Latest / ChildCare Conversations / 388: How better systems could free childcare budgets for what matters with Mary Harper

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388: How better systems could free childcare budgets for what matters with Mary Harper · ChildCare Conversations

0:03
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Childcare Conversations: Now let's get into today's conversation, one we think you're really going to enjoy.
0:47
Kate Woodward Young: Welcome back to our next conversation.
0:49
Kate Woodward Young: And today I am so excited that Mary Harper with Texas AUYC is joining us.
0:55
Kate Woodward Young: And or Dr.
0:56
Kate Woodward Young: Mary Harper.
0:57
Kate Woodward Young: Looking at you can put all the initials and all of the letters in.
1:01
Kate Woodward Young: Hey, you worked hard for that.
1:03
Kate Woodward Young: We might as well give it to you.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: We always say, just call me Mary, because if I'm on a flight and you need help, I'm not your lady.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm still gonna call you Dr.
1:13
Kate Woodward Young: Mary Harper.
1:14
Kate Woodward Young: All right, so Dr.
1:15
Kate Woodward Young: Harper is joining us with Texas AUYC, and we're gonna have a conversation that's not just about Texas.
1:21
Kate Woodward Young: So if you are not from Texas, don't run away and go, oh, it's those Texas people again.
1:26
Kate Woodward Young: Because we're actually gonna talk about something that every single state is feeling because it's not just a state issue.
1:32
Kate Woodward Young: It's not even really just a national issue because it's not really anything 100% yet.
1:37
Kate Woodward Young: Um, but um, I am suspecting that, well, probably before the end of 2026, it will be a something.
1:44
Kate Woodward Young: So before we do that though, Mary, you got to tell us a little bit about how you found yourself in early learning.
1:51
Kate Woodward Young: Um just give people the the closest you can to a snapshot about how you got here.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: So college, having a really great time, decided I should do something that's not about myself, took a job in a title 20 daycare, which is what we now refer to as CCDBG.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh so um subsidized child care.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: And and I would literally shoe the hookers off the fence in the morning.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: It was a really at-risk sort of place.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: And I got to be the twos teacher, and I fell in love with child development.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Like took a hook, line, and sinker.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Like, if it's really my first love, don't tell my husband.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: So I actually I senior in college, tell my parents that summer I've switched my major.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't sure what stroking sounded like, but it sounds like a whole lot of nothing for about 10 minutes as your parents realize how much money they've wasted.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: And my father said, Well, what are you going to do?
2:43
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I am going to be an early childhood educator.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And then there was another long pause to which she responded, Well, at least it's a noble profession.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: And my mother, who was an executive and a very independent women's lib sort of person, smacked him on the arm and said, Earl, may she marry well.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Turns out it was the best decision I could have ever made in my whole life.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: It continues to excite me, um, propel me, fill uh, fill my cup full all the time.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: I think kids are the most amazing, incredible thing we could be around, and the ecosystem that supports them is even more intriguing.
3:21
Kate Woodward Young: Okay, I think we need a whole other episode with your mom and your dad.
3:25
Kate Woodward Young: So um I'm just thinking, I want an episode with Earl and your mom.
3:30
Kate Woodward Young: I'm just saying, because I just think that would be funny.
3:32
Kate Woodward Young: Um, and maybe they aren't gonna tell stories nearly as good as you do, but um, so so Mary, you found yourself in this industry.
3:41
Kate Woodward Young: Now you are a professor.
3:43
Kate Woodward Young: Now you have found yourself also um the executive of a professional association.
3:49
Kate Woodward Young: And, you know, we we've talked about this a couple of times in our conversation.
3:53
Kate Woodward Young: Having done your job in Oklahoma in 2005, so we got a few years.
3:58
Kate Woodward Young: It's been a little while since I was the executive director of the Oklahoma AUYC.
4:04
Kate Woodward Young: But sometimes finding yourself in those professional associations is kind of a whole different, well, kettle of fish.
4:12
Kate Woodward Young: And so, how did you make the transition from, especially because I am not a two teacher?
4:17
Kate Woodward Young: Like I learned a lot about hiring by having to hire two teachers because I did it so desperately because I didn't want to sub that room.
4:25
Kate Woodward Young: So, how did you go from loving the toddlers to now being a professional association executive?
4:32
SPEAKER_00: So it's really interesting.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Every iteration has provided another way to look at the systems that surround this work that we do.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And I I'm a systems person or a puzzle figure outer, you know, whatever.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: Putting it all together, I want to figure out why we do what we do and how we do it.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that we can be for certain is I'm never gonna figure out this puzzle of child care in the United States.
4:55
SPEAKER_00: So I will continue to have questions.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: But I started out classroom teacher, moved into um a central agency that supported the CCDBG money.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: So that center I had been in a million years ago that shaped who I was as a practitioner, I got to go back and think about how they were funded and why those children were able to get the services they were and why those families had access.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And I got to think about, well, that's why we were doing what we were doing.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: So a whole nother lens.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Then went to higher ed, left there, came back to the system's work to oversee it, and talking about sort of how do we implement a system on a for-profit, nonprofit basis, right?
