Missouri has a real child care crisis. Listen to Gov. Parson and fix it, lawmakers | Opinion

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has a great idea. We hope the legislators in the Missouri General Assembly agree and act.

Our child care system is in crisis, negatively affecting parents, their children, our businesses and our economy.

According to the Kansas City, Kansas, nonprofit Family Conservancy, the Kansas City region lost more than 5,000 child care spaces at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the problem continues. Today, we need an additional 62,000-plus spaces to answer the region’s enormous need for quality child care.

Bottom line: With no child care available, parents (primarily women) can’t afford to work. Meanwhile, our local businesses have too many unfilled job openings — 85,000 at last count.

It’s a national problem as well. The cost of child care continues to significantly increase, and our economy is facing $122 billion in lost earnings, productivity and revenue, according to a new report from ReadyNation, a project from the nonprofit Council for a Strong America. And that report comes on the heels of a 2021 analysis from the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, which found that in our state alone, child care gaps result in $1.35 billion in lost economic output.

With all these facts on the table, and an emerging consensus that our families and our small businesses are being held back by the gaps plaguing our state’s early education system, the time to invest in early childhood education is now. If we’re going to get our economy into a place of sustainable growth, with the kind of strength and dynamism necessary to endure the next recession, we must give Missouri parents and children the support that they need and deserve.

Because right now, the opportunity gap created by Missouri’s crumbling child care and early education system is imposing a terrible strain on working families even as it costs our businesses a fortune in lost economic activity.

The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and our Business for Education Committee applaud Gov. Parson’s call to the legislature to fund high-impact child care and early education investments across Missouri, keeping down the astronomical costs many of our families can’t afford to pay. As the governor said in his State of the State address: “Missouri businesses consistently rank the lack of child care options as a barrier to recruiting and retaining employees, and we have an opportunity to assist. Together these supports will help serve more Missouri families by enabling more child care providers to remain in business, start their business, or expand their business.”

The availability and quality of child care also affects our future workforce. Science shows that children’s brains develop the fastest during their first five years of life. They form 1 quadrillion — that’s 1,000 trillion — neuron connections by the time they’re 3 years old. In fact, if a baby’s body developed as quickly as its brain, it would weigh 170 pounds at 1 month. Quality early education pays off, reducing juvenile delinquency, addictions, school dropout rates, learning disabilities, obesity and other problems.

If we want our families and our businesses to succeed, we must make the pro-family investments that Missouri desperately needs to ensure that our parents are able to afford early child care while working to support their families.

Our opportunity to support our families and help build our businesses is now. Gov. Parson must be commended for his pro-family, pro-business agenda.

This is an issue of great importance to the KC Chamber and our Business 4 Education Committee, which I am privileged to chair. We urge the General Assembly to act quickly to plug the holes in our failing child care and early education system by passing and fully funding Gov. Parson’s plans.