When my daughter (now 18) was a baby I paid $1,000/mo in CA at a daycare center. When she was school aged I paid $100/wk for before and after school care. It always seemed like I was the only parent paying the full cost (I frequently heard staff telling parents that that daycare was not free and they needed to pay their "share of costs") Yet all the other parents seemed to have had the latest cell phones and drove better cars than I. Always made me wonder what really drove up the cost of care.
I also found it weird when living there that the schools will give the kids soooooo much free stuff, including healthcare but the daycares, even private ones were thru the damn roof.
I had forgotten about the free stuff! I just remember teachers asking me to buy stuff for the classroom. The teachers always told me that they were sorry for asking but there are only 2-3 reliable parents. So the schools were given highly visible stuff but the classrooms went without basics. I also remember the schools fundraising to hire teachers - something the state was supposed to provide but didn't. If I remember correctly, it was PE teachers and computer science teachers. Very strange for a public school system!
Wow that is strange AF!! I remember being surprised by the fact that they didnt require school supplies.....AT ALL!! there was no list, etc. I was like huh? At the time it was a nice convenience to not worry about buying the usual "list". Yea.....discovered why taxes are so high there i guess. So there was def good and bad!!!! And strangely enough, that was my favorite school my now 9 yr old went to out of her previous 2 schools. (We moved around a lot the past 5 yrs). I was seriously shocked. Luckily, her school in the lil town of chico was actually awesome education wise. Who knew
The teachers would ask for things like disinfecting wipes, kleenex, dry erase markers of different colors, etc. But yeah, fund raising for "extras" like PE teachers was weird. And I remember there were "Budget Cut Days" on the school calendar so that meant "Oops! We ran out of money so there's no school this day!!" This was in the Bay Area so maybe geography made a difference? You know, deep blue whack jobs running things?
California especially is loaded with regs and requirements to do almost anything - especially day care. Those kinds of hurdles always drive up costs. I have a friend that ran a Christian day care out of her home - not in CA. But some of the stuff she told me she had to do just to be licensed at times seemed over the top. They even remodeled part of their home in order to accommodate the laws - state regs and taxes. She finally called it quits because the hassles of the business had become too prohibitive and the parents themselves could make it difficult through inconsistency.
I get trying to protect kids, but the unintended consequences of all the protection has put the cost of most day care out of range for many people. That forces them to find day care from those that may not necessarily be qualified to do the job. There needs to be a medium. Parents need a place to place their children where they can be reasonably assured their children will be okay without breaking the bank or having to take another job just to pay for the day care.
When my daughter (now 18) was a baby I paid $1,000/mo in CA at a daycare center. When she was school aged I paid $100/wk for before and after school care. It always seemed like I was the only parent paying the full cost (I frequently heard staff telling parents that that daycare was not free and they needed to pay their "share of costs") Yet all the other parents seemed to have had the latest cell phones and drove better cars than I. Always made me wonder what really drove up the cost of care.
I also found it weird when living there that the schools will give the kids soooooo much free stuff, including healthcare but the daycares, even private ones were thru the damn roof.
I had forgotten about the free stuff! I just remember teachers asking me to buy stuff for the classroom. The teachers always told me that they were sorry for asking but there are only 2-3 reliable parents. So the schools were given highly visible stuff but the classrooms went without basics. I also remember the schools fundraising to hire teachers - something the state was supposed to provide but didn't. If I remember correctly, it was PE teachers and computer science teachers. Very strange for a public school system!
Wow that is strange AF!! I remember being surprised by the fact that they didnt require school supplies.....AT ALL!! there was no list, etc. I was like huh? At the time it was a nice convenience to not worry about buying the usual "list". Yea.....discovered why taxes are so high there i guess. So there was def good and bad!!!! And strangely enough, that was my favorite school my now 9 yr old went to out of her previous 2 schools. (We moved around a lot the past 5 yrs). I was seriously shocked. Luckily, her school in the lil town of chico was actually awesome education wise. Who knew
The teachers would ask for things like disinfecting wipes, kleenex, dry erase markers of different colors, etc. But yeah, fund raising for "extras" like PE teachers was weird. And I remember there were "Budget Cut Days" on the school calendar so that meant "Oops! We ran out of money so there's no school this day!!" This was in the Bay Area so maybe geography made a difference? You know, deep blue whack jobs running things?
California especially is loaded with regs and requirements to do almost anything - especially day care. Those kinds of hurdles always drive up costs. I have a friend that ran a Christian day care out of her home - not in CA. But some of the stuff she told me she had to do just to be licensed at times seemed over the top. They even remodeled part of their home in order to accommodate the laws - state regs and taxes. She finally called it quits because the hassles of the business had become too prohibitive and the parents themselves could make it difficult through inconsistency.
I get trying to protect kids, but the unintended consequences of all the protection has put the cost of most day care out of range for many people. That forces them to find day care from those that may not necessarily be qualified to do the job. There needs to be a medium. Parents need a place to place their children where they can be reasonably assured their children will be okay without breaking the bank or having to take another job just to pay for the day care.