5:36
SPEAKER_00: It has to self-sustain itself, but yet we want to have all these ethereal sort of substitutives, um, programmatic kinds of things, they don't connect at all.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: They don't, they don't mesh at all because one, if I'm trying to make a profit or a business, I'm certainly not going to pay for those extras.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: But I believe in the welfare and goodness of children and families and all that supports them.
6:04
SPEAKER_00: So uh I think what's propelled me all around this, again, um, in that space working with uh CCDBG and CCDF money and private providers as association, because I've done the Florida Association for the Education of Young Children, now the Texas Association for the Education of Young Children, and then this higher ed space where everything can be so woo and angelic and wonderful.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: But when the rubber meets the road, how do we balance between these two worlds of what makes sense for a business?
6:37
SPEAKER_00: Because we've got to be able to meet our budgetary requirements, and what makes sense when we think about the needs of children and families in the system?
6:45
Kate Woodward Young: Well, you know, you teed that up great considering what we said we were going to talk about today.
6:49
Kate Woodward Young: So we are going to um continue our conversation as we start to have a conversation specifically about deregulation and what is happening, what does that mean?
7:00
Kate Woodward Young: How does that impact um whether we want to start at the business level?
7:05
Kate Woodward Young: Because even our not for profits, because let's be realistic, an awful lot of childcare centers are nonprofits, um, even if they're privately owned.
7:16
Kate Woodward Young: So I'm gonna go with privately owned and not privately owned instead of you know profit versus nonprofit, because I've been in this world long enough and I've seen enough of these balance sheets.
7:26
Kate Woodward Young: And I'm like, why are you putting money into the account every week to make payroll?
7:31
Kate Woodward Young: That that that does not make um this is a business.
7:35
Kate Woodward Young: So if you're if you know you have to pay into the job, that that's almost um it's almost like a Ponzi scheme or something.
7:42
Kate Woodward Young: Like I feel like I'm like, if you're having to pay money into your business so that you can pay your employees, that there's a there's a misfit.
7:49
Kate Woodward Young: So we've got that piece, but a lot of folks, I think, in our industry, even the owners and directors who are listening, may not really understand where all of this is coming from.
8:01
Kate Woodward Young: They may not really understand.
8:03
Kate Woodward Young: Now, some of us do, some of us know that people think um that certain people are all behind this, but I I don't really think there is anybody who's in the industry, whether you are a big business, whether you're a private equity firm, whether you are Head Start, whether you're a school district or an ISD.
8:22
Kate Woodward Young: Like, I don't think any of these entities are excited about this deregulation piece.
8:27
Kate Woodward Young: So, so so give us a summary of what's going on and then let's let's keep starting.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: So I might be the only unicorn around this issue that I'm kind of excited about it.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: So regulatory reform gives us a chance to get rid of duplicative, uh non-essential requests that all they do is uh keep us from doing what we do.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: So recently, and I'm gonna use Texas as an example, but everyone who has this will understand what I'm saying, any state, um, is when you have to hire an FTE, a singular person to manage your licensing, your food program, your um special projects, such as when you're working with CCDBG money and you want to deal with quality and you have an accrediting body, when you're dealing with all this, if you have to hire an FTE to do this, there's something wrong with the regulation system.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: So I'm telling you now that a paper that says that my child uh can come back to school today, even that they've had a flu, having that record does not make your center safer.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: And so thinking about things that matter and systems that matter.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: So here's another simple thing that I hope comes out of regulatory reform, which likely won't because it's a systems issue, is I would love to see singular child care management software platforms statewide that allow for a single-level desk review that does not require you to produce all of that, but rather it's housed in a data system.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: It's the 21st century people.
9:58
Kate Woodward Young: Well, I mean, I actually would be perfectly happy, even if there's, because again, you know, I am an entrepreneur at heart, right?
10:04
Kate Woodward Young: So I don't care if there's multiple platforms.
10:06
Kate Woodward Young: I just want the regulatory agencies to be required to let somebody give them, you know, if they all had, actually, you know what would be great is if they all had a uh a virtual dashboard that you could look at, whether you are C C whether you're a food program, whether you're licensing, whatever, and you could do all the file checks from your dang office, and you have to hire the FTE to review it, and that I don't have to, and you can agree too.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: These systems do exist.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: So there are many states that have invested in enterprise versions of these, right?
10:38
SPEAKER_00: That then can do these exact same things.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Review right there, real time, how many students are enrolled, how much your food program you you claimed on that food program for that day.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: You don't need to submit anything.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: And and paper signatures?
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: It's the 21st century.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: Biometrics, where are we with all of this?
10:58
SPEAKER_00: Retinal scan.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is time to catch up with the 21st century.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: So regulatory reform, I think.
11:03
Kate Woodward Young: Especially because we use those to use our phone.
