If there were a succinct way to describe the state of child care and preschool education in the North Bay in 2021, it would be this: A hot mess. Imagine a vicious cycle of arranging for an in-demand slot for your 2- to 5-year-old child in a preschool, then figuring out how to pay for it, then being disappointed that the facility you’ve selected is chronically understaffed because the teachers—some with advanced degrees—are underpaid. As a result of such short staffing, child enrollment capacity has been cut in half.
There are far too few preschool teachers for a variety of reasons—mostly due to low pay, little or no benefits and the high risk of looking after children who at press time are still not eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations.
Yet early education is critical to the growth of young children. Research reveals that babies form more than 90% of brain connections that determine how they talk, think and grow by the time they are 5 years old. In addition, investments in early childhood education result in higher wages later in life, increased tax revenue, more effective public schools, improved personal and public health, less crime and more educated and skilled workers. Businesses investing in child care typically see up to and beyond a 100% return on investment from tax savings, increased retention and productivity and decreased absenteeism.
Fortunately, major forward progress for California families needing child care is on the way with the universal pre-K legislation signed into law in July by Gov. Gavin Newsom. A statement posted on the governor’s official website reads: “Assembly Bill 130 will provide free, high-quality, inclusive pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds beginning incrementally in 2022-23 and with full implementation anticipated by 2025-26.” The plan includes building new and renovating existing state preschool, transitional kindergarten and kindergarten facilities. This legislation is a key component of Newsom’s $123.9 billion pre-K and K-12 education package.
“California’s move to universal preschool is a meaningful step to begin to acknowledge that all children deserve access to early learning opportunities that will increase their chances for success,” says Ananda Sweet, vice president of public policy and workforce development for the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber. “It will take time for the money to get allocated to roll out universal preschool in California, which expands public schools to an earlier age, and when the program becomes part of the public school system. Private child-care providers are advocating for a mixed delivery system that includes existing programs, as they feel children and families would be better served. There is also a concern it may be one more thing that pulls qualified preschool teachers away so they can move into the public school system, where they can earn higher wages, which is a positive. But it would leave a staffing shortage in existing early learning programs. There are many wonderful preschool teachers who have to make a choice to give up something they love—and that benefits the community—to earn a larger paycheck.”
Still fighting the fight
Parents continue to struggle with the rising costs and scarcity of child care from infancy through the early school years. The numbers reveal the discrepancy between what child care and preschool cost per month, and the wages earned by the parents, according to Melanie Dodson, executive director of 4Cs the Community Child Care Council of Sonoma County.
“There’s a big disconnect between how much it really costs to educate young children compared to what a parent can pay out of pocket,” she explains. “A high-quality, early learning and child-care facility in Sonoma County runs $11,000 to $15,000 per year per child, so for most families, the cost becomes similar to a mortgage. For two minimum wage-earning parents making $60,000 a year, more than 50% of that income is going to rent or a mortgage and to child-care costs.”
In Marin County, preschool for a single 2- to 5-year old can cost $2,600 per month, says Aideen Gaidmore, executive director of the Marin Child Care Council. Child care for an infant or baby under the age of 2 runs about $3,000 per month. “Marin has the highest cost of child care in the Bay Area,” she adds. “And this disproportionally impacts women workers. They are hit the hardest because they must decide if it’s even worth going to a job when child care costs so much. It’s just not fair that women and families are being held for ransom by the cost of child care.”
Contributing to the problem is a general apathy toward child care and preschool from people who don’t need it. “If you don’t have to have it, you’re not thinking about how important it really is,” says Gaidmore. “Maybe you’re older, and arranging and paying for child care doesn’t impact your life in the slightest, and so you just don’t give it another thought. Yet it affects everything in our economy and is essential to our society.”
She says it’s demoralizing to constantly hear about how the child-care industry is in crisis. “It doesn’t help that I’ve been doing this job for 20 years, and the previous director was fighting the same fights I’m still fighting now.”
