Early education advocates marched onto the Arkansas State Capitol to protest the recent childcare funding cuts.
The movement was joined by more than 100 people who yelled as they marched, saying, "Arkansas children deserve better, we stand strong, we stand together." They claim that childcare funding is currently under attack.
Childcare Funding Cuts
One advocate, Ramona Simpson with Building a Better World Daycare, said that they cannot simply let the current situation go by unnoticed. She said that they have an obligation to do something about it.
The protests come as childcare in the state has gone through a series of unfortunate events in the past few weeks. The first of these was when the Arkansas Department of Education told providers and families that childcare funding for the School Readiness Assistance Program (SRA) would be cut.
After that, people were forced to figure out how to get by with lower reimbursements and higher copays. The department has now delayed the start of these changes for providers; however, some families are still forced to look for new sources of funds, according to KATV.
One parent, Sarah Patron, said that a lot of the families in the state have other things they need to pay for on top of childcare. She argues that they must also contend with a "huge copay" that they were not given enough time to budget for.
Patron shared that she has a two-year-old child at home, and they are directly in line of fire for the latest funding cuts. She joined the protests at the Capitol to demand a better way to fix the situation, as a parent and a provider.
Protest at the Arkansas State Capitol
A family home childcare owner in Rosebud, Tonya Rodgers, said that they feel like they are being taken advantage of with the latest changes. She had spent more than three decades in education and now faces a 40% pay cut with less than two weeks' notice, Fox16 reported.
The changes affect the SRA, which is primarily funded through the federal Child Care Development Block Grant. The latest announcements reduced its allocation by $8 million, and officials said that more cuts are possible amid negotiations.
Another Arkansas childcare provider, Debbie Mays, was an event organizer at the latest protest at the state Capitol. She said that children deserve quality, and educators deserve the pay for that quality provided.
An attendee, Bo Hines, argued that the decision to delay one of the big changes will not help a lot. He said that it is merely a break and not a solution to the problem, as per THV11.
