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It's something to consider. The lack of available childcare is THE most common reason that low-income parents have such a hard time getting jobs (lack of reliable transportation is second.) But seriously--can we have this conversation? God knows it would provide a desperately-needed service to working parents of all ages. If childcare were guaranteed by the public school system, employers would have the benefit of a vastly-increased pool of available workers, not to mention that some of them would be able to get rid of their private childcare centers, thus reducing costs. Parents would have their financial woes eased. Single people without kids would have to put up with other peoples' kids less often, because nobody would have to bring their kids to work or to lunch because the babysitter called off. And the children themselves would have the opportunity to be socialized early on in an educational environment.
This would make an ENORMOUS difference for poor and lower-middle-class parents. They'd have many more opportunities for jobs, job training, and even college, all of which are severely limited when people can't afford childcare. All too often these people are forced to leave their kids with strangers from newspaper ads or untrained teenagers from down the street, because those are the only options they can afford, and quitting their job simply is NOT a survivable possibility. Offering safe, background-checked childcare providers, for free, in a government-run school environment, on a regular schedule, could LITERALLY save the lives of small children who'd have otherwise been subject to some untrained teenager's negligence or some sneaky pedophile's babysitting spiderweb.
The one big difference between regular K-12 and an expanded system would have to be the idea of mandatory attendance. Some people prefer to stay home with their kids, or to let Grandma babysit, or maybe Mom is nursing full-time and needs the baby to stay home with her, and that's fine--attendance should not be mandatory for any child under kindergarten age. But for those parents who'd otherwise be leaving their kids with whatever teenage babysitter or shady daycare is cheap enough to afford, this could literally be a lifesaver.
I also wouldn't worry much about the effect of "government competition" on the private daycare industry, because there will always be a need for private daycare--mostly for parents who don't want their kids attending the public one, and who can afford the cost of a private alternative. Sure, the daycare facilities that are of cheaper, lesser quality will probably go under, but so long as there's an adequate public alternative, are we really going to decry the loss of the BAD daycare centers? If those people are qualified, they can always apply for jobs in the public sector, and if not, then they probably shouldn't have been working in daycare to begin with.
Sure, the socially-conservative Repukes would hate it (because they're reactionaries who hate anything that eeeeevil liberals support), but I don't think that the corporatists would necessarily hate it. Even THEY can see that increased worker reliability and productivity would be a good thing for everyone involved.
One final point I'd like to bring up is early childhood nutrition. Quite often, the children of poor parents don't get the kind of balanced nutrition they need--at least not until they're old enough to eat at school. Wouldn't it be an incredible public good to provide at least one or two solidly nutritious meals to every poor child in America, every weekday, nationwide? I grew up dirt-poor, and school breakfast and lunch were THE best meals of my day, by far, for years. Why should a poor infant or toddler have to make do with less-nutritious meals than their 6-year-old sibling gets at school? School lunches are not the most perfect meals ever, but they're a heck of a lot better than what many of these kids would otherwise get.
And to top it all off--the infrastructure for this is already in place! We'd need to make some adjustments for dealing with babies, but otherwise, we already HAVE this system. The Head Start and Early Head Start programs are already there for dealing with toddlers. If we can't find a way to make it work with babies under a year old, then at LEAST expand it to accommodate toddlers from ages 1-4.
So what do you think? Should there be an expansion of the public school system to provide OPTIONAL free childcare and early education for all children, from birth, guaranteed? What are the pros and cons that you see?
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