Below is a series of six blog posts that were published on the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association website as part of my capstone project. 

Jun 22, 2020
Uncovering Stories from the Early Care and Education Field During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A new series that explores the challenges of our essential workforce.

As the U.S. economy starts a reopening process, the critical need for early care and education is clear. Words like essential and infrastructure are used routinely to describe this field and its utility. At the same time, child care providers are experiencing whiplash as things change for them daily. Surveys from advocates and government bodies have been sent out weekly to understand what they might need during the pandemic. Additionally, new rules from regulatory bodies have been routinely issued. Grants available to this field come with complicated application and reporting processes. Not to mention, operating during a pandemic comes with incredible responsibility, fear, and anxiety. While many agencies are tracking things like who is open, closed, needs supplies, etc., the actual stories from providers themselves are hidden. Stories of the hardships like uncertainty, frustration, sickness, and financial worry. And, stories exemplifying the strength, tenacity, and humanity of this field.

While child care providers are experiencing this pandemic as individuals, they are also taking in the experiences of the children and families they serve. The early education field requires an intimate connection with clients. In regular times, child care providers often take on roles similar to social workers, therapist, friend, mediator, etc., in addition to the incredibly hard work of caring for and educating young children. During the pandemic, these roles have expanded in unbelievable ways.

Over the next two months, through a series of blog posts, I will explore the hidden stories from this field. Through confidential interviews, various social media communications, and advocacy forums, I will lift up the challenges, needs, fears, hopes, and future plans of our essential workforce during the pandemic. I will highlight needs that agencies and advocates could consider in creating a better support system for future crises. While I’m not sure where this exploration will take me, my overarching goal is to bring to the surface the topics that are not well understood or acknowledged by society as child care providers continue to work through the pandemic.

 

Jul 6, 2020
Impossible Choices

This post is the second in the series, Uncovering Stories from the Early Care and Education Field During the COVID-19 PandemicLinks to an external site., based on in-depth interviews of child care providers across Wisconsin.  

I am the daughter of two small business owners. I remember many late-night conversations around the dinner table where competing priorities were weighed and judged. For many small business owners and administrators, it can be freeing to have control over every detail and other times, it seems you don’t actually have control over any of it. Like other businesses of this size, child care programs typically lack human resource departments, legal expertise, and financial planners to help weigh these decisions. So, when COVID-19 hit Wisconsin, child care programs were tasked with making an impossible decision – close their doors or risk getting sick. To stay open meant greater financial safety; to close meant greater physical safety.  

One child care center director I spoke with said, “I had two budgets: the cheaper budget and the safer budget.” The burden to be the one to choose to keep people working or to stop the spread of the virus was unbearable. Early educators often live paycheck to paycheck in this field (averaging $11/hr) and even a small break in income could create housing and food insecurities. Staying healthy is a privilege that not all can afford in this pandemic.  

Consider the story of a family child care provider in a rural part of the state. She is a single woman with no other income besides her child care business. The parents she serves are mainly those still leaving the house for work each day and would not be able to pay her unless they had child care to work. Closing her doors was not an option she could entertain. These very real financial concerns eclipsed her own anxieties about staying healthy. While she can afford to keep the lights on, she’s working even longer hours than her typical 10 hour day – sanitizing toys, cycling loads of laundry and obsessively wiping down anything and everything that can’t be laundered or thrown in the dishwasher.  

Now consider a center director who manages a non-profit program in collaboration with a parent board of directors. Similarly, they had to heavily weigh finances of the program and the needs of working parents. However, as an employer of 10 staff, this decision was even more complex. The risk of exposure with a larger amount of staff and children was much higher. The program closed temporarily to create practices and policies to ensure improved health and safety protocols; then it reopened. They were lucky enough to be able to utilize some Small Business Administration (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding to maintain the business during its temporary closure. This funding was a “forgivable loan” (or in other words a grant), as long as the program complied with program rules (75% of the funding is required to support payroll costs and you had to retain all of your employees). While they kept all of their staff, they have far fewer children attending the program. This helps ensure that they can reduce any mixing of kids or adults (meaning no substitutes or “morning/afternoon” teachers needed). They are also spending much more on supplies and cleaning fees. While these practices allow them to operate safely, they are proving financially unsustainable. To continue this into the fall, tuition costs per child would have to increase $500/month to make up for a projected $180,000 deficit in the next fiscal year. Margins in this field were already tight pre-COVID-19. An average of 85% of revenues covered payroll and everything else paid fixed costs, like rent and insurance. There just isn’t anything extra to make up the difference.  