11:05
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, my phone is thumb, you know, we've been doing, we've been doing face scans on phones for a decade.
11:11
Kate Woodward Young: We've been doing finger scans for almost as long.
11:13
Kate Woodward Young: And what's really interesting is we're talking about this.
11:16
Kate Woodward Young: I get I kept going, but here's the thing.
11:18
Kate Woodward Young: If you start looking at the regulatory reform, and I just think about compliance paperwork, and you look at the number of actual compliance dings.
11:29
Kate Woodward Young: I I I don't remember the exact number.
11:31
Kate Woodward Young: I wish Cindy was on this call because that this call of Cindy.
11:34
Kate Woodward Young: But it's something crazy.
11:35
Kate Woodward Young: Like 80% of all of the licensing violations that are coming out of most states is the freaking paperwork.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: It has nothing to do with the actual application and care to children and direct contact.
11:51
Kate Woodward Young: Well, and then as a parent, all you look at is go, oh my God, they've had like 10 violations.
11:56
Kate Woodward Young: You don't know they're all paperwork.
11:57
Kate Woodward Young: Now, granted, paperwork constantly is changing.
12:01
Kate Woodward Young: You constantly have new systems, and then you have the different people who want different things.
12:06
Kate Woodward Young: And of course, all of this is being managed by these loving humans who got into the industry because they like the two-year-olds.
12:15
Kate Woodward Young: They didn't give out because they like bureaucracy.
12:18
Kate Woodward Young: They didn't know more like, oh, look, you're a great two-year-old teacher.
12:22
Kate Woodward Young: Let's promote you.
12:23
Kate Woodward Young: And we do it without absolutely no professional development that's relevant.
12:28
Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
12:28
Kate Woodward Young: And now part of that is on the part of like, especially owners and directors who've been in the industry for a long time.
12:34
Kate Woodward Young: But we don't go out of our way.
12:35
Kate Woodward Young: We also don't offer.
12:36
Kate Woodward Young: Like, think about it.
12:37
Kate Woodward Young: When was the last time you went to a conference that actually offered a computer science or a technology use class?
12:42
Kate Woodward Young: Zero.
12:43
Kate Woodward Young: And I'm sorry, a workshop on how to use AI is not a tech class.
12:49
Kate Woodward Young: How to, you know, listening to a sales pitch from a software program is not a tech class.
12:55
Kate Woodward Young: I would love to see a computer lab having been somebody who literally in the last three months has walked an entire CDA class through how to do the digital portfolio.
13:07
Kate Woodward Young: You would be surprised.
13:08
Kate Woodward Young: Like I had to teach people how to take PDFs of their training certificates with their phone because most of them still had paper training certificates.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: So I think that's really interesting.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: My mother is 87 years old.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: She has a tiny scanner on her phone and can scan documents and upload them through a singular.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I think as an industry, we've disabled ourselves.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And what this regulatory reform offers is an opportunity to think systemically about what we're requesting and why we're requesting it.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And does that truly have a direct impact on the care, health, safety, well-being, and educational outcomes of young children and their family and outcomes for their families.
13:46
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, right now I'm like, I don't care what my staff training looks like in a program.
13:52
Kate Woodward Young: I want to know if they have a damn sensor in their bus that there's a human.
13:55
Kate Woodward Young: Like, like, because to me, that is still like the fact that people are that that is still happening just seems stupid as snot to me.
14:02
Kate Woodward Young: Because really, like we should not be still having children having these issues, and we should still know where every child is.
14:09
Kate Woodward Young: And again, when we start talking about technology, right, like these things exist.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Well, so interesting you say that.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: I just saw a brand new article in Japan.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: They were looking at how they can keep elders in in home and care longer, even those with uh memory issues and that sort of thing.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: They have sensors that count the number of people in the room, how often they go and they go into a special place or eat or take any food out.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: All of these same applications, very inexpensive because what they found is then they don't have to have the human in there to take care of it, but rather it's a second or it's a secondary check, which is what they really want for healthcare providers.
14:49
Kate Woodward Young: Well, I mean, if you think about it, I mean, okay, so the uh this is just like so IBM, seriously in 1990.
14:59
unknown: Five.
14:59
Kate Woodward Young: You're talking about language.
15:00
Kate Woodward Young: You're talking about language.
15:01
Kate Woodward Young: So IBM in 95-96 actually created refrigerators that could tell you what was in your refrigerator.
15:09
Kate Woodward Young: And at the time, again, the technology didn't catch up, right?
15:12
Kate Woodward Young: Because all of the technology was gonna have to be in the packaging.
15:15
Kate Woodward Young: But the refrigerator could have literally emailed you, you are almost out of milk.
15:21
Kate Woodward Young: Yep.
15:22
Kate Woodward Young: So anybody who's doing the math can do the math on how many years ago that was, right?
15:28
Kate Woodward Young: And so almost 30 years ago, we had the technology to do that in a dang refrigerator.
