By: Brent Larkin Access article
The bottom of government’s pecking order is permanently reserved for poor young kids. In Ohio, legislative leaders are obsessed with keeping them there. For months, they have been far more concerned about protecting their comfortable majority standing by trampling the rule of law over redistricting than considering what might be done to help young children trapped in a cycle of poverty made immeasurably worse by the pandemic.
And in Washington, 50 Republican senators and a couple wayward Democrats squashed a House-passed Build Back Better bill that included $270 billion for child care. Passing a separate bill containing only the child care provisions was apparently never an option.
“There’s just no question, families of young children are in crisis today,” said Shannon Jones, the tenacious former GOP legislator from southwest Ohio who now leads Groundwork Ohio, the nonprofit that champions quality early learning. “Women with children need affordable, quality health care to get back to work. Their children are suffering. We know investments in quality early learning work. We know what to do about it. What we’re lacking is the vision to do it.”