Day care worker shortages present challenges to centers and families

Apr. 7—DECATUR — Kristen Robinson operated a home day care for 14 years before opening Fundamentals Early Learning Academy at 710 W. Macon St.

She had mentored Hailee Clark when Clark was in college because Clark wanted to open her own home day care, but knowing the need for more child care in the area, the women decided instead to open a center, and fortunately a building was available that was already outfitted as one, saving considerable time and money.

"Hailee and I are both qualified to direct and teach," Robinson said. "We have another (employee) who is, also, and two additional teachers on board, and we fill in where need be. We have assistants that have experience, too, and we're trying to get them to go back to school to further their career."

Department of Children and Family Services regulations require a lead teacher for each classroom, so though Fundamentals has nine classrooms in its building, only four are open, she said. They just opened on March 20, and haven't yet found enough lead teachers to open more rooms.

The Decatur City Council took action last month to enhance the day care options available to residents in the city's core. It approved a resolution to purchase the former Wee Folk child care center at 1170 E. Orchard St., which closed during the pandemic, with plans to turn the building over to Love Learning and Laughter Day Care. It will be operated by Cherri Johnson, who has had a home day care since 2019. The $180,000 cost of buying the building and necessary renovations will be paid for with COVID-19 relief funds, which is an allowed use of those funds.

New centers are sorely needed.

"There are not enough slots. There are not enough staff. Some places have space they can't utilize because they don't have the staff to cover it," said Megan Meyrick, who has five children and works for Decatur Public Schools. "Some places won't accept kids who rely on state assistance so that is even more difficult for low income or foster families. It is a major, major problem."

For those interested in entering the field, Richland Community College will hold an event 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, May 11 at MacArthur High School, where student success coaches, financial aid officers and other departments will be on hand to help potential students get started.

When Cassie Briggs' eldest child, now 12, was little, the family was on a waiting list for child care, which meant that Briggs and her husband, both nurses, had to work opposite shifts so one of them could stay home.

"Six days of the week, we had to work opposite days," Briggs said.

Kids 'N' Fitness finally had an opening and the Briggs family was so pleased with it that when the two younger children came along, they enrolled them there, too.

"A lot of the same people are still working there for our younger kids," Briggs said. "It says a lot about a day care if they can keep staff for so long. And we always had great teachers that really care about our kids."

Workforce Investment Solutions found, after COVID restrictions were lifted, that some people couldn't return to work because they didn't have child care, said Executive Director Rocki Wilkerson. Workforce offers "bridge" programs that help people bring their reading and math skills up and provide entry-level training for jobs.

Wilkerson wrote a grant to the Illinois Community College Board to provide a bridge program that could get people started in the child care industry.

Helping people fill those empty child care positions has a snowball effect, Wilkerson said, because once families have reliable child care, adults can go back to work, and that helps other businesses who have staffing shortages. Wilkerson said Workforce has a list of 2,000 job openings of all kinds in the area, but child care and transportation issues make it hard to fill them.

"We went to the Community Foundation (of Macon County) to help fund this," Wilkerson said. "Without the Community Foundation, we wouldn't have been able to do it."

Larry Peterson, special projects consultant and employment specialist at Workforce, was also working on obtaining grants to pay for training that would help child care assistants get further training that would result in early childhood teaching credentials. Day care centers and preschools must have a qualified teacher in each classroom and the lack of them means they can't accept as many children, leading to waiting lists and families with no child care options.

Since August 2021, 112 people have applied for assistance in obtaining credentials; 66 have received materials to use with online courses that lead to teacher qualifications; 23 have received funding toward online courses; and 38 have received funding toward classes in Richland Community College's early childhood education classes.

The first bridge class just graduated, and two of the graduates already have jobs lined up.

Helping out at Antioch Christian Church's Wee Worship with the 3- and 4-year-olds showed Stephanie Hall how much she enjoys spending time with little ones.

"I'm thinking about taking the licensing class to get the license to babysit in my own home," Hall said.

Anissa Freeman was hired by the Greater Decatur Family YMCA to work in their Child Development Center. She has seven children of her own and understands child care challenges.

"I wanted to work in a day care center and I wanted to improve my parenting skills as well," Freeman said. "I also want to take the licensing class. I was thinking about working at a day care during the day and then for second and third shift, having a home care."

Finding child care for second and third shift workers, and people who have variable schedules like retail employees, is an issue of its own. Most child care centers are only open Monday through Friday and seldom later than 5:30 or 6 p.m. Without family or friends who can help, parents are in a real bind.

Marlita Crowder said she knows a lot of young mothers who want to work, but don't have child care, so she took the bridge class as the first step in her dream of being a day care teacher.

"I felt it was my calling," she said. "And I always said if I got the opportunity to do that in my life, I would."

One of the barriers to finding enough qualified people to hire is the low pay, said Jamie Stanzione, director of St. Paul's Early Learning Center. A teacher must have an associate's degree, which is 60 college credit hours, and that must include six credit hours of early childhood education courses. Even someone with a bachelor's degree doesn't qualify as a teacher without those early childhood education classes.

"So it's not very good pay, and with working in day care, you have to go through (the Department of Children and Family Services) and have a background check and TB test and physical," she said. "There's a lot of hoops to jump through, and lots of paperwork to work in day care."

The Early Learning Center has 78 children enrolled and when school lets out, they'll reach about 85, she said, but she could take more if she had more qualified teachers. DCFS rules are that the adult-to-child ratio is 1 to 4 for infants, 1 to 8 for 2-year-olds, 1 to 10 for 3- and 4-year-olds, and 1 to 20 for ages 5 to 12, if the 5-year-olds have completed kindergarten. She used to search for employees through Indeed, but that's expensive and the candidates she saw weren't qualified or were unsatisfactory, so she is trying other ways now, such as posting on Facebook that she needs help.

Kids 'n' Fitness has three locations and serves about 500 kids in total, but even with 25 years in the business, owner Amy Steck still faces the same issues of finding help.

"What's kind of happening now is, the problem is getting worse because people are not going into early childhood education anymore," she said. "For whatever reason, this is just not a field that people are going into. We're all kind of vying for the same employees. The school district has been able to lower their standards for what an assistant teacher qualified person looks like, so their minimum standards for an assistant in the schools is now meeting the maximum standard for a child care worker. They're hiring people with a credential, a (Child Development Associate) that makes you lead teacher qualified if you're in child care, and makes you assistant-qualified if you're in the school district. What's happening is, we're trying to get the same people. The school district is always going to win in that situation because they can offer benefits and pay that the child care centers cannot."

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Contact Valerie Wells at (217) 421-7982. Follow her on Twitter: @modgirlreporter

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