The Legislation Joe Manchin Is Holding Up Would Help His State -- A Lot
West Virginia struggles with the exact problems that Biden’s spending bill aims to fix.
By Jonathan Cohn
POLITICS 09/26/2021 08:00 am ET Updated 6 hours ago
The child care center that Michelle McFall runs in Union, West Virginia, has been around for about 40 years. Just keeping it open has been something of an accomplishment.
Union sits on the state’s hilly and rural southeastern border. With a countywide poverty rate that is about 38% higher than the national average and a median income about 39% lower, almost nobody can afford to pay much for child care there. Three-quarters of the center’s kids receive government subsidies. Others could benefit from assistance but aren’t eligible, because a grandparent is their primary custodian (a consequence of the opioid epidemic).
These factors limit tuition revenue, McFall told HuffPost, and covering expenses with the center’s annual operating budget of about $200,000 has frequently been difficult. “There were many days,” she said, “when I said, ‘OK, how am I going to make payroll? How am I going to make the mortgage payments, cover the taxes?’”
Even so, McFall has managed to put together a center that meets the quality standards for the state’s Tier Two accreditation. Only a handful of providers in southern West Virginia have that status, which entitles the center to higher subsidy payments. McFall has done it with the help of dedicated workers, some of whom have special training in childhood development and have been with her for more than 10 years. She’s also set up a curriculum that, for 3- and 4-year-olds, mirrors what public schools elsewhere in the state offer as part of their pre-kindergarten programs.
There are entire counties that don’t have child care centers at all. Kelly Allen, West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/manchin-biden-west-virginia-child-care-hcbs-poverty_n_614e2e70e4b03dd7280afa11
( Policies one can win on. )
= new reply since forum marked as read
his concerns included us, citizens, having an entitlement mentality.
