SLO County child care is hard to find and even harder to afford. Here's how to fix it

Tribune - 10/30/2020

Oct. 30--Almost every week day for four months, Erin Foote got up before 6 a.m. so that she could go in to work early and be off in time to pick up her daughter from school at 2:30 p.m.

Two years ago, it was the only option for their family -- a clerical error had left Foote and her husband scrambling when their then 10-year-old daughter accidentally got dropped from the after-school program at Hawthorne Elementary School.

Suddenly, there was no room for her in the already packed, waitlisted program, and the Footes -- both of whom worked full-time jobs -- were left to figure out child care on their own.

"It's just a very pressure-filled situation," Foote said. "There's not a lot of room for error."

Foote worked a job that allowed her to switch around her work schedule -- but others aren't so lucky.

Outspoken

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Unable to pay the cost of the after-school program provided to Atascadero students on her part-time event-staffing paycheck, Shane Eaton had to come up with a creative solution for her young son.

She and a friend decided they would split duties: on Monday and Tuesday (her days off) Eaton would watch the kids. Wednesday and Thursday, the friend would take them. Friday, it was her friend's mother's turn until both women were off work.

"It wasn't a great system," she said. "If your boss wants you to come in on your day off, then you're wondering, 'Who's going to pick my kid up from the bus stop,' you know?"

Foote and Eaton's stories aren't unusual in San Luis Obispo County, where a high cost of living and a highly competitive market make finding safe, affordable child care a challenge.

Meanwhile, workers in the industry -- largely women, and even more, women of color -- are routinely underpaid and unable to make a living on the expensive Central Coast, leading to high turnover at facilities and not enough workers to staff centers.

This in turn limits the number of spots available to kids -- and leaves parents to fight to make it onto pages-long waitlists for the only child care option in their area or price range.

It's a vicious cycle that has yet to be fully fixed, or even widely addressed by local elected officials, several people interviewed by The Tribune said, especially during a global pandemic that has thrown a troublesome system even more out of whack.

"Everyone is struggling to figure out what they can do individually, which means we sometimes don't focus on what we can do systemically," Foote said. "People are concerned about their individual problems, and maybe not pressuring their elected officials to actually change things."

The affordability and availability of child care was one of the major issues brought up time and time again by Tribune readers who participated in our Outspoken election project, which aims to amplify the concerns of young San Luis Obispo County residents and featured a survey of more than 200 locals under the age of 40.

We spoke to local experts, child care providers, businesses and parents to find out what could be done.

There are plenty of potential solutions: Some advocated for more city-subsidized child care. Others said it was about paying early child development professionals more. Some said local businesses should pick up some of the responsibility.

In general, it boils down to a need for a massive private-public investment into changing the way child care works in San Luis Obispo County, they said.

"We try to rely on the state and federal government to get where we need to go," Wendy Wendt, executive director of the SLO County children's services program First5, told The Tribune in a Facetime interview on Oct. 27. "But we wait, and we continue to wait, and will keep on waiting."

California child care expenses by the numbers

What is or is not affordable child care for a family varies depending upon a number of factors like income level, number of kids, age and the amount of care needed.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services set a benchmark in September 2016 that defined affordable child care as costing 7% or less of a family's income.

In a 2019 ranking by financial analyst firm Ascent, California ranked as the least affordable state for child care.

According to the data, a family -- consisting of two parents, an infant and 4-year-old -- would likely spend about $28,420 a year on child care.

Measured against the state's median family income of $68,034, that family spends roughly 41% of its annual income on child care alone -- almost six times the Department of Health's recommended benchmark.

Ascent drew its ranking from 2019 data from the Economic Policy Institute.

A more recent release of 2020 data from the same source examined the average cost of infant care in California, pricing it at $16,945 a year.

That's slightly more than the statewide average annual cost of housing, $16,693, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

In short, child care for a baby costs more per year than the average Californian will pay for rent.

Other things an infant's child care is more expensive than, according to the data? A year's tuition plus fees at Cal Poly ($10,071). A 2020 Nissan Versa ($15,655). No dates-barred Disneyland annual passes for you and 10 of your friends ($1,449 per pass, $15,939 total).

Care for an older child is slightly less expensive at $11,475 per year, or $956 each month, according to the Economic Policy Institute data.

