COVID showed how many daycare centers teeter on the edge. Children deserve better.

My family has had an attendee at Central Chrisitan Child Development Center (CCCDC), a nonprofit daycare providing care for 80-100 children, for the last nine years. I’ve served several of those years on the PTA and the board for the school. Raising my children has taken a village. When daycares were shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, I instantly began fearing CCCDC would never re-open again. I selected a care center like this because of their hours and freedom from worrying a sitter would call-in sick or quit, leaving me in a lurch. Family is not locally available to assist. I write this letter because the staff here is exemplary. I want all families to have access to the quality and care my children were able to receive. I wouldn’t have had the professional opportunities and peace of mind without them in my life.

My years as a Board-member revealed the myriad of problems that childcare facilities face. The pandemic heightened all of them. CCCDC is hardly alone in wrestling with the following problems:

▪ High tuition costs for families;

▪ High staff turnover;

▪ Difficulty in finding qualified staff;

▪ Rental costs;

▪ Building management to meet childcare regulation, staffing to meet teacher-child-ratio regulations, and limited funds and expertise to handle highly-skilled business matters.

If/when people think about baby-sitting, images and memories of a smiling female, delighted to take care of babies likely come up. The reality is a group of underpaid individuals who have to worry about matters above and beyond early childhood pedagogy. CCCDC has survived the pandemic, unlike many other daycares, but just barely. I have witnessed two near-shutdown moments, but they have only been avoided because the burden has been carried on the backs of staff and a handful of extra-dedicated board members who have basically worked a second job for free.

Grossly underpaid directors are asked to manage hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, overhead costs, acquiring and keeping staff with degrees in early child development, and a tremendous amount of regulation created for the health and safety of children. They have the same or greater amount of issues to manage as other complex businesses — likely closer to the level of management of a hospital, but with FAR fewer funds and expertise available. In this small to mid-size city, our daycare is one of a handful that offer structured child development, full-time teachers with specialized childcare degrees, meals, and 11 hours of availability (10 in the pandemic). CCCDC maintains an excellent reputation in the community. For most of the years I have been directly involved, the school has been at or near capacity; yet the school is perpetually one disaster away from ruin.

To avoid this, the administrative staff have offered their own resources of time, money, and talent to maintain the school and keep it welcoming to workers and children alike. Those I have had the honor of working beside on the board volunteered their time and skills (beyond full-time jobs and small children to raise) to assist them. This is unsustainable and should not continue. I and others have had burnout or full-on breakdowns due to the overwhelming amount of work that is required to keep a center running. The cost of hiring the administrative staff needed to manage book-keeping, building management, regulation compliance, food safety compliance, along with paying the salary of staff at a level that would encourage retention, would mean tuition would have to increase by at least 50%, if not double. As one of the costlier daycares in the city, the school is lucky to receive the amount of tuition it receives now. The school already experiences an uncomfortable gap in the diversity of children attending — both racially and socioeconomically. Raises in tuition increases that gap. We can do better. Subsidizing child care now will provide the well-rounded, healthy citizens we will all need in the future.

Eden Davis Stephens is a mother and attorney in Lexington, Ky.

This story was originally published June 10, 2021 at 11:45 AM.