Overcoming disasters
Renee Whitlock-Hemsouvanh, the owner of three preschools in Santa Rosa, is also co-chair of the Sonoma County Child Care Planning Council, a county-appointed group that oversees the state of child care in the county. “All the things that are problems happening with child care now were happening before the fires of 2017,” she says. “For our industry, all of the disasters and then the COVID-19 pandemic have been a catalyst for change. It’s helping to put a microscope on a problem that already existed.”
Whitlock-Hemsouvanh lost one of her preschools, in the Mark West area, during the Tubbs Fire in 2017. In one night the fire destroyed 15 licensed child-care programs in the county, displacing nearly 450 children. “We were underinsured and it was devastating, trying to pay a living wage to our teachers and keep child care affordable. To build a child-care facility in Sonoma County doesn’t make any financial sense, it’s just too expensive.”
She ended up finding a new location, which she is now leasing from the City of Santa Rosa. “We had just opened it up when we suddenly had to close for the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020. Child care is considered an essential service, so we reopened that facility four months later. We had to raise our rates 10% to 15% to pay our staff as our costs doubled, and we applied for every single grant we could find. Our position was that if we didn’t reopen right away, we wouldn’t be able to reopen at all.”
Her preschools are currently operating at less than 50% capacity, and one of the three was recently shuttered for the remainder of the 2021-22 school year. “We are having staffing concerns because people are not applying for these low-pay jobs. We can only afford to pay our teachers $18 to $22 an hour, and frankly, that is shit pay for a hard job. We are asking a lot from people for a wage that doesn’t sustain a lifestyle they want to live. They could wait tables and make the same wage with less pressure.” (According to Gaidmore, in Marin County, preschool teacher aids are also paid $18 to $22 per hour on average, and teachers earn on average about $24 to $28.)
The ethical dilemma, adds Whitlock-Hemsouvanh, is that teachers can’t earn any less and parents can’t pay any more.
Adding to providers’ costs that must be passed along to parents is the complication of continuing to deal with COVID-19. “We are still heavily into health and safety mode, with children and teachers in masks in our child care and preschool facilities,” explains Dodson. “One of the most expensive costs in these facilities—and in public schools—is janitorial and cleaning. Because of the pandemic, it is critical to provide deep cleaning five days a week. The state is helping to pay for some of these expenses, but there are many for-profit, child-care facilities that have had to raise their rates to keep their staff and to stock more cleaning supplies.”
Whitlock-Hemsouvanh says it’s been a “devastating” year for her business from a family perspective. “We have families moving out of state every month. They are going to the Midwest, East Coast, and places like Colorado and Maine. These tend to be parents who are more affluent in careers that afford them the ability to move. The families who can’t do that are the ones left behind in a tricky situation.”
Employers need incentives
In February 2020, Keysight Technologies, one of the largest employers in Sonoma County, was poised to break ground on an on-site child-care facility for its employees and the public. The facility would have added about 100 child-care slots to the community.
A month later, the COVID-19 lockdowns began and Keysight sent home all employees who could work remotely. “Keysight had just moved the heavy equipment onto the site to begin construction, but the project came to a stop. For now, that project is on hold,” says Sweet.
At the time the project was announced, nearly two years ago, Hamish Gray, senior vice president at Keysight, said this in a prepared statement: “Keysight fully understands that offering on-site child care is important to attracting and retaining the best talent in the North Bay and surrounding areas.”
Cornerstone Properties, a North Bay developer, will be incorporating a child-care facility into the eight-story apartment tower it plans to build along Santa Rosa’s Ross Street, according to Sweet. And as the County of Sonoma makes plans for its move to downtown Santa Rosa, the chamber will be talking to the county about incorporating child care into its building plans. “It’s definitely cheaper to build in child care right from the start.”
What would help an employer to invest in providing child care or assisting their employees with paying for it? “One of the biggest things we’ve advocated for is access to capital. Most local employers are not as large as Keysight, so capital is a barrier for them,” adds Sweet. “There are tax credits available to give them an incentive, but they still have to make the investment upfront before they receive the credits. The cost of building or running a child-care facility is the biggest barrier. How do they self-fund a project that doesn’t give them a huge return on investment when it opens?”