SLO County child care expenses by the numbers

Similar 2020 information on San Luis Obispo County-specific child care costs was not immediately available, but a needs assessment conducted by the local Child Care Planning Council in 2018 confirmed local spending was high then also.

According to the study, the average cost of full-time, center-based infant care was $11,511 annually (still more than that Cal Poly tuition). Full-time preschool care came in at about $9,752, while school-age care (meaning after-school care) for one child totaled $9,445.

Center-based care costs varied across the county, with full-time infant care costing the most in the North Coast region ($15,120) and full-time preschool and after-school care costing the most in San Luis Obispo city ($10,942 and $12,600, respectively).

When compared with the Census Bureau's median SLO County household income of $70,699, the data shows that care for one child -- of any age, in any area of San Luis Obispo County -- is well above the Department of Health and Human Services' 7% benchmark.

Only one region had average child care costs even close to attainable under this informal standard: Parents on the North Coast could expect to spend about 9% of their household income on after-school child care, according to the data.

Across San Luis Obispo County, the average household could expect to spend a little more than 16% of its income on a baby's care, just under 14% on a toddler to preschool-age child and then about 13% for care once the child reaches school age.

For families earning less than the median income, or with more than one child, the costs become exponentially higher and more difficult to bear.

What happens when families can't find child care?

When there are too few affordable child care options, parents resort to a hodgepodge of Band-Aid solutions that can put unnecessary stress on the family, usually under the guise of saving money.

They turn to mothers-in-law or relatives to watch the kids before or after school; two-parent households shift to working opposite schedules so one adult can be at home with the non-school-age kids at all times; if that's impossible, a parent may consider leaving their -- though often, her -- job to say home with the children; or the family may split child care duties with other neighborhood families or school friends.

"I know there are situations where families are sort of pressed to the wall with what they can do," said Wendt, the First5 director. "Families find themselves in informal arrangements."

For Eaton, who found herself in one such arrangement, the pressure of constantly watching multiple children became a huge burden.

"It was an absolute nightmare," she said. "My entire life was taken up by hanging out with 5-year-olds, in order to save a couple hundred bucks that I just didn't have."

Eaton added that she didn't feel like that arrangement, which she has since been able to stop while going to school, was even uncommon.

"I've heard of a lot of people who were in the same boat," she said. "It seems to be a pretty common go-to for people who can't afford the child care."

It's important to note that even these informal arrangements aren't available for everyone.

For single parents, those without family or neighborhood connections, or those without a job flexible enough to accommodate an altered schedule, often the only child care option is to pay for it. And when they can't, the child may get left home alone or in the keeping of other slightly older children.

Though short-term solutions can work on a family-by-family basis, they're often stop-gap measures that fail to address the larger systemic problems regarding the way we provide care for children.

One of the biggest ways to revolutionize the industry, CAPSLO Children Services Manager Shana Paulson said, starts with its workers.

Minimum wage child care workers can't afford Central Coast

Much of the difficulty surrounding child care in San Luis Obispo County comes from underpaying child development professionals, Paulson said.

For the most part, early child development workers are paid minimum wage, and many don't work full time, even though most are required to have at least some college credits and usually an associate degree.

According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, average pay for a San Luis Obispo County child care worker was approximately $12.15 per hour in May 2019 (the most recent wage data available for the field).

According to BLS, a local child care worker could expect to make approximately $27,210 a year were working full time, with slight increases as the state's $13 minimum wage rises in coming years. They also often go without employer-provided health care and other benefits.

All of that is because a combination of rent, materials and administrative costs and other overhead expenses leave little budgetary room for worker salaries, according to a formula published by Child Care Aware America, especially when you take into consideration state mandates for the number of workers each facility must have per child.

Couple these pressures with San Luis Obispo County's already high cost of living and difficult housing market, and you have the perfect recipe for dissuading potential child development professionals from even entering the industry.

"We are concerned that we have a lack of people interested in going into the industry," Paulson said. "Just because not everybody wants to take pay as part heart."

When child care providers have a difficult time staffing facilities, they have fewer spots available for kids, leading to competitive waiting lists for the most desirable providers and putting families in a fix.

All the way around, it's often a lose-lose, for workers and parents.

