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Kansas City child care options dwindle amid program closures and staff shortages

Kansas City Star - 8/9/2021

Aug. 9—As more parents re-enter the job market, many will be looking to enroll their kids in child care. But finding a spot won't be easy.

Staff shortages have forced some programs to reduce their capacity, while some have had to close altogether.

Since the start of the pandemic, 177 child care programs in the Kansas City metro area had permanently closed their doors as of June, according to data from Child Care Aware. Of the centers that are open, many are not operating at full capacity because they are unable to maintain the required child-staff ratios.

"We're basically on an enrollment freeze until we get staff," said Jan Powell, the general manager of Spectrum Station, a day care and early learning center with locations in the Kansas City metro area. Spectrum Station's downtown location, for example, is operating at 60% capacity.

At four of its five locations, Spectrum Station has five to 10 job openings. And, according to Powell, the number of openings far exceeds the number of applicants.

"I believe there will be a continued shortage of child care availability for families going back to work," Powell said. "Staffing shortages, as well as the closures of so many centers, will contribute to the problem. I know that centers are turning away multiple families every day due to staffing shortages."

Robin Phillips, the CEO of Child Care Aware of Missouri, said more and more people are using the nonprofit's referral services to get connected to child care. But with COVID-induced program closures and staff shortages, the supply of viable child care programs is not keeping up with demand.

"Some families have to drive an hour the opposite direction of their work to find care, some can't find care in their region and are willing to move to a county where there is care," Phillips said in an email. "Another family used our services and it took her nine months to find care for her children."

Child care is not the only business facing a shortage of workers willing to accept jobs at the wages and benefits offered. But as workers gain more leverage with potential employers, the current funding model of the child care industry is not poised to keep up.

While there is some public funding for child care, families pay for most of the care expenses — the biggest of which is personnel. Offsetting wage increases would fall on them.

"We're a fragile business model to begin with," said Deidre Anderson, the executive director of United Inner City Services. "We're dependent on the enrollment and attendance of children for our revenue to then allow for us to have the sufficient funding to maintain a quality program."

At United Inner City Services, two classrooms are closed because they lack the staff to operate them, Anderson said. Another is at half capacity because only one teacher is there to run it.

It's taking a toll on morale, Anderson said. The shoestring staff structure has made it challenging for existing teachers to take sick days or time off.

The Rock at Stony Point, a child care center in Kansas City, is operating with almost half of its usual staff.

Director Lee Howell said she lost workers to employers who could offer more money and benefits. Despite having limited resources, she said raising wages is next on her to-do list — along with talking to insurance companies about benefits for medical, dental and vision.

"How we're going to do it? I have no idea. But it's going to happen. It has to happen," Howell said.

In Missouri and Kansas, infant care costs more than in-state tuition for four-year public college, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. The average annual cost of infant care in Missouri is just over $10,000. In Kansas, it's $11,222. Infant care for one child takes up 17% and 18% of a median family's income in Missouri and Kansas respectively.

"The thing that happens within child care is that you're at the mercy of what families are willing to pay," said Jovanna Rohs, the director of early learning at the Mid-America Regional Council. "We're already at a place where families are paying a pretty substantial amount of their income in our area for care."

As Missouri moves toward a $12 minimum wage, some child care workers aren't making even that. According to Rohs, there are programs where 60% of staff make less than $12 an hour.

"Getting them up to that $12 an hour is going to be a pretty big lift without raising rates. But then to get above that to compete with the Targets, the Walmarts, the Amazons, etc., of the world is really difficult for them, particularly when it comes to adding the benefits on top of just the hourly wage," Rohs said.

The mean hourly wage of child care workers is $12.24, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Data from monthly surveys done by MARC and The Family Conservancy in Kansas City, Kansas, show that providers expressed a need for increased enrollment and tuition — and the staff necessary to open rooms back up, Rohs said.

"The two are really closely aligned when we think about needing to have the staff there so you could have the children in the programs as well," she said.

When raising wages, child care centers have to be mindful of keeping rates equitable with what existing employees make in addition to considering what families can pay.

Powell said Spectrum Station raised wages across the board in order to accommodate a fair wage increase for new hires.

"There's 1,000 childcare positions out there, but the pool isn't enough for all of us. So we're competing against the bigger chains that can throw a lot more money at people," she said.

In addition to offering referral and sign-on bonuses, United Inner City Services has started hosting job fairs to attract workers into the field. Its upcoming job fair will be held between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m on August 28 at its St. Mark Center.

"There's this need for a really coordinated effort to ensure that we have the human capital necessary," Anderson said. United Inner City Services has openings for receptionists and assistants as well as teaching positions.

KinderCare, a child care center with more than 2,300 locations across the country, has also been struggling to recruit new workers and compete with what places like Target can offer employees, said Kim Kluge, the quality business manager at KinderCare Education.

On average, KinderCare employees in the Kansas City area make $13 per hour and receive benefits like medical and dental insurance.

Expecting a baby boom in upcoming months, KinderCare has been ramping up recruitment efforts, including increasing its presence on job platforms, launching a text campaign, raising referral bonuses and offering sign-on bonuses. Most of their centers are operating at 50%-60% capacity.

A 2019 analysis by the Department of Education found that while many parents relied on relatives or nannies to stay home with their children, 62% turned to a center-based arrangement to care for their kids.

The pandemic magnified the lack of dedicated public funding for child care that is embedded in its perception as a nonessential service, Phillips said. In spite of its common misconception as babysitting, child care is a profession, she added.

"That's the piece that's really difficult around this — we would all love to be able to pay the teachers in parity to a K-12 teacher or kindergarten teacher," Rohs said. "However, the reality is that because there isn't that dedicated funding stream and care is not a public good, like the K-12 system, it's not as simple as raising that rate because they don't have more than just what their clientele will pay."

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