As I explained in a previous article, efforts to regulate daycares in Vermont and expand access by providing daycare through public schools adversely impacted private daycares, causing many to close. Vermonters lost about a quarter of existing daycare facilities in a three-year period.

S.56, “An act relating to child care and early childhood education,” passed the Vermont Senate and is now being weighed by the House Committee on Human Services. A handful of conservative legislators seek to ensure this bill does not further degrade — but instead recognizes and supports — Vermont’s private daycare providers.

John Klar

Ensuring young children are nurtured and trained up to be functional adults is a laudable goal. The Bible sensibly counsels: “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Fentanyl, methamphetamines and other illicit drugs have swept through Vermont, increasingly impacting children’s development in the womb as well as their home environments. Toxic foods, inflation, housing shortages, income struggles, and fatherlessness compound the threats to the developing mind. Vermont’s social services have been inundated with the demands to meet these increasing needs.

Many have questioned whether the public school system that has become increasingly ideologically radicalized can serve these young children. Grade school and high school proficiency levels in core subjects have declined despite ever-higher spending, and efforts to blame this failure on the pandemic ring hollow. It is a legitimate question whether public schools failing big kids should be expanded to oversee our little ones.

“Active shooter drills,” climate alarmism, “comprehensive sex education,” and racial and gender theories are being thrust upon schoolchildren beginning in kindergarten. These are making children more anxious and troubled, even as schools introduce “social emotional learning” (SEL) programs using Artificial Intelligence to supposedly enhance their well-being and performance. Are these efforts now to be extended to even younger children in the name of instilling values and rescuing children from deteriorating families? 

This is a legitimate question, especially since SEL is clearly a Marxist initiative. As Marx himself wrote: “The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions.”

Is that the goal of S.56, or is it to genuinely benefit young children in learning while helping parents navigate difficult economic times? S.56 contains language that raises concerns about whether the legislature understands the danger of unfairly stifling quality private daycare alternatives. Section 2, subsection (c), describes the “Powers and duties” of the Prekindergarten Education Study Committee:

The Committee shall examine the delivery of prekindergarten education in Vermont and make recommendations for expanding equitable access for all children three and four years of age in a manner that achieves the best outcomes for children, whether through the current mixed-delivery system, the public school system, the private prekindergarten system, or a system that allows school districts to contract with private providers. The Committee shall also examine and make recommendations on the changes necessary to provide prekindergarten education to all children three and four years of age through the public school system, including a timeline and transition plan for such changes. 

This language is tone deaf to the damage already done to private daycare in Vermont, as acknowledged by Vermont’s 2019 Prekindergarten Education Study. Section 2 (c) (2) of the Act oddly poses questions for the Committee which reflect oblivion to this shortcoming:

(2) Capacity and demand. 

 (C) If prekindergarten education in the public school system is provided solely to children four years of age, what is the impact on the capacity and workforce of private prekindergarten providers?

(D) If prekindergarten education for children who are four years of age is provided exclusively through the public school system, how will infant capacity in private child care providers be impacted?

The answers to these questions are already well known. There is a very negative impact on private prekindergarten providers when public schools provide services to 4-year-olds. Caring for infants is much costlier per child: siphoning off 4-year-olds to unfair competition by public schools dramatically undercuts private daycares. Why does the Legislature ask this new commission to waste time reevaluating that clearly known fact? If prekindergarten education for four-year-olds is provided exclusively through the public school system, of course this will adversely impact private daycares, forcing more to close, or else undermine their competitiveness and raise costs for young families by compelling them to increase rates. 

Unless the Legislature’s goal is to ensure Marx’s institutional usurpation of all childcare by the state, this language reflects utter incompetence, or complete insensitivity to the problems that continue to face private daycares in Vermont. In an effort to call out this embarrassing oversight, a number of state legislators are weighing an amendment to S.56 which clarifies the importance of preserving and not unfairly extinguishing Vermont’s important private daycare providers. The bill has undergone more editing in the House, and it is hoped the intention to support independent private daycare facilities will be emphasized in the revised language.

Voters will be watching to see whether the Vermont House affirms a commitment to support private daycares, or instead reflects an agenda to wipe them out entirely.

John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield. © Copyright True North Reports 2023. All rights reserved.