The state has put a lot of money into the hands of providers, the large and small family day cares and centers. Without this money, many of us would not have survived. Indeed, the money from the Paycheck Protection Program grants and the Delaware Early Education and Child Care Stabilization Fund are the only things that are keeping early-childhood care limping along.
Simply put, parents need care.
Parents need to work, and they need someone or someplace to “put” their children, so that they can work. The biggest issue is a simple one. There just aren’t enough workers. It’s not a matter of not enough qualified teachers, but literally not enough people for day cares to meet ratios. In my center, I have “solved” that problem by not enrolling new children. And even then, at one point, we closed for three days because I had too many staff out sick and couldn’t cover classrooms.
A lot of businesses are experiencing worker problems. Child care is a bit different, however. We operate on strict ratios; staff have to be specially trained and have federal background checks. Frankly, this is not a new problem. We are in crisis now because of issues over the last several years. This is a problem we knew about, and the pandemic has only exacerbated it into crisis proportions.
I wrote above that parents need a place to put their children. Of course, everyone wants more than just a holding facility, but the basic need of parents who MUST go out to work each day has taken a back seat to state and federal movements to transform our little businesses from caring for children to mini-schools, which need to meet curricula standards, so that children get good jobs when they grow up. The mantra that “in the first five years of life, the child’s brain develops more and faster than at any other time in his life” has been drummed into the heads of legislators and noneducators to the point that voting for stricter child care regulations is virtually the only thing that gets 100% backing by both political parties.
Long-term day care workers wistfully say to each other, “Remember when this used to be fun?” Younger workers don’t even realize that their primary purpose is really to keep children safe and happy. And if day care isn’t fun, what are we doing?
The purpose is to have them more than ready for kindergarten, and kindergarten teachers will tell you, in an honest and anonymous context, that kindergarten standards are too high for most children. So standards have been pushed down to the preschool level. It isn’t even mentioned that almost half of children do not attend preschool, and when statistics are collected, it is those children who fall to the bottom of the academic ladder.
The number and types of regulations have skyrocketed over the last several years.
Annual licensing renewals involve unannounced inspections, and 100% compliance is required to receive a renewal. What other business works this way? Examples of citations include the renewal application not being received 60 days before license expiration; water on a playground (after a snowstorm turned into a severe downpour); weekly lesson plans for 1-year-olds missing a science activity or a social-emotional activity or a healthy-habits activity; removing of all of the fallen leaves from the playground; lack of supervision of children when two children were playing under a table, etc., etc. Parents must receive and sign right-to-know notices when they tour and when they complete paperwork for the child’s file, and also sign a rolling log.
This notice informs parents of the phone number by which they can call in a complaint. Since regulations are often changed, the parent and staff handbooks have had to be updated every year, also. Teachers and administrators are in constant training just to stay on top of them. The average worker has a high school education, plus 120 hours for certification as teacher, and earns about $25,000 a year. Respect for these extraordinary caretakers is abysmal. They are constantly blamed for not having children “ready for kindergarten.”
The state and the federal government have finally decided that something must be done about the low salaries of child care staff. Their solution up until now has been to increase opportunities for training, and indeed, one of the new Delaware requirements will be stricter qualifications. They have finally made laudable strides towards what they feel staff should be earning, but the path to accomplishing this is not entirely clear.
No matter how much education is attained by staff, providers are not going to be able to charge parents more. Child care is one of the lowest-profit businesses in the country. It cannot support higher wages, and neither can parents pay more. When staff members do complete higher degrees, they leave for public schools, where their compensation is two to three times day care wages and they receive benefits.
At this time, we have poorly paid staff who are asked to work long hours for a basically minimum-wage job with no benefits but lots of training requirements in a high-stress work environment with very little respect paid to their talents.
Is anyone surprised that there are not enough people going into this field? How many of the above conditions will need to change before it actually becomes a profession? How much has to change before young people feel that this is a field where they can grow and develop a career instead of just being a stopgap for them, while they are working on other life challenges?
And even if these are met, how long will it take before we have the numbers of workers we need for this profession?
I love this field. I have worked in it for almost 40 years. But I do not encourage young people to go into it. In 40 years, the field has only gotten less rewarding.
Connie Merlet is the director of a child care center and serves on the Provider Advisory Board. She lives in Newark.
