Delaware's Child Care Crisis

How it’s disrupting our road to recovery

BY PAUL HERDMAN

“ACCESS TO CHILD CARE is increasingly important as businesses continue to reopen and expand operating capacity. …it will be essential for Delaware to use resources wisely to solve a long-standing child care challenge that has been heightened as a result of the pandemic.” – Delaware Business Roundtable & Delaware State Chamber of Commerce Road to Recovery Plan

As many in Delaware begin looking to the fall as a return to normalcy, those in the early learning community are still grappling with the longstanding challenge. The children that need it most can’t afford it. And if the centers don’t have the numbers, existing centers will shrink or close.

All children deserve high-quality, developmental experiences beginning at birth. The brain science behind it is clear: the first few years of a child’s life are far more formative than we ever imagined. But in Delaware, early learning is still unaffordable and inaccessible for far too many families. I’ve had two kids go through our public school system, and many on Rodel’s staff are parents of young children—this is personal to us and our neighbors.

Despite calls from advocates, when the legislature wrapped this summer, state leaders committed no additional funding in the fiscal year 2022 budget for early learning (just a minor increase within existing budgets and a small contingency fund). Today, as families and communities prepare to go back-to-school, their ability to find affordable, high-quality early care will have a direct impact on whether those parents can get back to work. Given the limited funding, Delaware has a legitimate child care crisis on its hands. We hear through our networks that it’s causing families to scramble for care, find themselves on long waitlists, or refuse job opportunities or COVID vaccinations because they don’t have reliable child care.

This doesn’t just create a challenge for families. Delaware’s child care crisis could stifle our economic recovery.

As cited by the Huffington Post and others, while hundreds of thousands of Americans continue to re-enter the workforce following the pandemic, labor force participation among women fell significantly. Female labor force participation is at its lowest rate since 1988, even lower than it was during the Great Recession.

The National Restaurant Association’s senior vice president, Hudson Riehle, acknowledged “the need for caregivers to remain at home” as one of the reasons restaurants are having trouble hiring.

This spring, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cited both the absence of affordable or accessible child care and irregular school schedules as two reasons why the April jobs report wasn’t strong. Child care is a major pillar of the Biden administration’s American Jobs and Families Plan, which includes $225 billion for expanding and improving access to child care.

As State Chamber president Mike Quaranta wrote in a July Message from the President, “some employees with child care needs are struggling to find care. Some child care providers have closed or lost staff during the pandemic. Others are fully staffed, but the “teacher-to-child” ratio or physical site of the center make it impossible to take in more kids. We anticipate access to quality and affordable child care to become a growing issue for our member companies in the coming months if not already.”

Federal resources will help inject short-term lifelines to the child care industry, potentially for two to three years—but without a long-term plan for supporting child care, Delaware will remain behind.

Delaware invests pennies on the dollar on early learning compared to K-12. Today only about 15 percent of Delaware’s three- and four-year-olds have access to state funded pre-K, and there are waiting lists at all locations. Early childhood teachers earn about one-third of the salary of kindergarten teachers—with a longer workday and year, and with minimum or no benefits or paid planning and professional development opportunities.

Delaware invests in a state subsidy called Purchase of Care (POC) that helps only 23 percent of low-income families cover child care tuition. As any parent will tell you, child care can be expensive: approximately 20 percent of the median family income per child. The problem is POC doesn’t come close to covering what it costs to care for a child. In fact, POC only pays at less than half of the true market rate, the figure that providers charge families for care. In order for Delaware to fully invest in our youngest learners, it must increase those rates.

This lack of investment hit providers and communities hard over the last year. One provider called it “a losing situation for all involved.” Either navigate your business through a perilous financial scenario, or decide simply not to accept POC children. In other words, low-income families—those who could benefit greatly from high-quality early care—are losing access.

Without adequate funding, providers can’t hire qualified staff. One in six early learning professionals vacated positions throughout the pandemic. With less staff, they’re forced to take on less children. Child care providers statewide have waiting lists that are dozens long, multiple open positions, and have had to close multiple classrooms in most cases. In Kent and Sussex counties, especially in rural or low-income areas, child care deserts are a reality.

The good news is: the broader world is waking up to the critical infrastructure and economy-building power of early childhood education.

This summer, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia partnered with the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, Rodel, and the Delaware Department of Education to launch a Research in Action Lab to educate the business community in Delaware on the economic importance of the child care sector.

Public-private partnerships like the Delaware Research in Action Lab help build an inclusive and equitable workforce recovery by removing barriers to employment, such as access to child care.

Stay tuned to Rodel and the DSCC as this partnership continues to evolve. As an organizational leader, tell us how this issue is impacting your employees by taking the survey at bit.ly/3CwmH6B.

Tell the governor and your legislator to make this a priority in the FY23 budget. It’s time Delaware prioritized the essential infrastructure of early learning—for our workforce of today and tomorrow.

Paul Herdman is the president and CEO of Rodel.