Pictured above, from left, are state Assemblymen Andy Goodell, R-Jamestown, Beth Starks, Chautauqua Lake Child Care Center founder and executive director, U.S. Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning, and Sara Zampogna, A Children’s Place Daycare Center director, on Tuesday afternoon in Jamestown. P-J photo by Jay Young

U.S. Rep. Tom Reed, R-Corning, and state Assemblymen Andy Goodell, R-Jamestown, participated in a tour of A Children’s Place Daycare Center at First Presbyterian Church on Tuesday and discussed solutions to local child care issues.

Reed and Goodell spoke with Sara Zampogna, director of A Children’s Place, and Chautauqua Lake Child Care Center founder and Executive Director Beth Starks, who also serves on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Child Care Task Force.

In a June 8 letter, Reed requested that the governor expedite the distribution of federal funding given to the state for child care programs, including $164 million in Child Care Development Block Grants.

Goodell has also spent time working to ensure that federal funding allocated during the COVID-19 pandemic reach the organizations most in need. In a letter dated May 12, Goodell requested that Cuomo “please expedite the release of the remaining $133.4 million in federal child care funding in a manner consistent with the recommendations of your Child Care Task Force headed by Sheila Poole, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, and Roberta Readon, commissioner of labor.”

While concerns about child care funding, reimbursment, availability and staff compensation have increased as a result of COVID-19, many of the problems discussed on Tuesday have persisted for years and require long-term solutions.

In the short-term, Reed is committed to delivering federal assistance funds to child care providers.

“We have to get the money that is supposed to be delivered to these folks out of the state, that has already been delivered to the governor’s office and he is sitting on it for cash-flow purposes,” Reed said. “I get that, I understand his crisis, but why he would put these local child care operators in harm’s way because of his own problem just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Zampogna and Starks briefed those in attendance on the day-to-day operations of local child care facilities, including how state funding is used to offset staff salaries and other costs.

“Not only is there a crisis, today, that we have to make sure we address with additional funding, but I do appreciate the hard work that Beth and others are doing in regards to coming up with a long-term model that is going to reform child care and use this crisis to come out on the other end of it stronger,” Reed said.

“That is what we have to do, this is not a sustainable model and our children deserve better than this. We can do it, but it is going to take all of us working. Public-private partnerships, all entities, all hands on deck working together to solve this.”

Starks and other members of the Child Care Task Force have looked at a variety of solutions to child care funding issues, which have become more pressing due to budget shortfalls during the pandemic.

“That’s why we have good guys like Andy Goodell, as a state partner with George Borrello and others, they are focusing on this issue and with their help the federal and state and local governments will come together to fix this I hope,” Reed said. “These folks should not be stressed out any more than they have already been stressed out, and that shouldn’t be what is happening in our state capitol. Additional money is necessary, this is a crisis that impacts everyone and we’re going to advocate as we go forward. Then, hopefully long-term, we come up with some reforms that put a sustainable model together.”