Another provider that I spoke with, who is also a nurse, spoke about the inevitability of illness in her program. She said she didn’t worry if someone in her program would get sick, but rather when it would happen. Indeed, this is already happening in other programs. Young children often have runny noses, share toys, and don’t know how to be physically distant. Additionally, less than half the early childhood workforce receives employer-sponsored health insurance. Naturally, when someone in a child care program contracts COVID-19, the program must partially or fully shut down for 2 weeks to halt the spread of the deadly virus. While closing is clearly the best practice to keep children, families, and staff safe, because programs are dependent on parent fees for their operating budget, the financial viability of the program is at also risk.  

While financial security and physical safety are driving factors for many sectors right now, few are experiencing this tension like the child care industry. The airline industry received $25 Billion in CARES funding relief. Delta Airlines alone got more than the entire child care industry who received a mere $3.5 Billion.Links to an external site. Airline travel for individuals and cargo is essential for our economy. However, America relies on child care as well – to support essential personnel and parents who return to work. Yet, our country has never invested in it as the public good that it is. Moreover, the financial viability and the health and safety of these programs at this critical time, have far-reaching implications for the successful reopening of the larger economy. Every other sector relies on child care availability for parents to return to work. A provider I talked to today put it this way, “they say we’re essential because they realize just how much they need us, but without the financial assistance to safely operate, we feel utterly expendable.”  

While these are by far the biggest take-aways from my research with child care providers in Wisconsin during the pandemic, there are many more layers of complexity that this blog will explore over the summer. I hope you continue to read along and share your own stories about this time as well.

 

Jul 13, 2020
A Weary Workforce; Child Care Work Gets More Complex Every Day

This post is the third in the series, Uncovering Stories from the Early Care and Education Field During the COVID-19 PandemicLinks to an external site., based on in-depth interviews of child care providers across Wisconsin.

EconomistsLinks to an external site. and the world’s best neuroscientistsLinks to an external site. agree early life experiences are critical to lifelong physical, mental, and economic wellbeing. With over 70% of Wisconsin’s childrenLinks to an external site. having all available parents working outside of the home, early care and education (child care) plays a necessary role for many children during this window of rapid development. While quality early care environments support children to reach their fullest potential, they also allow parents peace of mind while they work.

Early care and education issues are a priority in rural and urban communities across Wisconsin. Before the pandemic, over 50% of Wisconsin citizens lived in what was called a “child care desertLinks to an external site..” This means that there were three or more children for every one regulated child care seat. Businesses can’t recruit new workers and keep the ones they have when dependable child care isn’t available in their communities. As highlighted in the last blog post of this series, Impossible ChoicesLinks to an external site., the current crisis has exasperated already thin financial margins for child care programs and they are shuttering their doors at alarming rates. At this current pace, Wisconsin will lose an estimated 41,357 child care slotsLinks to an external site., leaving care available for a fraction of the children who need it.

To put this into perspective, a family provider I spoke with in rural Wisconsin, who has stayed open through the pandemic, gets calls daily for care. A while back, she heard a knock on her door one evening to find a new mother and baby on the other side. This mother was desperate for any amount of child care she could offer. Unfortunately, the provider didn’t have any room left in her program. Turning down families-in-need is really hard to do. The child care providers I have spoken with have gone above and beyond to support as many parents as possible during this time, including providing care in families’ homes, cooking meals, and assisting school-aged kids with online learning.

Even parents who can work from home right now are struggling, working late into the night or waking up before the sun, so that they can do their work while their children sleep. For parents doing essential work outside the home, only 22% are able to utilize their previous care arrangementsLinks to an external site. during the pandemic. This means many children are spending time in unregulated child care arrangements. Likely, costs for child care will go up to cover increased operating expenses, even though parents were already paying up to 30% of their household income on child care.Links to an external site.

It’s crystal clear that the child care sector is essential. Wisconsin cannot afford to lose any more of its child care supply. The reopening of our economy depends on it. Yet, child care providers need help to stay open. During the pandemic, many have continued to do the impossible – more with less. This is hard work. Anyone who is now home with their own children day-in and day-out can testify to that. While providers have figured out how to carry on amidst all the new regulations, requirements, and fear of getting sick, they are becoming weary.

For months child care providers have been asked to fill out survey after survey documenting their needs. Again and again they ask for financial assistance, personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, and access to bulk food and household items, like toilet paper. In order to continue operating at this pace, child care professionals also need health care, paid time off, and mental health supports for themselves and the families they serve. With the responsibility that they hold, they also deserve a voice in K-12 planning and regulatory decisions affecting them.

