Ready Louisiana Coalition 2022 Legislative
Joint Statement

The Ready Louisiana Coalition — a nonpartisan, nonpolitical group of more than 115 chambers of commerce, civic organizations, businesses, and advocacy organizations representing more than 1 million people in Louisiana’s workforce — believes that investing in high-quality early care and education will prepare our youngest children for a smart start in life, enable families to be productive in the workforce, and serve as an economic engine for communities across Louisiana.

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We, the Ready Louisiana Coalition, urge the Legislature to appropriate $94 million of state funds to early care and education programs which will:

• Expand access for at-risk children, birth to age three, to receive full-time, year-round quality care;

• Improve quality for LA4 programs, which has been shown to produce positive long-term outcomes for the children who participate in it;

• Incentivize local investment in early care and education by using one-time funds to offer communities a dollar-for-dollar match on their efforts;

• Give thousands of parents the support they need to be productive members of the workforce while choosing the high-quality early care and education programs that work best for their children;

• Grow early care and education jobs needed to serve children in communities all across the state;

• Support child care businesses across Louisiana, ensuring they continue providing high-quality experiences preparing our youngest learners to enter kindergarten while their parents work, look for work, or go to school; and

• Strengthen the Louisiana economy, which loses $1.3 billion a year due to the impacts of child care breakdowns on working parents.

Louisiana needs to invest more in children.

For three years, Louisiana has experienced a budget surplus while spending less than one-half of 1% of its revenue on the early care and education of our youngest children. The legislatively created Early Childhood Care and Education Commission charted a course in 2019 with the LA B to 3 Report, finding that there were 114,000 at-risk children birth to age 3 in the state who did not have access to quality early care and education experiences, and that we needed to invest over the next decade to ensure that all Louisiana children begin kindergarten ready to succeed.
 

Investing in early care and education is one of the best investments we can make, with a return on investment of up to 13% per year. Appropriating $44 million in ongoing state funds and $50 million in one-time funds to improve preschool programs, expand access to child care assistance, and incentivize greater local investment in early care and education is the right choice for Louisiana in 2022. As we invest more in children, the state spends less on remedial education, social programs, and criminal justice in the long-term, while helping children learn and parents work today. Children only get one chance at childhood and one chance at learning the fundamentals—how to count, how to talk, how to process. Let’s take action for children now.

Louisiana workers need support to access quality child care.

Louisiana employers lose hundreds of millions every year from employee absences and turnover due to child care issues. The lack of affordable, quality early care affects not only the workforce of tomorrow, but has a substantial impact on the workforce of today in terms of worker participation and productivity. Economic studies show that states all over the country are losing hundreds of millions, if not billions, in economic activity due to child care breakdowns—and Louisiana loses $1.3 billion a year.

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The pandemic highlighted a stark reality for many Louisiana families and businesses—parents cannot go to work without access to reliable care for their children. Families are the foundation of our communities, but too many Louisiana families are struggling to pay bills and put food on the table. While two-thirds of Louisiana children have both of their parents or their single parent in the workforce, less than 15% of children under age 4 from low-income households have access to a quality, publicly funded early care and education program. We know the consequences of our growing income gap. Without accessible, affordable early care and education, our children will endure an opportunity gap as well. 

We, the Ready Louisiana Coalition, urge our leaders to invest $94 million in early care and education programs during the 2022 General Session to ensure children have the quality early learning experiences they need and to support Louisiana working families.