“Selma Sanchez spent the summer in a hiring frenzy. She’s the program director of the Child Development Consortium of Los Angeles (CDCLA), and at one of the preschool sites, almost all of the jobs needed to be filled.

“ ‘In July we lost our director,’ Sanchez said. ‘June and July – we lost three teachers.’

“Most of the staff left to work at a Head Start center that’s recently opened nearby – the federal preschool program pays slightly better than her state subsidized program. One lead teacher left the preschool in Canoga Park after 10 years, for a job as a teacher’s aide at Head Start – fewer responsibilities, more pay.”

“ ‘People who are trying to run these programs are tearing their hair out,’ said Marcy Whitebook, who runs the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.”

“Whitebook, who’s spent decades studying child care employment issues, lays out a simple case for higher wages: ‘If the science says the brain is most sensitive in these early years, and if we know every community has child care centers, and if we can be reasonably assured the robots are not gonna take over this area of work, then why aren’t we making this a middle class job?’ ”

“It’s getting even harder to hire early childhood educators,” KPCC Radio, October 30, 2017