It’s true many have received federal funds through the CARES Act and thankfully, this has allowed them to keep their doors open – at least temporarily. However, this money is already running out and most of their supply requests have gone unanswered. The work gets harder and more complex each day, resources are dwindling, and disillusionment is setting in. Individuals, communities, the state, and the federal government must do the right thing and prioritize a field that has been steadily prioritizing our nation’s most precious assets, our children, for centuries.

 

Jul 22, 2020
It’s Not Daycare

his post is the fourth in the series, Uncovering Stories from the Early Care and Education Field During the COVID-19 PandemicLinks to an external site., based on in-depth interviews of child care providers across Wisconsin.   

I’ve spent the first half of this blog seriesLinks to an external site. talking about the essential nature of early care and education and why we should fund it as a public good.Links to an external site. I’ve laid out the challenges of low wages,Links to an external site. significant stress and burnoutLinks to an external site., and the intersection of new challenges connected to the pandemic with these existing issues. These themes are ones we hear about in the news as well — ‘it’s a necessary, but broken system.’ Yet, this is not the whole story; this work is so much more than its current headlines. This post is dedicated to the magic that happens in early care and education programs and the soulfulness of those that do this work 50+ hours a week. 

When I ask early educators about their work, they talk about raising the next generation of thinkers, doers, and change-makers. They talk about helping children work through trauma and adverse childhood experiences. They talk about working in collaboration with parents as they navigate hard times with their children (think tantrums and bullying). They talk about really seeing childrenLinks to an external site. for who they are and helping them develop into the best version of themselves. The majority of kids in child care spend more waking hours there than at their home. During the pandemic, early educators are volunteering to care for children of essential workers in a variety of settings. They are doing storytimes on YouTube for children who are quarantining and are contributing to child-centered content for understanding the emotional complexities of living during the pandemic.    

When I ask early care and education business owners and administrators about their work, they talk about supporting families, staff members, and children. They talk about their visions of carrying out the deep work of raising up the next generation within the unique populations that they serve. They spend a lot of time thinking about their larger communities and how they can contribute to positive change. During the pandemic, they have figured out how to operate their programs safely because, unlike the CARES funding for K-12 education, to receive Child Care Counts funds they had to be open or agree to reopen in order to receive funding. One director I spoke with said that she has been cooking and distributing dinners once a week to refugee neighbors. Others have purchased computers and supported school-aged children with online learning. 

When I ask parents about their experiences in early care and education, they talk about child care providers as an extension of their own families — as confidants, counselors, experts in child development, and often as “miracle makers,” “gurus,” and “baby whisperers”. One parent I spoke with said, “choosing someone to be with my children 40-45 hours a week for 4-5 years straight was like choosing another parent in their life (but that’s what I love about family child care!).” Another said, “after our divorce, our child care provider was a rock of support for our whole family; we are forever indebted to her for her support during that time.” My own child care provider performed the Heimlich maneuver and stopped my three–year–old daughter from choking on a mango, literally saving her life.  

When I asked my daughters about their experiences in early care and education, they wax poetic about making spaceships out of giant boxes, sharing delicious meals with their friends, and exploring their community through field trips. They both agree, “those were the good ol’ days”. 

The tasks involved in caring for and educating young children are seemingly endless and require a depth of expertise over a range of topics. Here are just a few that come to mind: lesson planning, recognizing and supporting children with developmental delays or disabilities, planning field trips, building character, solving problems, cleaning, serving food, communicating with parents, harvesting joy, conversing through diaper changes, running circle time, and supporting subject matter acquisition like math concepts, speech and language, preliteracy skills, civics, and social-emotional learning.  

When you own a child care business or manage it, you are in charge of balancing finances, strategic planning, marketing, grant writing, purchasing goods and materials, hiring, training and scheduling staff, paying bills, making sure parents pay on time, maintaining and fostering relationships with families and, more often than not, also unclogging toilets, cooking lunch, and learning yet another new online reporting program for one of many regulatory systems. 

Family child care providers do all of the above, often for 12 hours a day, earn the least in this field and also share their home with children and families. 

Working in this field is mentally, physically, and emotionally demanding. When people are well resourced and compensated in their jobs, they are more prepared to continually handle stressful professionsLinks to an external site.. In the post Impossible ChoicesLinks to an external site., I describe how razor-thin financial margins compress wages and cover little to no fringe benefits. Many well-meaning, but uninformed, people think that having a love of children allows you to somehow pay your rent in hugs. While doing meaningful work has intrinsic benefits, that alone was not enough before the pandemic as evidenced by the 40% turnover rate. Additionally, new data from the NAEYCLinks to an external site. questions whether this field will survive the pandemic.  