15:33
Kate Woodward Young: We should be able to, and if you think about things like we have AI videos, and again, nobody has really liked them for the way some of this technology has been used.
15:44
Kate Woodward Young: But if you think about it from the standpoint of where could we put the money that we're spending on the humans to manage the paperwork to make the kids safer.
15:55
Kate Woodward Young: So I it that I'm not talking about necessarily making the curriculum better.
16:01
Kate Woodward Young: But if they're safer, we figured out step one.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: We figured out pedagogy a long time.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: What we have refused in this industry to pay attention to is business standards, systems, and analytics that drive change, reduce cost, and improve care.
16:17
Kate Woodward Young: And until we do that, I think we should just stop right there.
16:21
Kate Woodward Young: It was like that is the mic drop.
16:24
Kate Woodward Young: Like, and and it's interesting.
16:25
Kate Woodward Young: And I will tell you this because this is gonna be my one little pushback because I was like going, oh, I'm gonna have a conversation with the professor.
16:31
Kate Woodward Young: This should prove to be interesting.
16:33
Kate Woodward Young: Um, because again, historically, when I am going to generalize higher education professors, a lot of times.
16:42
Kate Woodward Young: Completely out of touch, completely out of touch, don't even know the marketplace with which they're working, have no idea.
16:47
Kate Woodward Young: A lot of times they've never run a business, they've never actually done a budget.
16:51
Kate Woodward Young: It's been a long time since they worked in anything other than a lab school.
16:54
Kate Woodward Young: And like you said, I love that from a pedagogy standpoint, and I love that for them sharing.
16:59
Kate Woodward Young: But if we even just get really practical about the folks working in our industry, the fact that people are getting in debt to get early childhood degrees in a profession that will never pay them enough money to get out of debt in reality in what they want to do, right?
17:15
Kate Woodward Young: Like they want to be the teacher.
17:17
Kate Woodward Young: They want to work with the kiddo.
17:19
Kate Woodward Young: Well, the teacher at the kiddo in early learning.
17:21
Kate Woodward Young: Now, public school, that's a different animal.
17:24
Kate Woodward Young: Public school K-12 currently is a different animal.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: But Department of Defense figured it out many years ago and demilitarized those documents.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: They use CDA instructors and they put their most expensive people as the coaches and or the behavioral or um uh behavioral and or support, psych psychological support, um, P T O T, um, all of those sorts of things.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: That's where the money should be.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: But the support for the CDA credential teacher, the one who's implementing all day, every day, with, and let's be clear, Department of Defense, benefits, support, professional development, all of that.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: But they figured out how to do it on a manageable budget because they had to use their own money to do it.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: And why we keep insisting it has to be a degree teacher is not I don't see the data to indicate that that is accurate.
18:17
Kate Woodward Young: Okay, so here we go.
18:19
Kate Woodward Young: You're gonna get my my my really quick um my my my staffing lecture.
18:23
Kate Woodward Young: Okay.
18:23
Kate Woodward Young: So here's something I'm gonna plant the seed and I'm gonna share it with you, and you can take it to everybody in the world, right?
18:28
Kate Woodward Young: Because there's two industries that I don't, well, really there's four that I don't understand why we don't look at more.
18:33
Kate Woodward Young: One, hospitality and retail.
18:36
Kate Woodward Young: Both of them have manager and training tracks.
18:39
Kate Woodward Young: You come in and you're working at the bottom of the food chain, but you're hired, knowing from the get-go you're gonna be the manager.
18:45
Kate Woodward Young: Then we have healthcare.
18:48
Kate Woodward Young: So the certified nursing assistant is literally how nursing homes were able to start staffing.
18:54
Kate Woodward Young: They created their own people.
18:56
Kate Woodward Young: You paid to get the CD CNA, so you pay to take a CNA course at a nursing home.
19:02
Kate Woodward Young: So you get to take that credential with you.
19:06
Kate Woodward Young: So, so the the nursing home doesn't own it, you own it, but the nursing home offers it, you've paid for it, they get to watch you while you're taking that class and they get to decide if they want to hire you.
19:17
Kate Woodward Young: Now, why we don't, especially now that the CDA has changed.
19:21
Kate Woodward Young: Now, the when you think about the CDA when it was first started, right?
19:24
Kate Woodward Young: And the whole concept behind being able to give a credential to somebody who's been in the field and didn't want to go take college classes, but and then it morphed into CDAs as college classes.
19:37
Kate Woodward Young: Right?
19:38
Kate Woodward Young: So there's there's that whole what are we doing with this?
19:41
Kate Woodward Young: The whole college pipeline, the faux pipeline, as I refer to it.
19:44
Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
19:45
Kate Woodward Young: Yes, absolutely.
19:46
Kate Woodward Young: But here's the one that I really love people to start to think about 15-year-olds.
19:51
Kate Woodward Young: They save their money from the time they're 14 to 15 because they want to be a lifeguard.
19:56
Kate Woodward Young: And they pay their own money to take that training.
