Registered Childcare Providers Eligible for Grants

• Author: Michael Bordonada
• Posted: 2024-10-26

Thousands of public schools were hit hard during the pandemic in 2020, and some are still struggling nearly two years later. Many people lost their jobs and-or stopped paying their taxes in. Even though many schools were closed, teachers' salaries and the salaries of various school board and other district members are all taken care of by the taxpayers. So when there weren't any taxes, government had to extend itself. To put it all succinctly, it was a big mess. It was also a huge mess at home for a lot of people. We focused a lot of our attention in America on schools and at home, though few of us paid much attention to childcare providers at daycare and pre-schools. This industry suffered a great deal as well and only recently has there been a large grant program to help this industry. In North Dakota, supplement childcare provider grants are now open for application.

Childcare providers who are legally licensed and fully cleared to operate in the state can go online to the state government's website (NDGrowingFutures.org) to apply for a supplemental grant. This grant program is actually accepting applications all the way through August of 2022, which is basically an admission by government that this profession has been entirely overlooked. So, what they're trying to do is make up for the fact that nobody was stepping up to the plate to help childcare professionals until very recently.

It's an odd thing that so many states haven't gotten around to helping the childcare industry. This is especially true when you consider that states like North Dakota still aren't spending a single penny of their own money to offer these grants. Every single cent of this grant spending is what the state is carving out from the money the federal government gave to them through Congress's last spending bill it passed. One might think that these states would be more generous with the money that's just handed to them, but states are holding onto this money very tightly, and many are just now getting around to handing it out.

This program was just announced, and so there are a lot of details that are still left to be ironed out. What we can tell you so far is that these are specifically North Dakota grants, so any childcare facility must be licensed and fully operational within the state to receive a grant. We also know that these are one-time grants, so they're likely going to be for $10,000 or more. Though, to date, we don't know the exact amount that the grants will be for. Like most grants that follow this same sort of line, the total amount will likely fluctuate based on the size of the childcare facility and how much supplemental money is actually needed. There will be a spectrum that runs from low-end grants to the maximum amount.

Grants will be given to help cover the costs of health and safety, technology upgrades, inclusion, quality improvement, and helping start-ups to get off their feet and market their services. This is about all we know about this North Dakota initiative to date.

What Was the Hold-Up for Childcare Grants?

Any time the government spends money, it picks winning and losers. That's just how the American government operates. Whether you're a fan of this sort of action or hope that it changes, the fact remains that the American government always picks winnings and losers. This isn't just a federal government thing either; in fact, it's even truer at the state level. So, the fact of the matter is that when the pandemic hit, so too did the George Floyd controversy, and all the Antifa commotion in the streets. All of this stuff was happening at the same time. We had everything ranging from very peaceful and respectful protests to outright riots with burning buildings, looted stores, and tent cities popping up that set themselves up as "no-go" zones for police and the public. These groups were putting a lot of pressure on the government, and government threw the money in their direction first.

Long before government could even consider childcare facilities, or even personal stimulus checks, it set out on a mission to quell the frustrations of groups like Black Lives Matter. The very first round of huge grant spending that we witnessed was all directed at black-owned businesses in many states, followed closely by grants for minority communities and minority rec centers and so many other minority-based causes. Then the feminists started raising a stink about women being more affected by the pandemic than men, and so government then started throwing money at them.

You can call it "hush money," or you can believe government truly cares about these causes. That doesn't change the fact that this is where government was spending its money first. Now that much of this outrage has died down, they can start handing out money to childcare centers without people throwing bricks through windows because of it.