Make Alabama a place to start a family.

A market that fails on both sides at once.

Child care in the United States, and acutely in Alabama, is the textbook case of a market that fails on both sides at once. Parents can't pay more, because the cost is already crushing. Workers can't be paid less, because they're already at or below the minimum that lets them survive. The middle is filled by quality compromises: higher ratios, less training, faster burnout, more turnover, which silently lower the floor.

The federal subsidies that historically softened this market have either expired or been diluted. The result is a service that working parents need to participate in the labor force, priced out of reach of working parents.

Who pays

• Parents, particularly mothers, who exit the workforce when the math stops working
• Workers, staffing facilities at wages that don't keep pace with rent
• Children, whose earliest developmental window is shaped by the staff their family can afford
• Employers, losing experienced employees who can no longer commute or arrange care
• The state economy, losing the labor-force participation that local employers and the state depend on

What we're building

1. Alabama's 2024 law created a child care tax credit for employers and providers. The next step is a credit for families: refundable, for households under area median income, so families that owe no state tax still benefit.
2. A child care worker wage floor with state-level top-up funding, so providers can pay workers a living wage without doubling parent fees.
3. Expand Alabama First Class Pre-K so it covers every four-year-old in the state. It is the only program in the country to meet all ten national quality benchmarks twenty years running and one of the highest-return investments in education available, yet today it reaches only about 40% of four-year-olds.
4. Streamline the licensing path for in-home and small-center providers, without lowering safety standards. The current process locks out exactly the kind of small-scale, neighborhood-based providers Madison County's growing communities need.

This work runs every day of every year. Whether by passing legislation, organizing the community, or partnering with existing providers, progress will be made.