(1)The general assembly finds and
declares that:
(a)Colorado's economic recovery depends on its workforce having access to
stable, high-quality, and affordable child care. Supporting the ability of Colorado's
workforce to return to work during and after the COVID-19 public health emergency
is estimated to have an economic enabling effect of more than four billion four
hundred million dollars in income.
(b)The COVID-19 public health emergency has significantly impacted
Colorado's child care sector by reducing child care provider revenues while at the
same time increasing expenses. Child care provider operating costs have increased
to include additional daily cleaning, daily health monitoring, supplying personal
protective equipment for child care workers, and lower staff-to-ch
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(1) The general assembly finds and
declares that:
(a) Colorado's economic recovery depends on its workforce having access to
stable, high-quality, and affordable child care. Supporting the ability of Colorado's
workforce to return to work during and after the COVID-19 public health emergency
is estimated to have an economic enabling effect of more than four billion four
hundred million dollars in income.
(b) The COVID-19 public health emergency has significantly impacted
Colorado's child care sector by reducing child care provider revenues while at the
same time increasing expenses. Child care provider operating costs have increased
to include additional daily cleaning, daily health monitoring, supplying personal
protective equipment for child care workers, and lower staff-to-child ratios to allow
for sufficient physical distancing.
(c) In Colorado, this additional cost burden has forced ten percent of the
state's child care providers to close their doors since March 2020. Almost three-quarters of all child care providers indicate they have or will engage in layoffs,
furloughs, or pay cuts. For minority-owned or operated child care providers, this
figure is even higher. More than twenty-five percent of existing child care providers
report that closure is imminent without some kind of financial intervention.
(d) Child care providers generate revenue primarily through enrollment and
tuition fees and the business model depends on full enrollment;
(e) At every stage of the COVID-19 public health emergency, parents have
been faced with the difficult choice to pull their children from child care, either due
to health concerns or because the economic recession has impacted their ability to
afford it. Statewide, enrollment in child care for children less than five years of age
has decreased by thirty-nine percent since the COVID-19 public health emergency
began.
(f) Colorado faces other ongoing threats to the child care sector's
sustainability, including high turnover and low pay in the child care profession, as
well as the prohibitively expensive cost of opening and operating a child care
program;
(g) More than half of Coloradans live in a child care desert, where there are
more than three children less than five years of age for each single available child
care opening. Some rural areas completely lack licensed child care providers.
Statewide, Colorado faces a dramatic shortage of at least thirty-nine thousand
spots for infants and toddlers.
(h) Most child care in Colorado is owned or operated by women, and more
than forty percent of our child care workforce is composed of women of color.
Furthermore, throughout the COVID-19 public health emergency, women of color
have been more likely to be on the front lines as essential workers and are more
likely to lose their jobs.
(i) Despite women's steadily increasing labor participation rates and earning
trajectories over the past twenty-five years, the COVID-19 public health emergency
threatens to set back a generation of progress. When women exit the workforce,
they face more barriers than men do to return, and their future earning potential
and path to retirement security suffers.
(j) Women have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 public
health emergency: Almost one hundred seventy-nine thousand women left
Colorado's labor force between February and May 2020, compared to eighty-eight
thousand men. Nationally, four times as many women as men dropped out of the
labor force in September 2020 alone. The impact of this trend on the United States'
economy and the well-being of women and families is estimated to amount to
approximately sixty-four million five hundred thousand dollars in lost income and
economic activity.
(2) (a) Therefore, the general assembly finds it is a matter of statewide
concern that we take immediate action to save and protect our child care
infrastructure, including offering a wide range of child care options, including but
not limited to public and private child care centers, day care centers, school-age
child care centers, before- and after-school programs, nursery schools,
kindergartens, preschools, church day care centers, day camps, summer camps,
facilities for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and other
facilities described in section 26.5-5-303. Supporting this mixed delivery of child
care enables the state to invest in its children's futures, advance gender equity in
the home and the workplace, and rebuild an economy that works for all Coloradans.
When Colorado families have access to child care, everyone benefits.
(b) The general assembly further finds that, to assist the state's workforce in
returning to work and maintaining employment without facing the difficult choice
between working and accessing quality child care, it is critical that the state
allocate and quickly distribute funding to existing and new child care providers
throughout the state and that such actions constitute critical government services.