OLYMPIA — Regulations and training certifications for child care and early learning providers are being rolled back in an effort to increase access for parents with preschool-age children after the state legislature unanimously passed House Bill 2556.

The bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, said he had been working on passing legislation to provide regulatory relief for child care and early learning providers for the past few years. Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bill into law on April 3.

Dent said standards put into place in recent years by the Department of Children, Youth and Families began to require certain child care and early learning providers to have a four-year degree to earn a proper certification.

According to Dent, this meant that some child care and early learning providers with 15-25 years of experience caring for and teaching young children were required to pay for and earn a bachelor’s degree to do something they had already had years of experience with.

Dent said early learning standards for preschoolers are relatively simple. Educators are expected to teach young children about numbers, the alphabet, basics of reading and socialization skills. Things that make young children “kindergarten ready,” as Dent described it.

Dent argued that a college degree may not be entirely necessary to be able to teach these subjects.

He said there was already an industry workforce shortage before the training and certification standards were raised, and that only exacerbated the problem.

Child care workers may not want to have to go to college, Dent explained, and once they pay for and attend classes, they may realize they want a different, possibly higher-paying career.

“We don’t have enough people now, and this is only going to make it worse,” said Dent about the training standards.

Rep. Chris Corry, R-Yakima, who also sponsored the bill, said lack of access to child care is not a rural or an urban issue, it is a statewide issue. He said the regulatory burden being forced on child care and early learning centers is making it difficult for providers to keep up financially.

Dent said not only is the over-regulation of these facilities making it difficult for new child care centers to be created and for existing ones to expand, but the high costs of complying with regulations are being felt by the parents who need child care services.

Corry said the regulatory rollbacks provided by HB 2556 were intended to strike a balance between maintaining quality early learning and child care and affordability for providers and parents. He said the bill allows community-based training programs and online training resources and even caps the price of these programs to prevent “price-gouging.”

The intent of the new law is to make the training and certification for child care providers more accessible and more affordable, in hopes that the child care workforce will increase and make child care more accessible and affordable for families that need it.

Dent said the demand for child care providers is so high that in some instances parents have had to put their names on waiting lists for early learning centers before their child is even born. He said the lack of licensed providers can also force parents to enroll their kids in unlicensed child care situations.

“I believe we are putting too much on our child care centers,” Dent said.