20:00
Kate Woodward Young: And then they spend 40 hours getting a piece of paper that's this big, but they've got to prove that they can swim, they can tread water, they can dive and pick up a brick.
20:13
Kate Woodward Young: They have to prove this before they can take the course.
20:15
Kate Woodward Young: Then they take the course, then they get a job.
20:17
Kate Woodward Young: Then in this job, over the next three months, every single week, for at least five hours a week, they are training to keep their profession because the life of the children depend on it.
20:29
Kate Woodward Young: I'm sorry, if I can trust a 15-year-old at a swimming pool with my five-year-old, why the heck can I not figure out a solution to train 18 to 21-year-olds to come into early learning, to be passionate, and to keep those kids safe.
20:44
Kate Woodward Young: We have totally disregarded that we think that everybody in our industry has to come pre-qualified.
20:49
Kate Woodward Young: No.
20:50
Kate Woodward Young: BS.
20:51
Kate Woodward Young: That's why everything is so expensive.
20:53
Kate Woodward Young: I'm not saying that, but but as an industry, we have no clear career path.
20:58
Kate Woodward Young: We have some the some states, some municipalities that are creating apprenticeship programs.
21:03
Kate Woodward Young: Okay-ish, but we aren't a trade associate.
21:06
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, we're never going to pay what the trades pay.
21:09
Kate Woodward Young: So, like to me, if somebody's going through an apprentice program, like electrical or plumbing or any of the other trades where a true apprenticeship programs work, I get that.
21:20
Kate Woodward Young: But we have a program.
21:21
Kate Woodward Young: The 120-hour CDA program has a great opportunity to be something that should be, because again, it's transferable.
21:30
Kate Woodward Young: It is why DOD uses it.
21:32
Kate Woodward Young: It is why it works for DOD.
21:34
Kate Woodward Young: As a 24-year military spouse, I can tell you every person I ran into in early learning, they took that CDA with them and they got a job in the next town.
21:42
Kate Woodward Young: And they took that CDA with them and they got a job in the next town.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: And I know this from your experience every place you went into, every CDC was heaven for children.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: And it was based on a logical model.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: And like I said, all of those documents have been demilitarized.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: They're accessible to everybody if you're thinking in a state or in.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Municipality, how to make things more accessible to the workforce, it's there.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:05
Kate Woodward Young: Absolutely.
22:05
Kate Woodward Young: The DOD model.
22:06
Kate Woodward Young: And if you've not talked to any of the national advocates who really talk a lot about the DOD model, um, you know, feel free to message the show and I'll be happy to connect you with some of those folks because I'm sure that both Mary and I know folks who literally can talk for hours about that DoD component.
22:25
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, I've got folks I've worked with for literally decades.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: If you're ever worried about a conference session, if they're from the military childcare system, you'll be entertained.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: You will be.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, not only entertained, but you're gonna be like, you know, you're gonna walk out like this.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: My favorite one.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: I love to go to a conference and get this.
22:44
Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
22:45
Kate Woodward Young: Absolutely.
22:45
Kate Woodward Young: So if you aren't, if you're just listening and you're not watching the video, you really need to come back and listen to the watch the video because, well, Mary and I are just funny.
22:52
Kate Woodward Young: And you're losing trouble if you're only listening to the audio track.
22:56
Kate Woodward Young: So, all right.
22:57
Kate Woodward Young: So we have shared a lot of ideas with you.
23:00
Kate Woodward Young: And I'm hoping that if you're listening, you're going, okay, so maybe there is an advantage to some of this deregulation.
23:06
Kate Woodward Young: And it's not that we're saying because I think people get hung up on they think deregulation.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: They believe that the minute you say deregulation, children are gonna drop like flies.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: That is not the case.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, I also think that a lot of them, because what we're hearing, right, are the ratio changes.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Right?
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Like so that's what we're hearing.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: But there's other components of that that are not related.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: And then could we afford to keep ratios where they were if we didn't have to spend so much money, time, and effort on unnecessarily unnecessary regulation?
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Does it bring down the overall operating costs?
23:41
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, just the paperwork alone.
23:43
Kate Woodward Young: The paperwork alone.
23:44
Kate Woodward Young: And here's the thing, and I have to say that when I saw this brought up by um another advocate in the state of Texas, it did kind of hurt my head.
23:51
Kate Woodward Young: When you start to look at what the regulatory inspectors are making compared to the teachers, compared to the directors, compared to the owners.
23:59
Kate Woodward Young: And I'm sorry, if you're gonna come in and tell me how to do my job, A, have you actually ever worked in my job?
24:05
Kate Woodward Young: And no wonder people are leaving child care to go work in those agencies because they're making 60 grand with benefits over there, and I'm lucky if I'm getting 30 over here.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: No, and I think there's something, I think there absolutely is something to that.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: We talk about a regulatory pipeline.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: How about we make those the less uh the least expensive on that pipeline?
24:23
SPEAKER_00: Because I can simply verify whether or not something's been done.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a high school, this sounds a lot like the lifeguard.