"It's one of the biggest economic and budgetary paradoxes we have in society," Wendt said. "It's not affordable for parents, and it's not even tenable for the workers."

But there are possible solutions.

Solution: Pay child care workers more

Though it sounds somewhat paradoxical, Paulson and Wendt both said one of the best ways to improve the local child care environment would be to pay workers more.

A 2017 UC Berkely study found that child care workers earned roughly one-third of what a kindergarten teacher makes, despite needing a similar array of skills.

This can seem like a hard sell: How would paying workers more make child care more affordable to families?

"Essentially, families walk in and think they are paying so much," Paulson said. "And they do the other math, and think they (child care providers) must be rolling in it. When you get a look at the actual formal, it's more complicated."

What it comes down to is, paying workers more would help keep much-needed child development professionals in the field, and would help to cut back on worker shortages.

In short, more workers equals more quality child care options for parents.

There's also some data to indicate that higher pay could lead to better quality of service in care-providing jobs like child development; some say it could also help to lessen the wage gap by improving pay for women, and especially women of color, who tend to make up a large portion if not a majority of child care workers.

"You are talking about people who are raising and educating our community's children," Paulson said. "I don't know what is more important than that. It's hard to fix a dollar amount to that, but it surely isn't minimum wage."

First solution: Public-private investment into early childhood development

Nice as it sounds, paying more isn't a solution that can just happen -- not without some outside funding.

Child care facilities are often operating on an already tight margin, and in a time when COVID-19 has exacerbated its existing problems, money is scarce.

Funding from federal and state resources tends to be highly competitive, and many monetary sources in this realm are also being diverted to COVID-19 response.

This is why both Paulson and Wendt said it is time for more public-private investment into the system to both fund workers and to examine ways in which the county's children could be better served.

Wendt said the best solution to addressing problems within the industry on a major scale would be through a massive commitment from both the public and private sectors.

"Historically, for the most part, society has assumed that parents are going to take care of child care," Wendt said. "What's really needed to fix that paradoxical math equation I was talking about is a four-way partnership between the business community, the public institutions. ... Those are two legs on the stool along with parents, and then there is the private sector as well."

This could materialize in a number of ways.

Second solution: Get businesses involved in child care

One of the best fixes would be for more businesses to prioritize providing child care resources and in some cases, support, to their employees, Paulson said.

"I think for a long time we've wanted parents to understand that child care is their own personal responsibility, but more and more we are making businesses understand that our community is our children," Paulson said. "And we need some community solutions."

At Trust Automation in San Luis Obispo, employees are guaranteed a spot in the company's on-site child care center, which cares for children ages 6 months to 4 years old.

Childcare Center Director Sarah Davis said the center was created in 2016 in part in response to Trust Automation owners Ty and Trudie Safreno's own experiences with bringing their children to work.

According to the center website, employees pay about $1,260 per month ($15,120 annually) for full-time infant care and $1,050 ($12,600) per month for full-time preschool-age care.

Depending on availability, the center does open up some spots to non-Trust Automation employees. Those rates are $1,675 per month for infants and $1,335 per month for preschoolers.

Even at those prices, Davis said the center is far from profitable.

"We 100% could only do this because Trust Automation subsidizes it," she said. "It's definitely not profitable."

Davis said the facility, which she has been a part of since its conception, has all the same challenges as other child care providers: low worker pay, difficulty finding qualified people, high overhead, complicated scheduling and hiring requirements and of course, COVID-19 difficulties.

But the center does have one unique draw for its child care workers: benefits.

"All our employees are considered employees of Trust Automation," Davis said. "They get the same benefits as an engineer with the company or anyone else."

In a workforce where health benefits are a luxury, that can act as a draw for local child care workers.

Other local businesses also provide child care to their employees.

Mindbody has long provided on-site day care for its employees' families at its San Luis Obispo campus.

That site is currently closed while the campus remains closed to workers due to coronavirus restrictions, Mindbody spokeswoman Tracy Richmond said. It will likely remain shuttered until at least January.

Third solution: Public investment could add needed resources

Besides individual businesses providing child care services, another leg of the care support stool would be creating local initiatives and funding streams focused on early childhood development.

