First 5 Orange County President/CEO Kim Goll was invited to be on the news program, “Inside the Issues,” hosted by Alex Cohen, to discuss the child care crisis facing Orange County and the state of California.
Goll frequently cited the findings revealed in First 5 Orange County’s latest child care landscape report, “Child Care and its Impact on Orange County’s Economy,” which was released in June.
The report found that more than 67,000 jobs in Orange County are lost annually due to unrelenting disruptions and gaps in child care, resulting in a $4.3 billion hit to the county’s economy in lost productivity and wages. These child care challenges take a staggering personal and financial toll on families with young children, who far too often must choose between continuing to work or abandoning their careers to care for their children.
An excerpt from Goll’s appearance on “Inside the Issues”:
“We have no problem talking about having the highest and best public schools. But we don’t think about the pathway into public schools. One of the most critical pathways into public schools is child care. So if we want to talk about third grade reading and math scores? We need to also be talking about what is the quality of our child care within the community.
“It has rippling effects on every part of the economy when we don’t do it right, when we don’t expand the options for child care and the quality of the child care we’re providing to those children.”
View the interview below: