Stumbling Through Work
Working in education is to stumble through your everyday! We love what we do, but staff, families, policies, regulations and sometimes even the children make us quit everyday then come back the next day. Just remember, you are not in this alone.
Stumbling Through Work
Beyond Talk: When States Actually Solve the Child Care Crisis
New Mexico has just achieved what many thought impossible – implementing truly universal, free child care for all residents regardless of income. Follow this podcast to stay updated on this groundbreaking initiative and share this episode with anyone interested in how states can transform early childhood education from aspiration to reality. Visit jarekhuff.com for more resources and to connect with me directly.
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Welcome to Stumbling Through Work where educators figure shit out. I'm your host, jarek Huff, and I'm here to explore and share the complexities of our work and let you know you are not alone. Before we start, though, please follow this podcast and share episodes with others. You can find me on my website, wwwjarekhuffcom, where you can find links to my social media and where I share information and tips for educators. Now let's jump into today's episode. Hey team, welcome to another episode of Stumbling Through Work where educators figure shit out. I've actually been following this story for a little bit, and it has finally come to fruition.
Speaker 1:New Mexico is the first state to offer universal, free child care, so let's dive into it a little bit more. Beginning in November, it will be the first state in the nation to provide child care to all residents, regardless of income. Provide child care to all residents, regardless of income. The state has been working to lower child care costs since 2019, when it created the Early Childhood Education and Care Department and started to expand eligibility for universal child care. This latest change removes income eligibility requirements from the state's child care assistance program altogether and waives all family co-payments. The initiative is expected to save families $12,000 per child annually. Child care is essential to family stability, workforce preparation and New Mexico's future prosperity. By investing in universal child care, we are giving families financial relief, supporting our economy and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow and thrive.
Speaker 1:New Mexico has expanded funding for child care significantly in recent years. The Early Childhood Education and Care Department got a budget increase of $113 million in the most recent legislative session, taking its total operating budget to nearly $1 billion. The state has also established an Early Childhood Trust Fund. In 2020 that has grown from $320 million to $10 billion from tax collections on oil and gas. Those funds will be used to help fund the initiative. The governor will be requesting an additional $120 million in state funding. The news also comes with improvement for child care facilities and, potentially, raises for their staff. As part of the rollout, the state will establish a $13 million loan fund to construct and expand facilities, launch a recruitment campaign for home-based providers and incentives programs to pay staff a minimum of $18 an hour.
Speaker 1:This is really good news, because everyone keeps talking about this. Everyone keeps saying universal child care. Universal child care is kind of one of those things that everyone says and shit never happens. But kudos to New Mexico. They finally got their shit together. They started working on it years ago. I told you I was following this for a while and they're executing the shit and it starts in November. Now. A couple of things I want to point out. I did a little more further research and they are targeting growth to focus on care for infants and toddlers, low income families and children with special needs, which is amazing. So let me explain a little business practical practicalities to y'all. Business practicalities to y'all.
Speaker 1:Infants and toddlers are really hard to enroll because it's more risk being involved. The younger your children are, the smaller your ratio is. With a smaller ratio, meaning the amount of teachers compared to the amount of children that someone can watch, the number is lower and from a business aspect, you lose money With infants. From a business aspect, you never actually make any money with infants because your ratio is low. Most places are either a one to three ratio or a one to four ratio, which is really, really small. It to the normal person sounds like it's not bad, which is not, but from a financial aspect, you're losing money because the money that's coming in from the infants is so small that you're putting it right back out in your facility, your salaries, all of that.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people do not like to enroll infants and toddlers. Same thing with toddlers. Usually, toddlers are somewhere around one, depending on your area, one to two-ish, and their ratio tends to be one to five, one to six-ish, and you tend to lose money with them too. So nobody ever wants to enroll them because it actually costs more to have them than just not having them. You don't really make money in the business until you start looking at preschool pre-K, because your ratio is them. You don't really make money in the business until you start looking at preschool pre-K because your ratio is higher. You can have like a one to 12 ratio, one to 13, one to 14, one to 15,. Wherever you live at something like that, that's where you make your money at.
