Every morning across Alabama, parents drop their children off at child care and go to work. Nurses, teachers, factory workers, first responders, small business owners. They can do their jobs because someone they trust is caring for their children. That system is breaking, and if our leaders don't act now, it may not be there tomorrow.

Families are being shut out. The freeze on child care subsidies means working parents who qualify for help can't get it. Families who were counting on assistance are now being told to wait, with no clear end in sight. For many, that means choosing between keeping their job and caring for their child. Some are cutting hours. Some are leaving the workforce entirely. Some are placing their children in whatever arrangement they can find, safe or not. A subsidy freeze doesn't make the need go away. It just pushes the cost onto the families who can least afford it.

Families are being cut off with little notice. It's not just new families who are being turned away. Parents already in the program are being removed with only a few days' warning, because income guidelines were changed without being made public. Families who followed every rule and did everything right are suddenly told they no longer qualify, with barely any time to plan and nowhere to turn. A few days is not enough time to find new child care, rework a family budget, or figure out how to keep a job. Others are being terminated because of technical and system errors that were no fault of their own. A glitch or a lost document should never be the reason a child loses care and a parent loses a job. Families deserve clear rules, reasonable notice, and a fair chance to fix problems before their child care is taken away.

Providers are being penalized for quality. Alabama asked child care programs to raise the bar through the Quality STARS system, and providers answered. They invested in training, curriculum, classroom materials, facility upgrades, and better-qualified staff, often out of their own pockets, because they believed the state would stand behind that commitment. Now the rules are changing midstream. Provider payments have been delayed, and the funding structure is being reworked in ways that punish the very programs that did everything asked of them. You cannot ask a small business to invest in quality and then pull the rug out from under it.

The math no longer works. Child care providers are being asked to do the impossible. Costs keep rising: wages, food, insurance, rent, utilities, supplies. At the same time, providers know that most families are already stretched to the limit and can't pay more. Even for families on subsidy, reimbursement rates don't come close to covering the true cost of care. Providers are absorbing the difference until there's nothing left to absorb.

The workforce is paying the price. Child care teachers are some of the most important and lowest-paid workers in our state. When programs can't cover their costs, they can't raise wages, and good teachers leave for jobs that pay a living wage. Every teacher who walks out the door means fewer children served and longer waitlists for families.

We have seen this before. During COVID, when child care shut down, so did much of Alabama's workforce. Parents couldn't work. Employers couldn't staff. The economy felt it everywhere. Right now, many child care programs across Alabama are facing closure. Not someday. Now. If they close, families won't have a harder time finding care. They won't be able to find it at all. And the ripple effect on our workforce and economy could match what we lived through in 2020, or be worse.

Child care is not a luxury. It is the workforce behind the workforce.

We are calling on DHR and our elected officials to:

Restore the income guidelines Alabama families have relied on for years, allowing eligibility up to 180% of the Federal Poverty Level for initial certification and up to 200% of the Federal Poverty Level for recertification, instead of the new guidelines that drastically reduce income thresholds and push working families out of care.
Stop removing families with little notice. Make any future changes to eligibility public, give families reasonable advance warning so they have time to plan, and reinstate parents who were terminated because of technical or system errors outside their control.
Lift the child care subsidy freeze so working families can get the help they qualify for.
Pay providers on time and stop delays that put programs at risk.
Halt changes to Quality STARS funding that penalize providers who invested in quality, and involve providers in any future changes.
Raise reimbursement rates to reflect the true cost of providing care.
Treat child care as essential infrastructure, with stable, long-term funding.
If you are a parent, a grandparent, a child care owner or teacher, an employer, or anyone who knows how much Alabama depends on child care, please sign and share this petition. Our children, our families, and our economy can't afford to wait.