One, Quality Counts of San Luis Obispo County, offers stipends to child development professionals to help pay expenses of advancing their education. It also helps to organize peer mentorship and other necessary career development opportunities for early childhood development workers.

That program is "insufficiently funded to adequately address issues of low compensation," however, Paulson said.

Paulson said CAPSLO has "cobbled together" funding streams for stipends of between $500 and $1,200 for more than 180 local child care workers. Even that "is insufficient to expand quality investments, retain or attract child care professionals," she said.

Other groups like the Economic Vitality Corp. of San Luis Obispo County have launched child care programs aimed at connecting resources and facilities with local businesses to "provide childcare services where they are currently lacking," according to a news release.

The EVC's Childcare Capacity Project, which launched in September, is partially funded by a grant from Bank of America.

With that money, the EVC plans to serve as a "matchmaker" for more than 20 local businesses, connecting them and parents with resources available. The grant will also help with facility costs, staff support and other needs.

Though in-roads are being made in creating more diverse revenue streams and resources for local child care providers and parents, Wendt said it means little without a concerted push from elected officials to make early childhood development and the care of the county's children a priority.

"In the public place, we've had some encouraging signs," Wendt said. "It's really now, 'What are the policy levers that they can be moving?'"

One such important lever could be a push to cap child care costs for families at 7%, making sure no family is paying more than it can afford on quality care.

The road moving forward isn't easy.

Coronavirus threw a wrench into already ongoing efforts to fix the industry as everyone pivoted to the more immediate concerns. Many local child care facilities either still haven't reopened or are struggling to get by in this new climate.

As coronavirus restrictions ease and more parents return to the workforce while their children return to hybrid mixes of in-person and virtual learning, San Luis Obispo County is potentially entering a unique new era of child care demand -- one that will face its own challenges.

"I feel like we are all cuing up to do something terrific, but it's challenging to be doing something like that in the current environment," Wendt said of her organization's recent efforts. "It's planning for a better day."

Paulson reiterated that the only solution she sees to fixing the system long-term would be both monetary and emotional investment -- a matter of prioritizing what is important to us a community, she said.

"It's not going in anybody's pockets," Paulson said. "It's about creating richer environments for our children to thrive in. Embracing our community's children helps embrace our community itself."

BEHIND OUR REPORTING

What is Outspoken?

The Tribune launched Outspoken, a special grant-funded project, as a way to amplify the voices of young San Luis Obispo County voters during the November 2020 election.

So often, we hear that local city council or government meetings are dominated by the concerns of older residents, who tend to be more engaged in local governance. Outspoken aims to change that, by increasing awareness of issues of major concern for younger voters in the region and pushing those to the forefront of the conversation. Through the project, we hope to increase turnout among millennial and Gen Z voters and help them become more engaged in their local governments.

Click on the arrow in the upper right for more.

How we reported this story

SLO Tribune reporters Cassandra Garibay and Kaytlyn Leslie began working on the Outspoken project along with former Tribune reporter Monica Vaughan in March, just before the first positive case of coronavirus in San Luis Obispo County was reported.

The project is possible thanks to a grant and support from Renewing Democracy, an initiative of the Solutions Journalism Network.

In April, Garibay, Leslie and Vaughan conducted a virtual listening session with local stakeholders to gather preliminary direction on what issues might be of concern to young voters in the county, and how best to perform outreach to gather more information.

With the onset of the pandemic and Vaughan's move from The Tribune to Fresnoland, a reporting and engagement lab with the Fresno Bee, the project was briefly put on hold as the newsroom pivoted to covering coronavirus in the community.

In July a Google Form survey was sent out to those initial stakeholders and shared on social media and The Tribune's website. Between July 7 and Aug. 13, The Tribune received 209 unique responses to the survey. The responses spanned almost all of San Luis Obispo County, from Nipomo to San Miguel, and covered a broad range of issues.

In early September, Garibay and Leslie began examining the results from the survey to condense into a citizens' agenda that would present the top issues for young SLO County voters. The five topics presented in this agenda were the issues the most respondents in the survey indicated they were interested in hearing more about from candidates this election.

Reporting based off of these findings is currently underway. To contact either Leslie or Garibay regarding the project, you can email them at kleslie@thetribunenews.com or cgaribay@thetribunenews.com.

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