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The phone call Tuesday morning hit Marianne Casucci, working mother of four, like a punch to the gut.
On Nov. 1, the state of California will stop paying for her child care. That means that if she wants to keep her 2-year-old son in day care and her three older boys -- ages 7, 9 and 11 -- in the after-school care, she has fewer than three weeks to come up with at least $1,200 a month.
That's nearly two-thirds of her income.
"I don't have the money," she told me. "I have no idea what I'm going to do."
Then she burst into tears.
Casucci, 30, is one of 60,000 single parents in California who were among the targets of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's blue pencil last week, when he made nearly $1 billion in last-minute cuts before approving the long-awaited state budget. With one stroke, he cut a $256 million program that assists low-income parents who have worked their way off welfare but don't yet make enough to afford child care.
The people served by this program are welfare reform success stories, folks who signed up for assistance and played by the rules. They learned job skills and found work as computer technicians, preschool teachers, clerical workers. Even in the recession, they hung on to their jobs. But without a child care subsidy, thousands will have to leave those jobs and go back on welfare. There are other subsidized programs, but all have long waiting lists.
Meanwhile, the people who were caring for their kids will lose their jobs, too. And the state will lose millions in matching federal child care dollars.
Sounds like a lose-lose-lose.
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- reprinted from the San Jose Mercury