‘Nowhere to go’: Day cares close doors to demand funding on Day Without Child Care

CHARLOTTE — Day care centers across Charlotte are keeping their doors closed and their playgrounds empty on Monday.

It’s part of a nationwide movement to draw attention to child care accessibility issues for families.

While that may seem to go against the goal, organizers of this Day Without Child Care believe it will push lawmakers to put more funding into the child care system.

Emma Biggs runs the Pathway Preschool Center in Plaza Midwood. She has organized events like this for years, warning about what could happen to tens of thousands of parents with young children if more state and federal money isn’t directed towards child care.

“They won’t have nowhere to go. That will increase child abuse and neglect. It will increase poverty. It will increase homelessness,” Biggs explained.

She says the biggest fight in North Carolina right now is keeping money the industry has depended on from going away.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal American Rescue Plan sent billions of dollars to child care facilities to keep them afloat.

That money — totaling 300 million dollars in North Carolina — is set to expire in June.

If that happens, the North Carolina Child Care Resource and Referral Council says nearly one-third of all child care facilities in the state could close, resulting in almost 92,000 child care slots going away.

“I’ve been in this field for 27 years so I love what I do, I love this industry,” Bigg says. “And as a result of me loving this industry so much, I don’t want to lose any children.”

Biggs says that money needs to be replaced and paid for by the state to avoid an even larger crisis.

She says the money would be used in part to increase wages to attract day care workers who left the industry during the pandemic.

Biggs and other daycare workers are headed to Raleigh later this week to pressure lawmakers into providing that money.

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