Speaker 1:So no one ever wants to hire I mean, no one ever makes any money from infants and toddlers, so most people just don't want to do it and because they require more care. So not only are you um having to lose money on the amount of kids that you can watch, but because the risk is higher, because those are the ones that are learning to walk, so they tend to fall more and, um, you know you're thinking about making formula and you have to make special foods for them and it just requires a little more work and a lot of people don't want to do that so they choose not to do it. So the fact that they said they're trying to put care on the infants and toddlers like good job that's all I can say is good job on that one partnering with employers and school districts to expand child care options for working families. A lot of families don't work because of not having child care, because child care is expensive. Like they say $12,000. I always tell my staff each family is worth $15,000. So if you lose an enrollment, you just lost $15,000. If you enroll somebody, that's $15,000. That's about how much you're spending when you're looking at their revenue or the amount of their tuition over the year. So they said 12, 15, we're in the same ballpark, but a lot of families that's expensive, it just is and not having any help from the state. You know, with K through 12, we always look at public education and they're able to go to school. So families can work. So this is definitely going to help them.
Speaker 1:They're launching a statewide campaign to recruit licensed and registered home providers. The home is super important. I know some amazing home providers that do the same work as any type of facility. Their ratios are smaller but they're opening their homes. Of course they're getting you know and for you all that don't know, they have to go through the exact same thing as a facility. So they have to go through health inspections and they have pop-up health inspections like we do Same thing with child care. Licensing comes in If they're part of quality rating improvement system or whatever states may call it. They do the exact same things, just in a different way, but the exact same things. And, like I said, I know some amazing home providers where some families may want that home type feeling. So that is awesome. And to support providers, reimbursement rates will rise to reflect the true cost of care. We all know that the money that the state gives us ain't shit. We all know that, but the fact that they're acknowledging it and trying to raise it, that is just super awesome.
Speaker 1:Programs that commit to paying entry-level staff a minimum of $18 per hour and offer 10 hours of care per day that okay, I'm going to continue reading 10 hours of care per day, five days a week, will receive an incentive rate 10 hours is definitely adequate because most people work eight hour days. I would imagine in you know. I mean I guess if you're working you know four tens, but most people work eight hours a day somewhere around there and you have your commute to and from work, so that works really well. 18 an hour starting out is a big jump and if that's your minimum, imagine what your people that are coming in that have qualifications, that have experience are going to get more than that. So starting 18 as your base pay so much better than the 13, 12, 10 some places are paying, and in the really poor areas, I mean some of them are still on federal minimum wage, so they're at seven dollars and fifty cents. Is that what minimum wage is federally? It's like it's seven and some change. That's sad. I'm like, first off, who the hell is living off seven dollars an hour? But conversation for another day.
Speaker 1:New Mexico estimates an additional 5,000 early childhood professionals are needed to fully achieve a universal system. Now that is where the problem comes in 5,000. We are in a field that has been attacked and criticized from a whole lot of people that don't know anything about education at all. We are one of those fields where people have the most to say that don't know anything about what we do in education, whether it's K-12 and whether it's early childhood education, k through 12 and whether it's early childhood education. We have people in power in places that are backwards thinking and don't understand developmental excuse me, that don't understand um child development at all. They just they, just they just. That's all I can say is they just it's been really hard. And then, with the cost of living continuously rising, wages has not matched that, excuse me, you all. Wages haven't been. Wages have not been staying in congruent with the cost of living has been really, really hard. So 5,000 is a lot. That's 5,000 people that need to gain more education, gain more experience in a field that has been going down since COVID. So it's going to be tough, but kudos to New Mexico for creating this system that all the other 49 states need to be looking at.
Speaker 1:This is how you do it. This is how, when you say some shit, you're going to do the shit. Just don't talk about it. Be about it. Just don't talk shit. Be the shit is how I look at it. So you know, thank you so much, new Mexico, for doing some shit that's right in the world and let's see if anyone else follows. And on that note, we'll be right back. We all want our schools or programs to be the best and although every school is different, all successful programs have the same fundamentals. Best Practices for High-Quality Preschool, afterschool and Enrichment Programs by Jarek Huff share standards to foster a high-quality program. These tips will help you put your best service forward, focusing on your children, families and communities. Best Practices for High-Quality Preschool, afterschool and Enrichment Programs by Jerick Huff is available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle. All right, we're back with asking for a friend.
