Childcare workers should be given same priority as teachers with COVID-19 vaccine

Outside my one-year-old’s daycare there’s a sign that says “Heroes work here.” I thought that even before the pandemic. The women she spends her days with have the patience of saints and the upper body strength of the Hulk.

The essential work child care workers perform—and the risks they have taken to do their jobs this year—have kept Kentucky’s economy from tanking the way many predicted it would. They have allowed parents to work, employers to retain staff, and children to have the messy fun that develops the skills necessary for kindergarten and beyond.

Undoubtedly, Governor Beshear has had to make tough decisions in the last year, decisions that have both saved lives and earned him unwarranted political attacks from Republicans in the legislature.

But, as a working mom of three and an advocate for early childhood care and education, I am disappointed that the Governor’s administration failed to prioritize Kentucky’s child care providers during the vaccine rollout, valuing their invaluable contributions below those of K-12 teachers.

This is not the nationwide standard. CDC guidelines recommended that child care workers be vaccinated along with K-12 educators and frontline essential workers. Kentucky veered from the guidelines and put child care workers in a lower priority group. Only four other states chose to leave child care workers out of phase 1b.

Let me be clear: In advocating for our early childhood educators, I do not diminish our K-12 employees. Since March 2020, I have watched incredible JCPS teachers deliver high-quality non-traditional instruction to my kindergartener and first grader.

I simply ask that teachers of our youngest children—chronically underpaid and without a strong labor union—are afforded the same protection.

Already, child care providers lack many of the benefits K-12 staff get, like paid sick leave and employer-sponsored health insurance. The median hourly wage for a child care worker is $9.28—just two dollars more than minimum wage. These workers have known the risks they were taking by working in-person with children, but they have little job security. Plus, there’s no such thing as virtual instruction for our youngest learners.

While the governor’s administration promises that we will enter the next phase of vaccine eligibility “soon,” that next phase, 1c, includes around one million people.

The stark line being drawn between K-12 educators and early childhood educators is more than a difference between being put in phase 1b and phase 1c. Teachers’ vaccine appointments were guaranteed and coordinated by their employers, and took place during the workday. Child care workers will be scrambling to get off-hours appointments, competing with their coworkers and a quarter of all other Kentuckians. Some worry that it could be May before child care providers are able to get the vaccine.

If the argument is that child care centers have been operating successfully without vaccinating teachers, they haven’t. More than 1,000 students and staff in child care have tested positive for COVID-19 statewide. Every time a student, parent, or teacher tests positive or learns of exposure, centers have to close classrooms, or the entire building, giving parents one night’s notice to find care—or to conjure vacation days— for up to two weeks. Capacity limits still in place create long wait lists and lost revenue.

Until we treat the teachers of our youngest children with the same appreciation and afford them the same protection as we do our K-12 teachers, we will never have the high-quality early childhood system our babies deserve.

It’s not too late to admit that it was a missed opportunity to leave child care workers off the COVID-19 vaccine priority list. Let’s show our child care providers how essential they are and care for them, as they care for our most precious cargo.

Josie Raymond is the state Representative for District 31 in Jefferson County.