UnidosUS Comments on Identifying and Tracking Data Related to Early Childhood Education (ECE) Providers for the purpose of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)

UnidosUS submitted comments on the request for information on Identifying and Tracking Data Related to Early Childhood Education (ECE) Providers for the purpose of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) strongly supporting expanding the eligibility of PSLF to all ECE providers regardless of their employer’s tax status.

This is crucial for the ECE workforce, and will highly impact Latinas, as they make up a little over a fifth of childcare workers. This workforce is also chronically underpaid and would greatly benefit from debt relief. ECE workers earn a median of $11.65 per hour, and Latina child care workers earn even less with a median hourly wage of $10.87. This causes a high turnover in the ECE workers that makes it difficult for programs to hire and retain their staff.

Many of these Latino early educators work in home-based and for-profit settings that are currently ineligible for PSLF. Expanding eligibility would promote equity and diversity in the ECE field. This would also improve access to high-quality, culturally and linguistically responsive ECE programs that can serve dual language learners (DLLs).

unidosus_identifyingandtrackingdatarelatedtoeceprovidersforthepurposeofpslf.pdf