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enterprise THE DAVIS
SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2023
California child care providers demand raises as budget deadline looms
Aggie stories
Jeanne Kuang Special to The Enterprise
UC Davis photos
Enterprise staff wrter UC Davis celebrated commencement last week. Meet eight of UCD’s graduating students with special stories: a graduate student who completed his doctoral degree while still age 19, the University Medalist, a 48-year-old fulfilling a promise to his parents, and the five student speakers for the undergraduate commencement.
Doctorate at age 19 Tanishq Mathew Abraham,
“As climate change intensifies and wildfires become more frequent and extreme, we need to protect wine-grape growers and consumers against the damage caused by prolonged smoke exposure. Wine-grape-growing regions are critical to our economy, especially in California. Growers, vintners, and consumers alike have a stake in the sustainability of winegrowing communities — these bills will help growers make informed decisions about harvesting and selling their crops,” said Padilla. “Washington state is the second-largest wine producing state in the country, creating thousands of jobs and fueling tourism across the state,” Murray SAID. “Washington is also seeing an alarming increase in wildfires
See SMOKE, Page A5
See CARE, Page A5
Student speaker Celia Sophia Mares de Juan.
Tanishq Abraham rings the ceremonial bell in Graduate Studies to signify he has earned his doctorate.
By Julia Ann Easley
Gabriela Guerrero’s children are all grown and have moved out, but the former stay-at-home mom never stopped raising kids. The children who attend her home daycare in El Centro, in Imperial County near the Mexico border, are as young as 3 months old. Some are the children of farmworkers who drop them off at Guerrero’s house before their shifts in the pre-dawn hours. Nearly all are from families poor enough to qualify for state subsidies. Many of the families can’t afford basic needs, Guerrero said, so the 57-year-old makes sure to provide their children with milk, diapers and sometimes clothes. “I want the families to go to work knowing that (their children are) well taken care of, and they’re being loved and fed correctly,” she said. Guerrero’s labor of love barely earns her a living. After paying two assistants and other costs, she figures she takes home about $3 or $4 an hour. She takes on credit card debt to keep her business going. For years family child care providers — the vast majority of them women of color — have said they don’t get paid enough by the state of California to cover the costs of their businesses. Their fight for better pay and benefits, a two-decades-old effort, is reaching a fever pitch in California’s capital this year. They’re pressing Gov. Gavin Newsom to raise their pay, and they have the Legislature on their side. Lawmakers put $1 billion for raises in their version of a state budget that they passed last week. That funding remains one of the key differences between Newsom and the Legislature as they hammer out a budget deal before July 1 that accounts for an estimated $32 billion deficit. The full cost of California child care Newsom deemed the child care industry critical to getting parents back to work and recovering the state’s economy from the pandemic. He signed legislation in 2019 allowing home child care providers like Guerrero to unionize and bargain
20, of Sacramento graduated with a doctorate of biomedical engineering — completed this spring while he was still 19 — at the Graduate Studies commencement. His sister, Tiara Abraham, was set to the national anthem at Thursday’s ceremony. She earned a bachelo’s degree in music from UC Davis last year when she was 16 and is a now a master’s student at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington. After earning three associate degrees from American River
College, 13-year-old Tanishq started studies as a transfer student at UC Davis in fall 2016. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in biomedical engineering in June 2018 and began doctoral studies that fall. His research has focused on using generative AI in microscopy and pathology. Tanishq is the founding CEO of the medical AI research center MedARC, through which he collaborates with researchers from around the world. He is author of academic papers and a book chapter, and he has won
multiple honors and awards.
Student speaker Celia Sophia Mares de Juan of Guadalajara, Mexico, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in international relations and sociology — organizational studies, with a minor in human rights. A peer advisor helping fellow students with global learning opportunities, she conducted her own research on the motivations that minority
See STORIES, Page A5
Legislation aims to protect smoke-hit vineyards Enterprise staff WASHINGTON — Reps. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash, and Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation for wine grape crop loss coverage. The bill requires the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) to carry out research and implement a crop insurance product that covers losses due to smoke exposure. “Wine grapes are essential to economies across our country, and states like California, Oregon and Washington have been disproportionately exposed to wildfires leading to smoke exposure impacting our wine grapes,” said Thompson. “Researching the impact that smoke has on our wine grapes and other crops is
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Business �����������A4 Living �����������������B4 Op-Ed �����������������B4 Comics ���������������B5 Kid Scoop ���������B8 Sports ���������������B1 Forum �����������������B2 Obituaries ���������A3 The Wary I ���������A2
essential in advancing solutions that will protect these key economic drivers from future natural disasters. Proud to work with Rep. Newhouse and Sen. Padilla to introduce legislation that strengthens crop insurance for winegrowers and helps fully capture the risks associated with growing in these smoke- and wildfire-prone states.” “Washington state’s wine industry produces some of the best wine in the nation and we need to keep it that way. Right now, the industry faces billions of dollars in losses from wildfires and smoke exposure. I am proud to co-sponsor this critical legislation that will ensure our wine grape growers and producers get the necessary funding to be resilient and continue to produce high-quality wine,” said Newhouse.
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