Speaker 1:Is it valid to feel upset about this hand, foot and mouth issue? I'm a first-time mom with a six-month-old. I noticed some bumps on her diaper area earlier and inspected more and became super suspicious about the hand, foot and mouth, even though it wasn't a classic looking case and it looked super mild. So I called the pediatrician who said I could come in the morning or go to urgent care. I went to urgent care who confirmed it was hand, foot and mouth. I reached out to the daycare director who asked some questions and then said that one of the other babies in the infant room had a confirmed case five days ago and that it was going around. I wasn't notified of this. It was only mentioned when I messaged about my baby. I've reached out with my concerns, but am I missing something? Shouldn't I have been notified of a confirmed case and told to be on the lookout? Dear lady, yes, you should have have, and I just want to say the fact that you use the word daycare lets me know the type of trash that they are.
Speaker 1:I don't understand how you can't notify someone if something is going around, like that's just basic one-on-one respect, but there are people that just forget it's not important, because it's not their kid or whatever it is I think is trifling. I communicate to death, you know. Even if a cold is going around, I'm sending out emails saying, hey, just so you know, a couple of kids have been sick, the season's changing. I email to death because I don't want anyone ever to get something. That can go into something worse, and my first thought when I read this was do they not have to notify their health department? Or licensing Hand, foot and mouth is a hard one, though, because some places ie where I'm at you don't have to notify them for hand, foot and mouth, because it is a common thing and sometimes I think because it is common people forget especially directors, people that work in child care that that is something that's not normal to you know, new parents.
Speaker 1:But it's normal to us because it goes around a lot. And I also want to say to all parents we do not breathe this shit in a back room. People like, oh, I caught it here and they got it from here, and maybe they did, maybe they don't, I can't confirm, but what I do know is that another kid must have came in with it and then spread it to your kid. We did not make this shit up in the back. I just want to put that out there because for some reason they always think that we're back there concocting spells in the back of hand, foot and mouth. But no, lady, you are exactly right. You should have been notified. Someone should have said something to you. Shame on them and raise hell until they change their ways.
Speaker 1:Next question Daycare refuses to help us potty train. My son is going to be three in a few months. We have wanted to start potty training for a while, but daycare has continued to push it back on it. I was having trouble reading today y'all Saying that our son isn't ready. Recently we got kind of firm about it and said that we really feel like he's ready. They say emotionally he isn't because he has very strong reaction when he doesn't get his way and he can be stubborn. It has all been a work in progress on both ends. I posted a while back about him holding food in his mouth at snack time and that problem has resolved. We've been firmer with him on boundaries. That being said, it is an uphill battle and he melts down very quickly. Even with warnings and gentle redirection, he just whines and screams and is pretty relentless.
Speaker 1:All that being said, I understand the hesitance to potty train, but I also am frustrated that they won't even try. We know we have to stay at home, but I don't want it if they're not going to bother a daycare. I know he's not the one who is ready for potty training as other kids in his class get brought to the bathroom. I spoke to the director and her compromise was that we either take all of Thanksgiving break a four day weekend or all of their holiday break. They close for Christmas Eve, when the new to the new year to potty train. If he's more successful than not, they'll help, but that's all that's still months away.
Speaker 1:She also has alternative. I can choose to keep him home for a week sooner because then to try to help the process. But I can't afford to do that selfishly on a financial level. Cutting diapers out would help with help a ton. I'm just frustrated and wondering if I should just start the process and send him in underwear, kind of leaving them with no choice. Or is it better to do what they say? She wrote an edit at the bottom. I don't expect them to do all the work. I'll do my part. The problem is they don't want to assist and have said, if I start the process at home, they won't do it at daycare until they feel he is ready. It's not that I can't read you all. It's the way that she wrote it. She didn't check for errors, so it was hard as I was reading, um, as I was, I was fixing her errors. Dear lady, I will actually say that they are 95% correct from what I can read.
Speaker 1:From what you said, he's being difficult. It sounds like when they try to take him to the potty he's having a meltdown, he's having some form of problem. Ain't nobody about to deal with that? Ain't nobody about to deal with that. I know that's your baby and I know where you want him to be. And for me it was the line where you said, well, it was saved on diaper costs. Girl, that is not our issue. We are not in your pocketbook, in your purse, in your wallet. That ain't got nothing to do with us. Because what we're not going to do is sit here and be stressed and stressed to the T about your child that is screaming, melting down, falling out and everything else down on the commode because you want them to be out of diapers. We're not doing that. But the thing about that is, all jokes aside, he might not just be developmentally ready and just hearing what you said before about some of his stubbornness, it may not be stubbornness, it may be some form of a delay. And because maybe you just don't know, or the people there that don't know, if you're consistent or if you're consistently having these problems, they sound like form of delays and I know you probably don't want to hear that I would recommend early trying to get him assessed in some form of way. If this is something that continuously happens, sometimes it can be their personality, but it never hurts to just look and see. But I'm with them. I'm not going to waste my time and waste my teacher's energy and all their motivation To be worried about your child rolling on the floor Because they didn't melt it down, because they don't want to be on a potty To save you some diapers. We're not doing it, girl, I'm sorry. I'm with them on this one, yeah.
