Sponsors (2)
Official title: To establish competitive Federal grants that will empower community colleges and minority-serving institutions to become incubators for infant and toddler child care talent, training, and access on their campuses and in their communities, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 10, 2025 by Jahana Hayes · Last progress April 10, 2025
The bill expands campus-based infant/toddler care, workforce supports, and targeted student-parent aid—helping hundreds of thousands of student-parents and improving care quality—but does so with sizable federal costs, new administrative and privacy burdens, and risks of uneven access or strain on smaller providers and state budgets.
Student-parents at community colleges and minority-serving institutions gain access to free, high-quality infant/toddler child care for up to 500,000 children, reducing barriers to enrollment, completion, and postgraduation debt.
The bill provides a substantial federal investment to build campus-based child care capacity and a workforce pipeline (including $9 billion FY2026–2030), increasing local childcare infrastructure at community colleges and MSIs.
Improved workforce supports — higher wages to parity with elementary educators, microgrants for students in early childhood programs, practicum/lab-school upgrades, and expanded training/mentorship — should raise job quality, retention, and the supply of qualified early childhood educators.
Expanding free child care, wage parity, microgrants, and new campus investments substantially increases federal spending and could add to deficits or require offsets (higher taxes or reallocated budgets).
Grant competition, per-institution limits, and reserved priority slots for student-parents risk leaving some high-need institutions, rural areas, faculty/staff, or community families without sufficient access to campus child care.
Compliance, reporting, and data-privacy requirements create administrative burdens and costs for community colleges and MSIs; anonymization/suppression rules may limit useful disaggregated evaluation, and lab-school observation/recording raises privacy concerns for families and staff.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Creates grants to expand infant/toddler campus child care and educator training at community colleges/MSIs, revises CCDBG matching rules, and adds dependent‑care guidance to College Navigator.
Creates a federal grant program to expand access to infant and toddler child care on public community college and minority‑serving institution (MSI) campuses, boost and diversify the infant/toddler early‑childhood workforce, and support related postsecondary training. It also revises federal child‑care rules and matching incentives in the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program and adds dependent‑care information to college cost‑of‑attendance consumer tools. The bill funds curriculum, faculty, lab‑school upgrades, student microgrants, and partnerships with local high schools and 4‑year institutions; requires annual reporting and consultation with advisory committees; expands CCDBG definitions and creates a higher Federal match for states that pay infant/toddler care at least 75% of market rates; and requires the Department of Education to include dependent care allowance guidance on College Navigator pages.