San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
In some places, child care costs parents more than the mortgage
GREENSBORO, N.C. — To understand the problems Democrats hope to solve with their supersized plan to make child care better and more affordable, consider the small Southern city of Greensboro, N.C., where many parents spend more for care than they do for mortgages, yet teachers get paid like fast-food workers and centers cannot hire enough staff.
With its white pillars and soaring steeple, the Friendly Avenue Baptist Church evokes an illusory past when fathers left for work, mothers stayed home to mother and education began when children turned 5. But its sought-after preschool illuminates the dilemmas of modern family life.
Until their elder son started kindergarten this fall, Jessica and Matt Lolley paid almost $2,000 a month for their two boys’ care — roughly one-third of their income and far more than their payments on their three-bedroom house. But one of the teachers who watched the boys earns so little — $10 an hour — that she spends half her time working at Starbucks, where the pay is 50 percent higher and includes health insurance.
The center’s director wants to raise wages but has little room to pass along costs to parents who are already stretched. She has been trying since February to replace a teacher who quit without warning; four applicants accepted the job in turn, but none showed up.
“I’ve been an administrator for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said the director, Sandy Johnson. “Directors are at the point where they’re willing to hire anyone who walks through the door. The children deserve far more than that, and the families deserve far more than that.”
Democrats describe the problem as a fundamental market failure — it simply costs more to provide care than many families can afford — and are pushing an unusually ambitious plan to bridge
the gap with federal subsidies.
The huge social policy bill being pushed by President Joe Biden would cap families’ child care expenses at 7 percent of their income, offer large subsidies to child care centers and require the centers to raise wages in hopes of improving teacher quality. A version before the House would cost $250 billion over a decade and raise annual spending fivefold or more within a few years. An additional $200 billion would provide universal prekindergarten.
“This would be the biggest investment in the history of child care,” said Stephanie Schmit, an analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a research group that supports the measure. “For too long, parents have had to struggle with the high cost of care, while child care providers have been incredibly undervalued and underpaid. This is a once-in-ageneration opportunity to do right for everyone.”
In Greensboro, parents know little about the Democrats’ plan but much about child care costs, which can cause them to reconfigure
work hours, postpone the purchase of cars and appliances or have fewer children than they desire.
“We had no idea child care was going to cost this much,’’ said Jessica Lolley, who works in human resources for the public school system and whose husband sells plumbing fixtures at Lowe’s. “There’s no way we could afford to have another child.”
Although center directors say they cannot hire, teachers say they cannot pay their bills. Earning $10 an hour at the Little Leaders Learning Academy, Uvika Joseph, a single mother, got food stamps and Medicaid for her three children. She just left to become an assistant in the public schools, where she expects to earn nearly twice as much and will receive health insurance.
“The only reason I am leaving is the pay,” she said. “I love the kids.”
To make ends meet, Rashelle Myers, who has an associate degree in early childhood education, splits a 60-hour workweek between the Friendly Avenue center and Starbucks. She called the
Democrats’ plan to raise wages “amazing” and overdue.
“I make $10 an hour to shape the future of children but make $15 an hour to hand someone a cup of coffee,” she said. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Lolley said she thought about staying at home after having a second child but needed the health insurance that came with her job.
“Oh, my God, it was terrible,” she said of the cost, more than $20,000 a year, of having two children in care. She hung on with significant help from her parents, knowing that “we wouldn’t have a kid in day care forever.”
Lolley knew nothing of the plan until a reporter described it, and she reacted with enthusiasm tinged with concern. She praised the potential financial relief and the “wonderful” help for teachers, whom she called devoted and “very underpaid.”
But she also noted that federal money often brings federal rules.
“If it would make things worse for the school in any way,” she said, “I personally would rather stretch to keep paying the bills.”