Speaker 1:Moving on to the next question, this career sucks and is not because of the children. The amount of teachers that are just straight up mean, single children out, just look to punish instead of actually teach, is astounding. Nobody knows how to talk to children. The other teachers at my center just want the whole class to sit down and shut up. They tell the children they're bad. It frustrates me so much, especially when I try to be calm and talk to the children and I get overstepped. It's just depressing. There's a difference between being firm and being mean, and most people are straight up verbally abusive to children. Thanks for letting me rant. You are exactly correct, and that is something that I think has gotten worse since COVID because a lot of the professionals are gone and so now we have all these new people. So let me break it down exactly what you said Nobody knows how to talk to children, and the sad part is somebody told me the other day that I have a way of communicating with children because I talk to them like they're people. I don't care if you're an old person, if you're a young person, if you're a middle-aged person, doesn't matter. You're still a person at the end of the day and there is a level of respect, no matter how old you are. And she's right. It is a little depressing sometimes because you're trying to do the right thing but everyone else isn't doing it, because they're just frustrated.
Speaker 1:We're not supposed to say that children are bad, but some of them are. Some of these, some of them are just bad. They just bad. That's just the only way to describe them. They are. We just live in a different time than we did 10, 10 years ago. We have much more obstacles that we have in front of us, especially with, you know, tablets raising children, friends raising children. Children raising children, tv raising children. Children raising children, tv raising children, netflix raising children. They're just so many. Rachel is that, is that homie's name on YouTube. Homie, rachel, rachel raising people, children. Gracie's Corner raising children. Everybody raising somebody's child, except for the parent. But that's just where we are, and we have to kind of acknowledge that.
Speaker 1:And sometimes the adults, the teachers, do make it frustrating that way, sitting down. I sometimes would tell teachers for them to remember to the earliest that they can, and the earliest they can remember specifically in school is usually elementary school and what they remember is walking in the halls with a bubble in their mouth. They're sitting down in desk being quiet. Those are most of our earliest memories of school and they try to replicate that. But that is not developmentally a preschool thing. They're going to be up, they're going to be moving, they're going to be going from here to there, from there to here and everywhere else in between.
Speaker 1:And it's fascinating watching people argue with children because they try to make children at that age do exactly what they want them to do and it is a losing battle. You are having an argument with a two-year-old, who is the child in the situation. When you argue with the two year old, I don't know why everyone tries to get the children to sit down because that's a form of classroom management. It's a terrible form of classroom management, but it is one, and so if I can get everybody to sit down, that means that they're listening to me. There's no one running around. They're going to do exactly what I want them to do. And notice, I said what I want them to do, not what they want to do, but what I want them to do. There are a lot of learned behaviors that have to be unlearned. So, yes, working with children is the easy part. It's the adults that suck, and it is what it is, and we have to train and do better and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1:I love sharing information with educators and program administrators. I have had so many successes, but also so many failures in my education tenure. I want leaders to know what not to do, but better than that, what to do, so I decided to write a helpful guide Best Practices for Center Program and Activity Directors. It's short and to the point. It's a compass to guide education leaders. These best practices will give you a foundation to lead your school program or organization. You can find Best Practices center program and activity directors by Jared Cuff on Amazon or Amazon Kindle.
Speaker 1:Okay, here's our interview corner for today. You asked the question have you ever been on a team where someone was not pulling their own weight? How did you handle it? And they respond with. You know. I told my boss that they ain't doing shit and I'm tired, so I took my lunch and then I called out for the next two days just to make sure that they did some work without me, because I need them to learn how to do this shit without me. Don't hire them, but you know what Some of y'all will because you hire out of desperation.
Speaker 1:The question is asking If you're going to talk shit about me behind my back. That's what the question is asking. Are you going to talk shit about the people that you work with? That is truly what the question is asking. Whenever you do this, it just makes you look so unprofessional and it really makes me wonder what are you going to say about me behind my back? I already know that I can be difficult to work with. I'm not going to say difficult, I just say it what I see it. What are you going to be saying about me and my team, my company? What are you going to be saying about us behind our back? When you go to another job interview or when you run across somebody like, just those are the things that go through my brain.
