States need to streamline sometimes cumbersome requirements for childcare providers, in addition to improving access and affordability and investing in childcare workers to strengthen the system for the future, according to a recent national report.
The 40-page report by a 13-member committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures — including Del. Aletheia McCaskill (D-Baltimore County), who has been a child care provider for more than 25 years — said that no one solution will work across the country, but that “incremental fixes alone are unlikely to address its underlying challenges.”
That sounds about right to Angela Kidane.
Kidane, who is CEO of KidzStuff Child Care Center in the Baltimore area, said that besides more funding for operational expenses and teacher salaries, state lawmakers must make some policy changes to improve the industry that she emphasized “is not a babysitting service.”
She said the 400 hours of experience for an individual to qualify as a school-age teacher (5- to 12-year-olds) in a center should be decreased. Those children are in attendance for before or after care during the school year. The center’s summer program lasts about nine weeks.
“We don’t have them all day long. You don’t need that [many hours] for school age students,” she said Friday at the center’s North Broadway location in Baltimore. “Working on those types of little nuances would actually help us to attract and retain employees inside of the center.”
McCaskill was not available for comment this week, but she spoke about the report on July 27 during the NCSL summit in Chicago. One aspect she touched on was a quality rating system in Maryland known as EXCELS. It’s optional for centers to be a part of, but doing so can let them receive state and national accreditation by achieving certain benchmarks such as training for staff, providing activities to assess a child’s development and engaging with families.
A March 2024 child care survey showed some providers didn’t participate in the EXCELS program because “the process was too hard to understand,” “not worth the time and effort” and they felt they didn’t need it “to attract families to their program.”
“Sometimes, in agencies and as policymakers, we overregulate,” McCaskill said at the summit. “We need to do a better job in streamlining regulations.”
Along with a recommendation to modernize licensing and quality rating systems, the report lists six other areas as a legislative framework for state legislatures to utilize:
- Expand access and availability;
- Address affordability for families;
- Invest in the childcare workforce;
- Strengthen small childcare businesses;
- Fund childcare for the future; and
- Elevate governance and leadership.
‘Respect’
The report also provides examples of laws implemented in other states, including three bills approved in Maryland.
House Bill 859, sponsored last year by Del. Jared Solomon (D-Montgomery), required the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange to promote access to health insurance for childcare professionals.
Also in 2025, Senate Bill 516 and HB 389, companion bills sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Nancy King (D-Montgomery) and Dels. Julie Palakovich Carr (D-Montgomery) and Dana Jones (D-Anne Arundel), allow a local jurisdiction to authorize an exemption on personal property tax for a registered “large family child care home.” However, not all jurisdictions have implemented it.
In 2022, Solomon and Del. Eric Ebersole (D-Baltimore County) sponsored HB 933, to provide no-interest loans for capital expenses to child care providers who participate in the child care scholarship program.
Chris Swanson, executive director of a nonprofit organization called C-Impact, read the NCSL report and said it’s good Maryland was recognized for its work. But he said early childhood care in the state must still improve.
Swanson, whose organization will serve as the backbone of a newly formed child care coalition, noted how the report mentioned the importance of states having a workforce registry. According to a March analysis from the University of Nebraska, “state workforce registries (state systems that track information about the early childhood workforce) provide one of the most comprehensive sources of information, including roles, educational attainment, and participation over time.”
“If we want to be improving, not only reading and math scores, but our social and emotional well-being of our children, we need to be investing in early childhood,” Swanson said
“It’s too important for us all – from employers, to government, to politicians, to families, to advocates, to researchers, to educators, to philanthropists and everyone else to not be invested in having the strongest system possible,” he said.
Back at KidzStuff, lead teacher Danielle Cooper calmly asked the children in the preschool classroom to stand in a circle and participate in the “stick song.”
In the school-aged classroom, four girls decked out in yellow T-shirts sat on the carpet to play Uno with lead teacher Chrystal Parker.
“Don’t y’all try to cheat,” Parker said smiling to the girls.
Kidane had a message for state lawmakers to come visit the center, which currently has 118 children but with a capacity for 127. If they can’t stop at the one on N. Broadway, there’s another KidzStuff center on 43rd Street in the city and one that opened this year in Towson.
“Come in. Spend a day with us. Come and see what it’s like to work with 20, rambunctious 3-year-olds that are coming into their own personalities,” she said. “We want people to respect early learning educators. It’s a worthy career, and it’s important to the success of our children, but also really our society in the long run.”