Local education advocates are pushing for the re-authorization of a bill that they say will improve early child care opportunities for working families across Pennsylvania.
Senator Bob Casey visited the Hansel and Gretel Early Learning Center in Harrisburg on Wednesday to talk about the Child Care and Development Block Grant. The program currently helps 55,000 families in PA pay for child care each month. If it fails to pass by the end of the year, all the work already in motion helping those families will be lost and the push for the bill will have to start over.
"I have often said that Pennsylvania doesn't wait for the future, we invent the future," Casey said, "and one of the ways to invent the best possible, brightest future for our people and for our commonwealth, is to invest in the workforce of tomorrow... in the learners, in the scientists, in the inventors of tomorrow."
The Senate is set to consider the bill on Thursday. If the bill passes, it will improve health and safety programs and add more funds to improve child care programs in the state.