DAYCARE DILEMMA

I am writing in response to the very well written article in last week’s issue of the Portland Phoenix regarding the day care crisis in Maine by Jess Kilby. I thought that the article covered both sides of the issue very well. As a parent of a child in day care I am very concerned about what these regulations will do to the parents and children throughout the state of Maine. Thousands of children will be released from their current daycares. Those that are lucky enough to stay will see an increase of at least 30 percent, bringing the total bill to $210 to $225 per week! I feel that DHS has not thought about the ramifications if these regulations are passed.

Do we really want someone that is uneducated, underpaid with no benefits watching our children day in and day out? The answer is a definitive NO! Along with cutting the benefits, reducing the current salaries, and lowering the starting wage, the day-care centers that do not pass on the entire cost of these regulations onto the parents will be forced to stop construction on new day-care facilities that have already started, eliminate specialized training, as well as eliminating lunches and field trips, just to make ends meet. I don’t mean make a profit. I mean barely stay in business. Some centers are going to lose over $150,000 per year because of these cuts. Who do you think is going to pay for it?

The state should focus on providing the training for these day-care centers as well as their staff so that we know that these people are being trained by someone that is competent enough to train them and not let the day-care staff read an article in a magazine written by someone who may not be qualified to write on the subject and log an hour’s time for it. Besides offering the training, the state should provide tax credits to the day-care providers as well as their staff for receiving the training. The state should also focus on the unregulated and unlicensed daycares that are out there and bring them up to the same standard that everyone else is already forced to be at.

Please write to your state senator. A month ago, I wrote to every state senator and representative and have only heard back from three of them. If more people write to them, they will be forced to look at the issue with the intensity and focus that it needs.

Alexander Stone

Westbrook

DAYCARE DIATRIBE

The debate over child-care guidelines is extremely important. It is also extremely incomplete. It is like the decision making of a 50-year-old who, after smoking five packs of cigarettes a day, finds himself with pre-cancerous cell growth, early stages of emphysema, and other health problems preventing steady employment so that he is behind in his rent — and never considers giving up smoking. As long as we as a society give approval to a bloated military budget (which, incidentally, could not have prevented the September 11 attacks and will not be able to prevent the next one); subsidies and tax breaks and environmental carte blanche to the wealthiest corporations; and tax caps and cuts for ourselves, we will never have the quality of life we want. We can not do it! The people reading this letter will likely survive our financial and environmental health problems — it is our children who will suffer. It is they who will face the consequences of insufficient drinkable water (the shrinking global supply is one of the unreported stories); pollutants beyond control; enemies at every gate armed with undetectable carton cutters and untraceable anthrax and homemade pipe bombs — and nuclear capability. Seinfeld and Limp Bizkit accepted as the height of culture. Schools that do not teach. And day-care centers that will have to choose where to make unsafe cuts. We can ask our financial doctors whether it is better to die of cancer or emphysema or end up homeless — or we can accept responsibility for our own roles in our crises and kick the habits that are killing us. And if we don’t we are killing our children!

Seth Berner

Portland

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