What Sweet and the chamber learned in their discussions with local employers was that these employers really do care about the child-care issue. “But in addition to needing the right incentives, they need help to understand how they can implement a program and how investing in child care can produce a financial return,” she says “Employers can see a tremendous return on investment from employer-supported child care in the form of tax savings, employee recruitment and retention, improved productivity and decreased absenteeism.”
In terms of return to the community, there are significant benefits, according to Sweet. “Comprehensive studies by economists site anywhere from a $7 return to a more than $20 return to society for every dollar invested in early childhood education, a range depending on outcomes studied and children served,” she says.
Child care can make or break our economy, says Sweet. “For generations to come, it doesn’t take long for the upstream investment in child care to pay off. It’s absurd that we don’t invest in it more. It’s a huge meaningful return because studies reveal that attending a high-quality preschool means children have better health outcomes, less need for social services, and are much more likely to graduate from high school.”
“No child’s life should be about where or who they are born to,” says Gaidmore. “They should all be at the same level and have the same opportunities as every other child. If we raise these families up, we are raising up all families. Businesses for the most part have never stepped up to say that child care is an essential part of the economy,” she adds. “It’s always been a hard nut to crack with them.”
Talking the talk
Dodson of 4Cs says there are no employer-supported child-care sites in Sonoma County at this time. “Some employers have been discussing with us the details of employer-supported child care and are considering their different options,” she says. “Our community has been having this discussion with employers extensively since the fires, but before that as well. Yes, an employer must make a financial investment to provide or help subsidize child care for their employees, but it’s a benefit they can offer that would support their recruitment and retention efforts. Studies show that 80% of parents would leave their job for another that provides child care.”
Employers, says Whitlock-Hemsouvanh, are scared of the liability of operating a child-care facility. “They will build a basketball court or a coffee bar, or pay for gym memberships for their employees, but not help with child care. It’s an equity factor. People with influence who have the ability to make family-friendly changes are not willing to do it for children. They talk the talk, but then don’t walk the walk. Children are not valued in our community.”
Yet she is optimistic. “People say they are worried about the kids in all these years of one disaster after another, but the kids are fine, they are resilient and doing great. They’re so young; this is all they know. It’s the adults with the high vibration.”
Child-Care Help Being Considered in Congress
At press time, the Build Back Better Act (HR5376) was still being hammered out in Congress, but the major points of the bill regarding child care are listed below. “There is no final language yet for the Build Back Better Act,” says Ananda Sweet, vice president of public policy and workforce development for the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber. “But it’s promising that some of what is being proposed for child care could make it into the final bill.” Some current highlights of HR5376 include:
Child-care costs are capped at 7% of income for middle-class families (making between 75% and 200% of the state median income, or SMI), for average per-family savings of $14,800 (a White House calculation).
Fully-funded child care for families earning up to 75% of SMI receive fully-funded child care.
Every eligible family that applies would receive a child-care certificate, starting the fiscal year 2024. (Currently, families who qualify end up on waitlists that can go on for years.)
Universal Pre-K is made available for all 3- and 4-year-old children. Initial programs must be established in state-assessed high-needs communities.
Child-care wages must align with elementary school educators with similar credentials and experience.
Understanding Definitions
The words “child care” and “preschool” are used interchangeably. Early care and education programs support learning and provide children with care when they’re not in traditional school and while parents are at work. The Sonoma County Child Care Council (4Cs), which operates 13 preschools in the county and refers parents to numerous child-care facilities, describes the different types of care settings available to families.
Licensed family child care is in a family-like setting made up of small groups of children (up to eight or 14 maximum).
A licensed child-care center is in a school-like setting of various group sizes and varying ages from infancy to age 13.
An after-school, child-care center is a school-like setting in an on-school campus comprised of various group sizes and serving the children that attend the school campus.
Licensed preschools are tailored for children 2 to 5 years old using a specific learning philosophy or curriculum, taught by teachers with formal experience in early education.