24:32
Kate Woodward Young: But but here's the thing, isn't it?
24:34
Kate Woodward Young: Like, so but here's the thing.
24:35
Kate Woodward Young: Like, especially if everybody went to one of the, because I think there's only really two real ECE video platforms.
24:41
Kate Woodward Young: Go to one of those two.
24:42
Kate Woodward Young: Go sit your butt in front of a computer.
24:44
Kate Woodward Young: Heck, one of them is even already AI loaded.
24:48
Kate Woodward Young: So, like, go in, you can do the damn inspection from where you are.
24:51
Kate Woodward Young: That does not require somebody paying$60,000.
24:55
Kate Woodward Young: And get them, those, those darn people up to speed on all the different pedagogies.
25:00
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, I am watching awesome Montessori programs fake it through these QIS programs because they have to like, I'm sorry, when was the last time you looked at your table and went, oh, I'm so glad that's labeled to tell me that's a table?
25:14
Kate Woodward Young: That is not a print-rich environment.
25:16
Kate Woodward Young: And that is what these quality programs seem to think like you gotta have a chair, you gotta have table, you gotta have shelf.
25:21
Kate Woodward Young: I'm like, no, I don't.
25:23
Kate Woodward Young: And watching Montessori programs and other pedagogy like that, that are not that kind of pedagogy, and then we're giving them all this equipment that doesn't fit their pedagogy.
25:33
Kate Woodward Young: So now they have thousands of dollars in unopened equipment sitting in a storage room because they're not gonna open that plastic stuff because it doesn't match their educational systems.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, we need to rethink the 20% quality money.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: And what does define quality?
25:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not a bunch of stuff.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: What are we doing to change the system?
25:51
SPEAKER_00: As a fiscal conservative, watching materials being purchased with quality dollars as opposed to actually doing transformative change that brings about systemic logistics of every investment I make at that 20% each year.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't need 20% every single year for the same amount of people.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, but you shouldn't be getting the same thing.
26:09
Kate Woodward Young: Right, exactly.
26:10
Kate Woodward Young: I have a lot of people.
26:12
Kate Woodward Young: When my cousin owned four programs, you're gonna love this story.
26:15
Kate Woodward Young: Four programs, five years in a row.
26:17
Kate Woodward Young: She got the same dang black history puzzle for four programs, five years in a row.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say it's the four same multicultural dolls that we all gave every single year to the same providers for the same classrooms over and over and over again.
26:35
Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
26:35
Kate Woodward Young: Well, and and now, granted, again, this comes back to that quality dollar piece, right?
26:41
Kate Woodward Young: We're not buying quality stuff and we're not buying USA made stuff.
26:45
Kate Woodward Young: And this is a whole, this could be a whole other rant because I really, I mean, we want to talk about making a difference economically in a community, but we don't sit here and talk about why as a workforce board or as an agency, why are we not insisting?
27:00
Kate Woodward Young: Like, we have hubs, we have BWEs, we have MWEs, but we aren't going, I want local.
27:08
Kate Woodward Young: Like if a childcare center is hyper local, why are the workforce boards and different municipalities across the country getting to buy their products and their trainers from overseas or out of state?
27:19
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, in Texas, and I went on a rant to one of the workforce boards because they hired a bunch of trainers that year from outside of the state.
27:27
Kate Woodward Young: And I was like, but why?
27:30
Kate Woodward Young: I live in I live in your workforce board.
27:32
Kate Woodward Young: Guess where I spend my dollars?
27:34
Kate Woodward Young: In your workforce board.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Guess where I hire my people from your local workforce uh population.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
27:43
Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
27:44
Kate Woodward Young: So so if I'm hiring people, why would you not hire me if if if I'm a comparable product?
27:50
Kate Woodward Young: Now I'm not saying if you can't find a comparable product anywhere in your municipality, then look in your state, but then look in your country.
27:57
Kate Woodward Young: I'm sorry, the amount of products that we are buying because it's cheap, like I don't care that you can buy it on Amazon.
28:03
Kate Woodward Young: I want to know is it gonna last the life of the time that you put it on the credit card?
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Is it actually possible to not find it in Texas?
28:11
SPEAKER_00: We are humongous.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know.
28:14
Kate Woodward Young: I know.
28:15
Kate Woodward Young: But but like, but again, when I look at, you know, because we can sit here and talk about quality all day long, right?
28:20
Kate Woodward Young: So when we start talking about quality, it also comes back to what are you buying as far as curriculum?
28:26
Kate Woodward Young: Because again, we want to talk about curriculum.
28:27
Kate Woodward Young: We have homegrown national curriculum in the state of Texas.
28:33
Kate Woodward Young: You know, we have US-based vendors, especially right now when we've got all the different sanctions and all the different, like there's fees for everything coming in from other countries.
28:42
Kate Woodward Young: I'm sorry, there is not a piece of equipment that you cannot find made in the USA that actually will probably last the entire life of either your credit card payment or your loan note that you actually use to buy that product to begin with.