Speaker 1:What I want to hear is how you finish your part of the work and then you help someone else. Now pause, notice I use the word helped. I didn't say do the shit for them. I said help meaning you had all your stuff done, your stuff was done, your stuff was right. And then it was like let me see if you need some assistance. You need my. Do you need me to look at something for you, need me to bring you anything? Those are type of things that I want to hear, because I want to hear that you are a team player, not all about you, but an actual team player, how we all help each other, because my thing is no one does anything right all the time.
Speaker 1:You're not going to be running on all pistons all day long, you're not. There are going to be some days where you're running on two pistons and there are going to be some days where you're working on all cylinders. Those days that you're only working on one or two cylinders, that day, your pistons ain't quite moving. Guess what? Somebody's gonna pick the slack up for you and I hope that you do the same now. I didn't say do they damn work now. I never said that I didn't sit. That is not what I said. So please listen clearly when I said don't do other people's work, we just help them. Help means you have to have done something for me to aid you in that situation. But, like I said, if that person well, I didn't went and told so and so that they ain't doing shit, no, no, no, no. I don't want to hear anything about somebody tattletaling on somebody. What are we three? I can't take a tattletaler. I'd rather you, yes, own your shit and move on, but don't be tattletaling yourself on other people. We're not great to do that.
Speaker 1:But it is now policy time. And remember, something became a policy because someone did mess the shit up for all of us, and the policy is no cell phones while supervising children. Now, why is this a policy? This is a policy because Brenda is in class swiping right on her date for the night, while her class is just WWE, and all up in there the kids are hitting each other, they biting, they annihilating one another. There's full on melee, they pissing in a corner, all of this while Brenda's looking for her next meal at her nightcap tonight. Then Brenda has a nerve to look up and realize what's happening in her class and then she starts yelling at her kids, saying why y'all acting like this. That's why this is a policy.
Speaker 1:So much can happen so quickly with children. I mean, there are times where I'm watching them and they move fast. But if my site is directed at a TikTok video, let me stop lying, because I don't even have TikTok. But if my site is directed at a TikTok video, let me stop lying, because I don't even have TikTok. But if my site is directed at, I'm old. So if I'm watching an Instagram, click that's where the old people be. At. A Facebook, that's where the super old people be at. If I'm watching a reel on there, I'm not seeing what's happening in my class.
Speaker 1:And then the worst thing, if it's something that's to happen, and then you look up and the first question that your supervisor, somebody's daddy gonna ask, somebody's mama gonna ask what happened, and you just go I don't know, it just happened over there, I don't know. Or you just make some crazy shit up and then you look at the camera and it was the total opposite. Now you a liar. It creates so many problems. Do not get distracted with all of these young children. They are fast, fast, they move quick. You have to be paying attention, you have to be in it. You can't be halfway in it. You can't be watching reels and sending a giggling and sending text messages back and forth to other people trying to confirm what you're going to do this weekend. What you're going to be doing next week is looking for a new job, and I just don't like the way cell phones look in a classroom.
Speaker 1:I like for my teachers to have tablets because it just looks professional, even though, yes, technically you still can be doing things on tablets that you shouldn't be doing. But something about a cell phone, it just looks wrong. It just looks like customer service is non-existent, even though you can be doing your work and I get it a lot of times you can do work. I keep a tablet sometimes when I'm in school, just so I'm not on my phone, because I feel like you know people are like, oh, he's just sitting there on his phone all day. No, I try to do stuff on tablets, so it makes me look professional. It looks like, oh, he actually doing work and then sometimes I could just be texting random ass people on my tablet, but they don't know. It look like I'm doing studios work. So I just don't like the way that that looks.
Speaker 1:So that is why cell phones are banned in school. It just looks tacky, but because of the supervision and how quickly children move, you have to be watching them at all times. So, brenda, then you know, mess it up for all of. Well, that's all that I have for you this week. First off, good job, new Mexico, but I want y'all to not potty train children that aren't ready to be potty trained. Don't talk shit about coworkers and do not have cell phones in the classroom. And somebody please fire Brenda. Other than that, talk to y'all next week. Bye, that's it for today. If you like this episode, it would mean so much to me if you left a rating review and subscribe to the show. I'd love to hear from you. You can visit my website, which is in the show notes, to contact me, and I hope you have a great rest of your week and speak to you all soon.
