Diane Barber, executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association, called the expanded tax credit “a wonderful thing for families.” But she and other child care advocates and experts said it doesn’t fix the staffing issues providers face.

“While we can reduce the costs for families, it only helps if they can actually find some place for their children to go,” Barber told Spotlight PA.

What the governor is proposing

State funding for two major child care line items has already increased, partially making up for a decline in federal revenue, according to a March report from the state’s Independent Fiscal Office. But overall funding is still down from the height it reached during the pandemic.

And the report noted uncertainties remain for the industry, including whether providers can maintain the wages they increased during the pandemic.

Shapiro’s administration has highlighted how one relatively small increase in his budget proposal — $96,000 in state funds — would allow the state to leverage $62 million in federal funds to increase reimbursement rates for providers in the state’s subsidized child care program. The new rates would be at a federally recommended benchmark, the administration has said.

“We’re very hopeful that this is something that is included in the final budget,” Secretary of Human Services Valerie Arkoosh said during a state Senate budget hearing in March. “It will be extremely important to these child care providers. It will allow them to increase salaries if they wish. It will put more money in their budgets and money they can count on.”

But child care advocates say the proposed higher rates aren’t enough. Barber of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association told Spotlight PA the money for higher reimbursement rates will help providers keep their “lights on, but it’s not going to be able to empower programs to increase staff salaries substantially or to provide benefits.”

The administration has declined to say whether it supports the $284 million proposal from advocates. Department of Human Services spokesperson Brandon Cwalina told Spotlight PA the administration is “happy to work with the General Assembly to review and consider specific proposals that invest in child care.”

But he said the administration anticipates raising reimbursement rates “will create a more stable business environment for child care providers and ensure equal access to child care services,” and that both reimbursement rates and child care worker pay have increased in recent years.

Child care workers would also benefit from the governor’s proposed minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, Arkoosh told lawmakers. And she said the budget plan includes additional funding to help child care providers reach that level should lawmakers raise the minimum wage.

Representatives for the party caucuses in the state legislature expressed support for child care. But they did not commit to a specific funding level.

Stefano, of the Early Childhood Education Caucus, said he wants to see more investment in child care and early education beyond what the governor has proposed. But he said there are unknowns, including how much money lawmakers will decide to spend on K-12 education.

Another co-chair of the caucus, state Sen. Judy Schwank (D., Berks), said she supports the $284 million proposal from advocates.

“Will we get all of it? I’m not so sure,” Schwank told Spotlight PA. “But I’d sure like to see something.”

So would Zelinsky at the Doodle Bug.

“If there was something that would take a little bit of stress off of me, it would be different because I can’t imagine my life doing anything else,” she said. “I would take every one of these kids home with me. That’s what makes me stay.”

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds the powerful to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania.

The Graduate Employees Together University of Pennsylvania, or GET-UP, is behind the drive to affiliate with the United Auto Workers, which often represents student  worker unions.

The union election was scheduled for mid-April but was delayed after the University of Pennsylvania tried to exclude several hundred student workers through the National Labor Relations Board appeal process, but the university failed.

There are about 4,000 eligible graduate student worker voters. There were 1,807 workers who voted in favor of the union, 97 voted against it and there were 417 challenged ballots.

The ultimate size of the union will likely be several thousand workers, but the exact number is expected to fluctuate depending on when student workers graduate or their appointments end.

The university is waiting for official certification of the results by the National Labor Relations Board but recognizes the union election’s unofficial results.

“At Penn, we engage as a community to advance what is important to us all — a dynamic and supportive academic environment,” said Ron Ozio, a spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania, in a statement. “We look forward to working with representatives from the UAW to continue this important mission for Penn’s graduate and professional students.”

Graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania earn a minimum stipend of $38,000 during the academic year. The biggest increase happened in the past year, when the minimum stipend increased by $8,000.

The university estimates the value of its funding packages for Ph.D. students, which include scholarships to cover tuition and fees, stipends, medical insurance and gym memberships, is $88,244.

Graduate students typically spend about six years working towards their Ph.D. degrees, which means there’ll be turnover in union members.

Dozens of student workers have already graduated in the past four years, but organizers say there’s more behind them ready to step up.

“We’re always bringing in new worker organizers who are in their first or second year. It’s really important for the long-term health of the union at Penn to do that,” Schirvar said.

Nationwide, colleges rely more on graduate student worker labor, said Celine McNicholas, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington D.C.

“Universities have increasingly shifted teaching duties away from those 10-year-track faculty onto graduate students, adjuncts and instructors,” McNicholas said. “That leaves a large portion of the research and teaching at some of the most prestigious universities really being done by folks who are there pursuing their own education.”

There were two previous unionization efforts by GET-UP at the University of Pennsylvania that were not successful.

In 2003, the first unionization effort at the University of Pennsylvania died after the National Labor Relations Board ruled against graduate student unions at private universities. At the time, the federal agency was overseen by the Bush administration.

In 2017, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that all graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania — including those in the business and engineering schools — should be eligible to vote.

By 2018, GET-UP withdrew its union petition during the Trump administration as a strategic move.

Now Trump is on the presidential ballot again this November. It’s unclear what the National Labor Relations Board under Trump may do. But in the past, it ruled against private university student worker unionization efforts. If the University of Pennsylvania and GET-UP don’t ink a contract before those changes, the union could have little recourse about a lack of bargaining in good faith.

But graduate student workers do have some leverage as the lynchpin of the university academic workforce.

“It’s not like Starbucks where you can just close the coffee shop or fire all the baristas and hire more people off the street,” said Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology and labor students at the City University of New York. “Graduate students are highly skilled and not that easily replaced. So that doesn’t mean [the university] won’t drag it out, but that they have some leverage.”

There’s been much more stress about student debt and fewer tenure track jobs waiting for graduate student workers when they graduate.

“That’s been building up for a long time but it’s getting worse,” Milkman said.