28:56
Kate Woodward Young: I had a whole conversation with a lady who who basically bought a lot of her product, you know, she bought a new program.
29:02
Kate Woodward Young: She bought it the way that she thought in her head made sense.
29:06
Kate Woodward Young: And she was replacing materials literally every six months because from the get-go, she didn't understand the quality over quantity.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was gonna say quality versus quantity and people not thinking about the longevity of things.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: So the difference between an Amazon suitcase today or a Toomy suitcase, while the price differential is significant, one's going to last, I promise you, a lot longer.
29:29
Kate Woodward Young: And well, back in the day with the Samsonites, right?
29:33
Kate Woodward Young: Like you can be the gorilla jumping up and down on your suitcase.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:36
Kate Woodward Young: Right.
29:36
Kate Woodward Young: And the thing is, is that really our American-made products 90% of the time are going to outlast.
29:42
Kate Woodward Young: Yeah.
29:43
Kate Woodward Young: And if I'm talking to a new business owner and I'm talking to uh somebody who is about to drop six figures in their furnishings and equipment, and they want to go do it on Facebook Marketplace and whatever, and I'm like, but don't you want it to at least last the life of your loan?
29:58
Kate Woodward Young: Because chances are that six-figure loan that you're about to use, if you're doing it all on Facebook Marketplace and Amazon or some of these other third-party providers, they aren't going to last.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: If we were to be more um thoughtful and think about longitudinally, how long can I keep this equipment versus the other?
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Making larger investments with those quality dollars towards sustainable materials.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Which we used to do back in the day when you used to get a bye-bye buggy.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Go in and do an evaluation and think about that.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: And now it's so much faster, even with AI or with tools that are already put in there, for us to look at the environment and say, okay, where can I make the biggest investment and impact for the long term versus unsubstantiative equipment that's in consequence?
30:47
Kate Woodward Young: Well, and a lot of this equipment, especially the bigger providers and the and the the ones that are using the the the US-based manufacturers, they actually have ROIs.
30:57
Kate Woodward Young: They can actually tell you the KPI on that product and how long that product's gonna last.
31:02
Kate Woodward Young: And I would think that if I've got a five-year grant, I would want the product that I buy year one to still be around year five.
31:11
Kate Woodward Young: Yes, absolutely.
31:12
Kate Woodward Young: And and if if I'm not doing that, that comes back to those dang puzzles and dolls we were just talking about.
31:17
Kate Woodward Young: Because I feel like if you're buying me that same doll and product, that same doll and puzzle every year, you mustn't think that it's not that it didn't survive a year.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Right.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: And then that goes to a whole nother issue about if we're talking about uh pedagogy, I don't even think that's pedagogy.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: I think that's just general maintenance, like what's going on in your business as a general rule.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:38
Kate Woodward Young: So yeah, actually, yeah.
31:40
Kate Woodward Young: Wow, boy, didn't we just take a total spin on that one today?
31:43
Kate Woodward Young: Okay, so um, this was supposed to be about derulate deregulation, and I guess we kind of did that a little bit.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: We talked about regulatory reform.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: We talked about uh current data systems that can change and shape what we're doing.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: In general, we talked about all the ways that we could be thinking about the money that we invest in early care and education and its return to allow for more flexibility, reduced costs, so that we can put the money back into the care and devotion that we give to children every day.
32:11
Kate Woodward Young: Absolutely.
32:11
Kate Woodward Young: And then we don't have to change the ratios, and then we can we can help all those people who are hearing deregulation immediately panic, who are thinking, oh, they're now going to allow 14 to 1, you know, in an age group that shouldn't be 14 to 1.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: And I think I think this goes back to two owners being smart enough to say, I don't have to do that.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Minimum requirement to do that.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I can I can these are the minimum criteria I can do it.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think if we think about it and frame it in the world of regulatory reform, the idea that we're getting rid of duplicative nonsense, then that's where we can really make the change.
32:47
Kate Woodward Young: Well, that's where you look at the state of Texas and the fact that we have four agencies that all have to get together to have this conversation.
32:52
Kate Woodward Young: I'm just saying we might be doing a whole lot of good if we can get it down to one, maybe two agencies, right?
32:58
Kate Woodward Young: I think Billy needs five.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: I have to be honest, I think we're headed that way.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: I think um uh I think it will be a long process, but I think we're headed in that way.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we're the only state.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: I think there are many states who've made some really good decisions about streamlining where these are.
33:12
Kate Woodward Young: We've also got some states that have made even worse decisions than Texas.
33:15
Kate Woodward Young: So I wouldn't say that we're at the bottom, but we're pretty low.
33:18
Kate Woodward Young: Um because if they make those bad mistakes, what will we have to talk about all the time?
33:25
Kate Woodward Young: I don't know.
33:25
Kate Woodward Young: I'd have no podcast because, you know, uh when Carrie and I started the podcast in 2019, we were just kind of doing our own little soapbox thing.
