During its first five years, these efforts led to the creation of child care for 2,000 additional families. And 86 percent of Rochester's three and four-year olds are now in child care, up from less than 35 percent in 1989. Lancaster Laboratories, a company with 600 employees, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania opened an on-site child care center in 1986. As a consequence, the company doesn't have to retrain and doesn't have to hire and train new workers to replace workers who don't come back to their firms. And as a consequence of that, the benefits to the company exceed the cost of operating the child care center.
Most small businesses encounter significant barriers with respect to running their own programs.
And this is an area I think that we need to look at, and we need to find solutions to those problems. By identifying and publicizing programs such as those that I have just described, we can spread that kind of success elsewhere. I'm very pleased to take the lead in the program that the President announced in his remarks by calling together a private sector working group to explore the problems of child care for working parents and to identify and publicize best practices that deserve greater attention. Addressing these issues can contribute not only to the lives of working parents and children but also to business profitability and to the well-being of our economy in the new global economy where it is imperative that every American be enabled to work up to his or her potential so that we can be productive and competitive and successful. Thank you very much.