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Parent Dorian Warren walked up to the microphone on the steps of the Wilson Building and made it clear how he felt about D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal to cut about $70 million from the Early Educator Pay Equity fund, which subsidizes pay for day care and preschool teachers.
“Mayor Bowser, you’re being disrespectful,” Warren said. “I want my kids to be taught by a workforce that is well paid.”
Warren, along with several hundred child care workers and parents, spoke out at a rally Friday as the D.C. Council held a public hearing on next year’s budget.
“My program may lose quality teachers because they have no other choice but to seek employment that can afford benefits and salaries to sustain their families,” said Bridgett Hall, who runs Big Mama’s Children Center.
President of the Washington Teachers’ Union Jacqueline Pogue Lyons also attended the rally.
“I know that you all prepare our kids to come, sit, stay and learn,” she said.
Several speakers criticized the proposed child care cuts because they come as the city is budgeting and planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to renovate Capital One Arena, home of the Wizards and Capitals.
“Now the mayor’s trying to tell us that the pay equity fund is too expensive, while pouring our tax dollars into big businesses downtown,” Anne Gunderson with the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute said.
That point resonated with the crowd, as a “babies not billionaires” chant broke out during the rally.
Following the mayor’s budget proposal last month, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he won’t allow the cuts. Council member Zachary Parker said during the rally he’s on Mendelson’s side.
“The pay equity fund is a nonnegotiable in the fiscal year ’25 budget,” he said.
Council member Trayon White said during the rally, “It is our duty to honor that pay.”
The parents and child care workers said they will be back for another rally May 13, when the council holds another public hearing on the 2025 spending plan.