33:33
Kate Woodward Young: And then, well, March 2020 rolls around and we had a whole lot to say for about nine months.
33:38
Kate Woodward Young: And not that we've ever not had enough to say, so anybody who knows us is probably laughing going, you two could talk literally for six years, and we have.
33:45
Kate Woodward Young: So uh with that, um, if you are listening to this and you don't already have your ticket to Texas AYC conference that is coming up November 4th, 5th, and 6th.
33:55
Kate Woodward Young: No, November 5th, 6th, and 7th?
33:57
Kate Woodward Young: Yes, there we go.
33:58
Kate Woodward Young: Fifth, 6th, and 7th in Round Rock, Texas, which is near Austin, Texas.
34:02
Kate Woodward Young: Always an excuse to come to Austin.
34:04
Kate Woodward Young: Bring your family, come down to Kalahari.
34:06
Kate Woodward Young: I will tell you, you need to absolutely come to Leadership Day, which is Thursday, because you know the keynote speakers are pretty awesome.
34:12
Kate Woodward Young: Um, I know a couple of them.
34:15
Kate Woodward Young: I know a couple of them, and I think they are pretty fabulous.
34:19
Kate Woodward Young: So, um, yeah, so if you didn't catch that, that's Carrie and I.
34:22
Kate Woodward Young: And we would love to see you guys Thursday at Leadership Day at the Texas AUYC conference.
34:27
Kate Woodward Young: And I have to ask, Mary, because I, you know, having done enough of these national AUYC conferences that are local, so not the NAUYC, but I'm pretty sure isn't Texas like the largest AUYC conference in the country with its 1,500 to 1,800 participants?
34:44
Kate Woodward Young: Yes, actually, it is one of the larger ones.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we hope to be the largest always, right?
34:49
SPEAKER_00: Because uh, you know, Texas, bigger.
34:50
Kate Woodward Young: Gotta love, gotta love Texas.
34:52
Kate Woodward Young: And actually, some years we even beat out NAEYC.
34:55
Kate Woodward Young: So um, if you're looking for place to God's ears, always.
35:00
Kate Woodward Young: Um, I I was trying really hard.
35:01
Kate Woodward Young: So if you are a neighboring state, if you are listening to this and you're like, well, I've always wanted an excuse to come to Austin, Texas.
35:07
Kate Woodward Young: Here's your excuse.
35:08
Kate Woodward Young: You do not have to live in Texas to come to Texas AUYC.
35:12
Kate Woodward Young: Um, the the leadership day on Thursday is awesome.
35:15
Kate Woodward Young: There's all kinds of great tracks.
35:16
Kate Woodward Young: There's higher ed, there's outdoor, there's business.
35:19
Kate Woodward Young: Um, and then Friday and Saturday, more awesome keynotes and more awesome workshops.
35:26
Kate Woodward Young: 200 workshops or more.
35:27
Kate Woodward Young: Uh, absolutely no excuse as an owner, as an operator, as a director.
35:32
Kate Woodward Young: Uh, bring your staff.
35:33
Kate Woodward Young: Uh, again, load everybody into that school van, drive them up.
35:36
Kate Woodward Young: I've got folks literally coming from, okay, now, so if you don't understand Texas geography, it is 12 hours from El Paso to Austin.
35:45
Kate Woodward Young: It's only nine hours for us to get to Nashville.
35:47
Kate Woodward Young: So, all you folks in Tennessee, y'all can drive the same distance as our Texas folks drive to come here.
35:53
Kate Woodward Young: Uh, we would love to have all the neighboring states, New Mexico come on over, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama.
36:00
Kate Woodward Young: I mean, heck, you Florida folks, you guys are still those panhandle folks, panhandle folks.
36:04
Kate Woodward Young: Well, of course, this year y'all are in Jacksonville.
36:06
Kate Woodward Young: So you hopefully you went to Jacksonville.
36:09
Kate Woodward Young: Um, if you didn't go to Jacksonville, drive on over to Texas.
36:11
Kate Woodward Young: Uh, we'd love to have you, and we hope that you all will come and join us at the Texas AUYC conference.
36:16
Kate Woodward Young: I know that at the time we recorded this, there was still space.
36:19
Kate Woodward Young: And I have this feeling Mary would figure out if you told them, but Kate told me I needed to come.
36:24
Kate Woodward Young: And I heard her and Mary, so I really want to come.
36:26
Kate Woodward Young: Um, I'm sure we'd figure out how to find you a C.
36:29
Kate Woodward Young: And with that, um, all of Mary's contact information, her LinkedIn page is um in the show notes.
36:36
Kate Woodward Young: Um, and if you haven't followed her on LinkedIn, you really need to.
36:39
Kate Woodward Young: She's got some great thought-provoking conversation on her LinkedIn profile, and it's the only place in social media you will find her.
36:48
Kate Woodward Young: So for the next episode.
36:52
Kate Woodward Young: And with that, we can't wait to talk to you guys in our next conversation.
37:01
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