The Impact of Universal Pre-K on Child Care Providers in FWISD 2014 sections. Additionally, while some focus group and site visit participants had not been impacted by FWISD pre-k (one center manager said they were running at capacity with 111 children), most had already felt some impact from losing 4-year-olds to public pre-k.
Economic Impacts Impact on Costs – Leveraging Ratios Though program costs and financial stability are closely linked, the survey asked providers to consider their impact separately using the Impact Scale to provide a deeper understanding of the economics of reduced pre-k enrollment. As shown in Figure 10, among child care centers, 85% predict that losing some or all full-day pre-k students would have a moderate to strong impact on their overall costs, with 50% of all responding centers predicting strong impact. As focus groups and survey comments illuminate, successful child care providers must carefully balance fixed and variable costs to maintain financial stability. Without the revenues of 4-yearold enrollment, many providers report being unable to cover fixed operating costs including facility expenses and classroom spaces. By far, however, the largest cost impact for providers is on staffing related to required caregiver ratios. Figure 10. Impact on Costs: Child Care Centers
The state of Texas issues guidelines directing caregiver ratios for all licensed and registered providers. The higher student-caregiver ratio requirement for younger children results in a reduced profit-margin for young children as compared to 4-year-olds. Table 9 (adapted from the Texas Department of Family & Protective Services) illustrates the student-caregiver requirements for child care programs in the State of Texas. For example, a toddler (18-23 months) classroom requires twice as many teachers as pre-k classrooms for the same number of children.
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