Letters to the editor July 14

Funding for child care

Child care providers are not compensated fairly for their essential work creating a workforce shortage within the child care industry. As many as 73% of Montana households with young children require some form of child care arrangement away from home to allow for all available wage earners to earn a paycheck (University of Montana, 2020).

While essential, skilled and educated, child care providers only earn an average of $11.19 per hour, qualifying most of the workforce for a variety of state assistance such as SNAP benefits and Medicare (Kids Count, 2021). With such low wages, the child care industry is unable to attract and retain a qualified workforce, decreasing the availability of child care, leading to parents/guardians being forced to quit their job or reduce their hours.

Because expertise and education is similar to that of kindergarten teachers earning an average of $22.13 per hour, child care providers deserve pay parity (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). Only with appropriate compensation, will licensed child care supply be able to meet the staggering demand in our state.

Director of Happy Trails Daycare and Preschool, Stevie Wayland, recently shared with Raise Montana that as costs increase, accessibility for families decreases, “early childhood educators deserve higher wages, but those higher wages can’t come from charging parents more” forcing directors to decrease their programs’ overall capacity.

It is important to notify your local legislators to support funding for child care and child care providers. Thank your child care provider today.

— Maggie Toole, Lolo

E-bike’s big lie

The new e-bikes with peddle-assist electric motors say you can get 75% as much of a workout on an e-bike as you can on a regular bike. Translated, that says you have to spend 25% more time on the e-bike in order to get exactly the same amount of exercise that you would gain on a regular bike.

How is adding more time to one’s exercise program going to encourage anyone to do that?

Worst still, they advertise that it helps you get up the steep hills ... but that is exactly where the exercise is on a bicycle. Riding around on a flat highway waving at people does nothing. Huffing and puffing up a challenging hill is everything. That is exactly where you get your cardio vascular workout on a bicycle.

It doesn’t matter if you are 80 years old, just starting, or only go a mile. E-bikes make an extravagant claim for exercise, then hand you an engineering principal that robs you of it at every turn. Why spend $3,000 on an e-bike, go to all the trouble to exercise, and then don’t get it ...duh!

— Ed Dramer, Kalispell