Source:
CNN (CNN)The owner of a Colorado day care that allegedly used a "false wall" to hide 26 toddlers in a basement has been arrested and charged, court documents show.
Carla M. Faith, 58, was arrested Monday and faces charges related to child abuse and attempting to influence a public servant, according to the documents. Her bond was set at $3,000.
The charges stem from November, when officers went to Play Mountain Place in Colorado Springs after complaints about overcrowding. There, they found 26 children younger than 3 with two adults behind the false wall.
The day care had a licensed capacity of six children, according to May 2019 data on the Colorado Department of Human Services website.
Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/25/us/colorado-day-care-false-wall-trnd/index.html
OK, so let's talk about child day care and early childhood education.
First of all, not excusing Faith, there is a serious policy issue here. We must ask if it was ONLY her greed that caused her to over fill her daycare home? or was it pressure from market demand?
Consider these four facts:
A. There are not enough childcare centers. There are not enough licensed daycare homes.
B. Childcare workers are paid minimum wage, generally, and owners of child care licensed homes are capped so income is capped.
C. It costs literally an arm and a leg to put your kids in a childcare home and if you're middle class there's NO subsidy.
D. Colorado Springs is an urban area, and there are problems; there literally isn't any childcare in most rural areas. None.
So, while we recoil in horror at Trump and his disgusting antics, and hear the Republicans positively CROW about how GREAT the economy is, be mindful that because of the structure of our child care system and the fact that it doesn't seem to matter much to policy makers, the REALLY IMPORTANT people who provide this care for our pre-school age kids earn driddle squat and struggle to make ends meet every month.
Early childhood education (pre-school) again because of no subsidies, is stratospherically priced - only about 6% of kids even go because it is so expensive.
And we all know teachers in K-12 don't make nearly enough.
But, hey, sports stars earn kazillions of bucks and we have a brand new shiny space force!