CONNECTICUT, USA — Pandemic-era funding that temporarily propped up the child care industry has officially been spent. Reports have claimed there’s a child care crisis in the United States. Connecticut early childhood advocates say they’ve been sounding the alarm for years.
When the Breaux family moved to Connecticut from Georgia, one of the first orders of business was securing childcare for their 2-year-old daughter.
“They’d say, ‘You know, our waitlist looks like nine to 12 months,’” said Sara Breaux, a mom of five from Plymouth. “Especially the larger ones, but some of the home daycares were like, ‘Maybe by March we’ll have an opening for you.’ But I need an opening today.”
The Breaux family isn't alone. For many American families, the story sounds too familiar.
Allyx Schiavone is the executive director of Friends Center for Children, which serves 122 families in New Haven.
“We are a childcare desert in New Haven,” said Schiavone. “Infant, toddler is a childcare desert across the whole state.”
Early learning and childcare refers to care for children from birth through age five, or before children reach kindergarten. Schiavone also serves as the co-chair of Childcare for Connecticut’s Future Coalition. She knows the industry well.
“We were in crisis prior to the pandemic, but we were functioning,” she said. “It’s hard to even say functioning. We were operating because we believe in it and we know what’s best for children.”
Rep. Mary Welander is on the Children and Education Committees in Connecticut’s General Assembly. Welander attended the White House Childcare Summit recently in Washington D.C. to discuss ideas to improve childcare with 90 other American lawmakers.
“People are now going to be facing either trying to find something that isn’t the best fit for their child OR is exorbitantly more expensive or they stay home,” said Rep. Welander. “Typically, the smaller [childcare centers] that already are in dire need of care, those are going to be closing or cutting back, which means they can only accept a smaller number of children.”
“Some people are paying $30,000 a year for childcare for one child. That’s insane!” said Rep. Welander.
Merrill Gay is the executive director for CT Early Childhood Alliance, an organization that advocates for improving childcare and education for young children in Connecticut. His work includes making sure quality childcare is equitable for all families. The alliance also works with providers to determine their needs.
“Tuition-based programs have raised their tuition almost 30% in the past three years,” said Gay. “There’s a limit to what parents can afford to pay.”
Sara Breaux has seen the prices increase firsthand.
“I have a 13-year-old and [child care costs] have definitely doubled,” she said. “It used to be $110 a week. Now, you’re not going to find that anywhere.”
The increasing price of childcare all comes back to staffing and a desperate need for early childhood educators.
“About two-thirds of the programs are either in the red or just hovering at breaking even right now,” said Merrill Gay, whose office conducted that study.
If child care centers can’t staff classrooms, they can’t accept more children. If they can’t accept more children, they’re missing out on precious tuition money to keep the whole center up and running. Wages for early childhood educators have historically been low, but with state unemployment at a low, the competition is even tougher.
“We can’t find educators who are willing to make $5 less than they would if they went to Amazon or Target,” said Schiavone.
The average salary for a full-time early childhood educator with a degree is $34,500 a year. These teachers who are predominantly women are barely making more than minimum wage.
“They’re feeding, bathing, teaching. Plus, they have to keep eyes out for signs of abuse,” said Welander, who used to work for a daycare in New Hampshire years ago. “There are just all of these levels that go into this line of work that I think people are not aware of and don’t value. This is typical of work that is done by women.”
If child care centers have to close classrooms, moms and dads will be forced to make the tough decisions about going back to work or staying home. Welander said, that often means women are kept out of the workforce.
“I stayed home for 13 years with my kids, but that puts me at a very distinct disadvantage in that I’ve lost 13 years of income,” said Welander. “I didn’t put away for my own retirement. I didn’t have a savings. I haven’t been able to step up on the income ladder. That happens to so many people and mostly women. That has a lifetime of impact.”
Schiavone said a lot of pressure falls on educators to bear the burden of supporting all parents to get back into the workforce.
“We should not expect them to work for poverty-level wages to support and subsidize the entire Connecticut economy,” she said. “If we’re going to raise wages, we’re going to have to then charge parents or we have to get subsidies from the state or federal government.”
Connecticut has the Care 4 Kids program that does subsidize childcare, but parents and advocates say the wait list is long. Gay said the threshold for who qualifies squeezes out a whole group of parents who make too much on paper, but not enough to comfortably afford care.
“We ask parents when they have the least wealth to spend a huge amount of money, it just doesn’t make sense,” Gay said.
Schiavone’s child care center, the Friends Center for Children, offers free housing for some of its educators as part of an employee benefit. The initiative started in 2021 after the center surveyed its teachers and found all but one of them couldn’t afford a home. Those who had apartments reported that rent was their highest cost.
“We asked, ‘How do we raise teacher salaries without raising parent tuition?’” And we realized it was really an impossible question to ask,” Schiavone said. “So, we realized we wanted to tackle rent and we wanted to remove that obstacle for teachers.”
Connecticut is ahead of some states because it offers the Cares 4 Kids program and has an Office of Early Childhood, which some states don’t have. The OEC works to address the needs of parents, providers and communities in regards to early learning.
In March 2023, Gov. Ned Lamont signed an executive order, instructing the OEC to come up with a five-year plan to address the state’s childcare challenges, calling it the Blue Ribbon Panel. The office has been hosting listening sessions and roundtables and has until December of 2023 to come up with their report.
Watch the full interview with Rep. Welander below:
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