Daycares still struggling to find workers 2 years into pandemic
Earlier this month, Juliet Blackenberry opened the double doors to the common play area at City Kids Preschool and Daycare for a small group of toddlers who had just woken up from their naps.
Some of the kids stayed behind with toddler teacher Tracy Dabney, but one girl wanted Blackenberry’s attention. One-year-old Marlow Dyer came up to the center director and immediately latched on to her leg. Blackenberry picked the child up, with Dyer wrapping her arms around her neck.
Blackenberry is a hit with the kids and much more. Because of staffing shortages at the Arena District daycare, Blackenberry does it all — preparing lunch, covering for teachers in the classroom and covering potty breaks.
But Blackenberry doesn’t mind the extra time she gets to interact with the children.
“It gets me out of the office, and I get to spend some time with the kids and with other teachers,” she said. “It’s really important for directors to do that. Pre-COVID, I always had a great relationship with my kids, but now I have lots of excuses to go into the classroom to hang out, so it’s definitely good.”
Hit hard by the pandemic, the child-care industry is still in disarray almost two years later in Columbus and across the country. Challenges for providers include workers leaving the industry, the struggle to find enough teachers and enrollment staying stubbornly below pre-pandemic numbers.
Parents — especially mothers — are having to delay going back to work because there’s no one to watch their children as providers have families on wait lists. According to The Washington Post, nearly 1.6 million moms of children under 17 are still missing from the labor force. They left work during the pandemic, many to care for children, and have not been able to return due to the delta variant and rising case numbers in schools.
The child care industry is down 126,700 workers nationwide, which is more than a 10% decline from pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. In addition, more than 10,000 workers have left the industry since June.
In Ohio, 76% of daycare centers are experiencing staffing shortages, said a September survey from the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Forty-four percent of programs impacted by staffing shortages are serving fewer children; 40% have a longer waitlist; 36% are unable to open classrooms; and 19% have reduced their operating hours.
The Columbus metro area had an average of 9,257 child-care workers in 2019, said economist Bill LaFayette, owner of Columbus-based economic consulting firm Regionomics. In 2020, that number was 7,547. Statewide, there was an average of 34,677 childcare workers in 2019 and 29,031 workers in 2020.
Daycare centers slowly getting back to business
Blackenberry, 49, has been a director at City Kids since 1997. The childcare center serves infants and toddlers and has a preschool program for kids ages 4 and 5.
City Kids currently has eight teachers, with two of them only working parttime, Blackenberry said. Before the pandemic, the center was fully staffed. However, Blackenberry could not bring back all of her staff when City Kids reopened in June 2020 because of the decline in enrollment. About 20 children returned, compared to the 80 kids the center was serving pre-pandemic.
“Our parents work in the Arena District, at Nationwide and AEP and other businesses, and they were working from home fulltime,” Blackenberry said. “They don’t live down here for the most part, so it’s not convenient bringing them down here.”
However, enrollment is beginning to rebound, with about 40 children attending City Kids now. Blackenberry has hired three teachers since the pandemic and is looking to hire another one. She said she has increased the pay rate for the position to around $15 an hour in an effort to recruit more applicants.
“It can be a challenge,” Blackenberry said. “A lot of people apply ... but they don’t have the experience at all.”
City Kids has raised tuition once during the pandemic, in August 2020, and Blackenberry said she usually increases rates a little each year. Parents pay between $240 a week and $340 a week per child for infants and toddlers. Tuition for preschool is $240.
‘A continued struggle’ for daycare centers to hire, retain workers
The biggest reason why providers are having a difficult time hiring and retaining workers is the low pay in the industry. In May 2020, the median hourly wage for child care workers was $12.24, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The median wage for the Columbus metropolitan area in 2020 was $12.47 per hour and $25,930 for the year.
“Part of the reason why this sector hasn’t come back is that pay is really low and you cannot socially distance. You’ve got the same problem you’ve got with restaurants,” said LaFayette.
“I’ve never understood why we pay people we entrust with the care of small children a lousy wage.”
Another obstacle facing child-care providers is closures. Research by childcare resource and referral agency Action for Children has found one out of five child-care providers in Greater Columbus anticipates closing in the next three months, CEO Eric Karolak said. In addition, about 56% of providers have monthly revenue that does not cover expenses, and nearly half of providers are losing more than $5,000 a month.
“We talk to child-care providers every day in many programs, and we’re not hearing it get any easier, that this is a continued struggle,” he said.
Karolak contributes this to a lack of recognition, respect and rewards for workers.
“Child-care teachers are brain builders, and every family that goes to work and uses child-care depends on them, and so does every one of their employers,” Karolak said. “And yet, this workforce doesn’t get a lot of respect. It’s there every day for us, and the pay is not what it should be.”
Losing workers to other industries
Like Karolak, Sharon Ward does not believe early childhood education is prioritized. The director of the Little Tigers Preschool and Childcare Center in Pickerington is facing similar issues as City Kids, where enrollment is down and the center struggling to find people to fill open positions.
Ward said she has 20 teachers and about 102 children, which is near pre-pandemic levels for the center. Little Tigers serves toddlers and children from ages 18 months to 10 years old, or until they reach fourth grade.
The Pickerington resident said she has been trying to fill a full-time teacher position for six months. In addition, Ward is looking for a bus driver and a couple of substitute teachers.
“We have ads on Facebook, we have ads on Indeed and any of those recruiter kinds of websites,” she said. “And we just don’t get a response. Or, they’ll call, set up an interview and then never show up.”
Ward is also frustrated about the delay in background checks for new hires. She said it can take between 45 and 50 days for them to be approved by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ward said staffing shortages and the slow process of the background checks are causing her to place kids on a waiting list.
“I think we’ve lost staff to other industries because (of ) the historically low pay for early childhood,” she said. “They can work at Amazon for $18 or $20 an hour.”