in attendance Monday.

After the event, Central Valley Area School District Superintendent Nick Perry said it was an easy decision to host Casey after the senator's team reached out to inquire about it.

"Whenever the topic is about finding affordable early childhood education and preschool, we felt it was appropriate to host this discussion because we're a school district," he said. "It's a discussion we certainly want to support."

Casey has held similar roundtable discussions across Pennsylvania in the last several weeks.

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(c)2019 the Beaver County Times (Beaver, Pa.)

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