I created three HeadsUp! Montessori Preschools in the Bay Area in the mid-1980s and have been managing them ever since. There is one easy remedy that would instantly make child care 25%-40% more affordable for working families: make child care a federal and state tax-deductible expense for those families where the parents must have it to be able to work. In other words, it would be like tools or a uniform, an unreimbursed (by the employer) business expense.

Naysayers will argue that wealthier families get a bigger tax break, but the reality is that they are typically also paying a higher proportion of their net income for taxes, so it is not really "unfair." Making child care a free public good for everyone creates a larger tax burden for all taxpayers. Alternatively, if wealthier families either opted out of public child care (as some do for public schools) or were ineligible for public child care (as with Head Start programs), it would allow the available funds to be meted out to fewer children, thereby increasing the quality (and teacher compensation) for the public programs.

--Chuck Bernstein, Ph.D.
444 Oak Court, Menlo Park