Taking a quick arts & crafts break with the preschoolers at Vancouver’s Hough Early Learning Center on April 4, 2018.

“No one is exempt from the child care crisis.”

That was the urgent message I heard all across Washington state last week as I visited child care and early learning centers to meet with parents, workers, and administrators to learn more about how the lack of high-quality, affordable child care has impacted their families and communities.

As former preschool teacher and a parent, I know how important the early years of a child’s life are, and how their development during those years can set them up for future success. And yet, as we work to build an economy that works for all — not just those at the top — too many in Congress and our state legislatures are still not focused on one of the most critical and challenging pieces of the puzzle: how to improve our outdated child care system to meet the needs of working families and an evolving 21st century economy.

So grateful to Dustin for sharing his powerful message in Richland on March 29, 2018 — seeing him and his daughters was a stark illustration of what’s a stake if we don’t start working now to solve the child care crisis.

That’s the message I heard from Dustin, a dad I met in Richland during a visit to the YMCA Early Learning Center. Dustin and his wife both have professional jobs with decent salaries, he told me, but rising child care costs for their three daughters have become almost unsustainable for their bottom line. He and his wife even briefly considered if Dustin should quit his job to become a stay-at-home dad in an effort to save more money — “a decision no family should have to make,” he told me.

Alexis, a parent I met shortly after during my visit to Lower Columbia College’s Early Learning Center in Longview, shared a similar story: an LCC employee and part-time college student, initially Alexis was able to afford child care for her 4-year-old daughter with the help of a state subsidy. However, when she transitioned from a part-time job at the college to a full-time position, her child care costs rose significantly. Alexis told me that while she still receives a child care subsidy, it is much less than she received previously — eating up more of her take-home pay than before, and effectively zeroing out her raise. She wants to keep her child in high-quality care to make sure she’s prepared to achieve when she starts Kindergarten, Alexis says, but as a single mom she’s worried that the climbing costs will become prohibitive and that her daughter will unfairly suffer the consequences.

I had the pleasure of meeting Alexis and her daughter in Longview on April 3, 2018 — hearing Alexis’ story was an additional reminder of how the current child care crisis hurts working parents trying to pursue their careers and prepare their kids for school success.

And these, along with other stories I heard during stops at centers in Vancouver and Seattle, are just the tip of the iceberg.