Now our country will be looking to early childhood educators to help care for and educate school-aged kids too as schools and parents make grueling decisions on tackling the Fall school semester. How is it that as a society we invest the least in the ones who give the most to making this world a better place? They are always there to create the magic, solve the problems and prepare our children for the rest of their lives. Can you imagine a future without early care and education? Because without a significant bailout, that’s where we’re headed. 

 

The Un System of Early Care and Education – 8.3.2020

I often struggle with how to present the injustices within the early care and education (ECE) sector without making early educators sound like victims because they are anything but. However, inadequate financing of child care often results in poor working conditions. And so, I must spend some time addressing how this impacts early childhood educators over time and the implications this has on children and families. Fair warning: this was a realistic, yet hard post to write and will likely be hard to read. 

Nationally, 98% of the ECE workforce are women and over 30% are people of color. While this diversity is excellent for our children, the compressed wages common in this field, are lowest for black and brown early educators ($0.78 less per hour than white early educators, which means $1,622.40 less per year for a full-time, full-year worker), which amplifies our nation’s already stark gender and racial wage gaps. Next to the average American with the same education, there is a wage penalty of 23% for anyone choosing to work in early care and education. In fact, a degree in ECE has the lowest lifetime earnings potential of all college degrees. 

Only 15% of the ECE workforce has health insurance sponsored through their employer, while the national average for the U.S. workforce is 50%. Over half of ECE professionals rely on at least one type of public assistance like EITC, Medicaid/CHIP, SNAP, and/or TANF to get by, which represents twice the rate of the national average. 14.7% of ECE professionals live below the poverty line, compared to 6.7% of all workers and 36.7% live in families with household income at 200% of the poverty line or below. 

How ECE Compares to Average American Workers
Health Insurance		Employer Sponsored Retirement		Reliance on Public Benefits		Living below the poverty line
ECE	US Avg	ECE	US Avg	ECE	US Avg	ECE	US Avg
15%	50%	9.6%	39%	50%	25%	14.7%		6.7%

 

Low wages and lack of benefits lead to economic insecurity. Economic insecurity creates  negative psychological consequences like stress, depression, anxiety and elevated cortisol levels. Economic insecurity can also negatively affect attention, decision making and memory. Overtime, the stress of economic insecurity can impede executive functioning and work performance. Low wage workers are more prone to accidents, are less present in thier work and have higher rates of absenteeism. 

Because of this, in the classroom we see low wages effect teacher’s mood, turnover rates and measures of classroom quality. The cornerstone for high-quality ECE is skilled and attentive early educators. Classroom turnover damages the teacher-child relationship and slows the learning process for children.  What’s hard to admit, but not hard to comprehend, is that only 10% of early care and education programs nation-wide are truly high-quality. And what’s worse, all of the economic on investment and lifetime benefits that ECE promises, only happen in high-quality settings.  

While low income children often gain the most from attending  high-quality early care and education programs, they are least likely to have access to such programs. Low child care subsidy rates (in WI hovering around 35% of market rate) mean that programs serving predominantly low-income families have the least amount of revenue to hire highly qualified staff, purchase engaging materials and keep facilities in health and safety compliance. 

Child care is a broken market; parents cannot afford to pay what the actual cost of high quality care would be and despite what appears to be very high rates, child care programs uniformly are not charging the true cost of care. The financial hurdles don’t stop there. Most of the 3,896,000 individual child care programs in our nation spend time and money to separately maintain their administrative duties (payroll, HR, compliance, curriculum, facilities etc.) in addition to overseeing quality programming. What’s more, most states require ECE programs to submit data/reports to a number of agencies, often the information required is redundant. This disconnection creates significant inefficiencies, costing programs precious resources. The lack of a streamlined “system” of early care and education makes it more expensive and exhausting to do this work. And, because of these constraints, the majority of the ECE sector was woefully unprepared to navigate the financial losses and new operating requirements during the pandemic.  

Programs that I interviewed who were part of a larger organization, shared services network or franchise, were able to benefit from sharing some resources and support, but independent programs had a very different experience. They talked about feeling overwhelmed at every turn. Even agencies like public health sometimes missed the mark in recognizing what type of information child care providers needed, babies don’t do social distancing. A void of industry informed knowledge created confusion. Providers often had to lean on each other through social media and other online forums to exchange ideas on best practice. Without a system, it was also more difficult to get PPE and other supplies to providers as well.   

This field needs and deserves a systematic investment in the early childhood workforce and a streamlined infrastructure so that programs can focus their time, resources and expertise on what they are best at, providing quality care and learning environments for children. We love to say it takes a village to raise a child, but each child does not have access to a well-supported “village.” When will the United States join other industrialized nations in investing in its most precious resources?