A recent survey of more than 200 Connecticut child care providers found roughly a quarter of respondents not generating enough revenue to sustain their businesses and suggests that there are more than 4,000 vacant staff positions across the system.
That’s according to the CT Early Childhood Alliance, which surveyed 205 providers between Oct. 23 and Nov. 14 in a sample that accounted for more than 21% of the state’s licensed child care centers.
Merrill Gay, the group’s executive director, said the survey results reflect a child care sector facing a difficult dilemma: providers can not generate more revenue without opening more classrooms, but many can’t open more classrooms due to a persistent workforce shortage.
“It means that there are hundreds of classrooms that are still closed, that haven’t reopened after COVID,” Gay said Friday. “It means that families are having more trouble finding care and programs are struggling to break even.”
During a five-minute speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said that 124,000 Connecticut parents had reported having their work disrupted by child care difficulties, with some even forced to relocate.
“Your entire life gets upended when you can’t find care for your child,” Murphy said. “Nothing matters more than making sure that your child is safe. And so, what we are forcing our families to do, simply because we don’t choose to do the right thing and provide funding to make sure that there are affordable child care qualities available, it is sending our families into unnecessary crisis all over this country.”
Murphy was seeking to build support for a $16 billion funding request to Congress from President Joe Biden’s administration, which could provide an estimated $107 million to support around 2,580 Connecticut providers, according to the White House.
Here in Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont has convened a task force to draft a five-year plan to shore up the child care sector. Later this month, the group is scheduled to submit its final plan and is expected to call for increases in state funding for providers and broader subsidy eligibility for families.
“Look, it’s bloody expensive,” the governor said during a meeting of the panel last month, “and what we can do to help subsidize that and make that a little bit more affordable and easier for parents makes a big difference.”
It is unclear how much additional funding the group will recommend as state policymakers prepare to make adjustments to a two-year budget that is already close to the state spending cap.
However, a draft brief by the group’s funding and costs subcommittee estimated that compensation increases to all child care centers and family child care providers could exceed $750 million.
For now, compensation remains a recruitment challenge for providers, according to Gay who said early educators sometimes find themselves choosing between a child care center offering to pay $16 an hour for a demanding, high-responsibility job or a fast food restaurant offering $17.
“This is a system that’s been held together with chewing gum and duct tape and exploitative labor of women forever,” he said.
Meanwhile, more than 80% of providers surveyed by the CT Early Childhood Alliance reported having already used up the last of their COVID relief funding. Gay said he hoped the pandemic would help frame child care as a necessity for both parents and the rest of society.
“We really need to look at it as infrastructure,” he said. “If I don’t have child care and I’ve got a little kid, I can’t go to work. We need to see it as just as important as the roads and bridges we need to go to work. We don’t expect roads and bridges to pay for themselves. It’s a public expenditure to address a common need.”
