109 HCON 395 IH: Supporting the goals and ideas of a U.S. House of Representatives 2006-04-27 text/xml EN Pursuant to Title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code, this file is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain.

IV 109th CONGRESS 2d Session H. CON. RES. 395 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES April 27, 2006 Mrs. McCarthy (for herself, Mr. Platts, Mr. George Miller of California, Ms. DeLauro, Mr. Towns, Mr. Wexler, Ms. Kilpatrick of Michigan, Mr. Kennedy of Rhode Island, Mr. Lewis of Georgia, Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Maloney, Mr. Hinojosa, Ms. Woolsey, Mr. Owens, Mr. Kildee, Mr. Davis of Illinois, Mr. Farr, Mr. Moore of Kansas, Ms. Eshoo, Mr. Grijalva, and Ms. Lee) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Education and the Workforce CONCURRENT RESOLUTION Supporting the goals and ideas of a National Child Care Worthy Wage Day.

Whereas approximately 13 million children are in non-parental care during part or all of the day while their parents work; Whereas the early care and education industry employs more than 2 million workers; Whereas these workers indirectly add $580 billion to the economy by enabling millions of parents to perform their own jobs; Whereas the average salary of early care and education workers is $18,060 per year, and only one third have health insurance and even fewer have a pension plan; Whereas the quality of early care and education programs is directly linked to the quality of early childhood educators and such low salaries make it difficult to attract high quality early childhood educators; Whereas the turnover rate of early childhood program staff is roughly 30 percent per year because of low wages and lack of benefits, making it difficult to retain high quality educators who have the consistent, caring relationships with young children that are important to children’s development; Whereas, the compensation of early childhood program staff must be commensurate with the importance of the job of helping our Nation’s young children develop their social, emotional, physical and intellectual skills and be ready for school; Whereas providing adequate compensation to early childhood program staff should not be achieved by further burdening parents with higher fees, and therefore requires additional public as well as private resources so that quality care and education are accessible to all families; and Whereas the Center for the Child Care Workforce, a project of the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation and other early childhood organizations, recognized May 1st as National Child Care Worthy Wage Day: Now, therefore, be it

That Congress supports the goals and ideas of National Child Care Worthy Wage Day, and urges public officials and the general public to honor early childhood care and education staff and programs in their communities, and to work together to resolve the early childhood care and education staff compensation crisis.