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Members of the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Health and Human Services received an update on child care at their April 2 meeting.
The biggest child care problem across North Carolina is the lack of sufficient funding to support competitive, family-sustaining wages for early childhood educators. Even if pandemic-era stabilization funds run out by the end of June 2024, the program could continue to operate with adequate funding.
“Let's be a buffalo”
Sandy Weathersby, owner of Providence Preparatory School in Charlotte and director of the North Carolina Children's Partnership and Child Care Services Association, shared her concerns with the committee.
Weathersbee's main concern is staffing. Early childhood education programs like his have to compete for teachers with public school systems, which offer lower teacher salaries but have the advantage of providing state-funded health insurance and retirement benefits.
“We haven't been able to find solutions to problems bigger than ourselves,” Weathersby said. “We need help.”
He argued that support is needed urgently as funding that has stabilized early childhood education during the pandemic is about to expire. North Carolina's funding is scheduled to end at the end of June 2024, a date known as the “funding cliff.”
Weathersby pointed to recent results from a child care provider survey conducted by the North Carolina Council on Child Care Resource and Referral (CCR&R) to strengthen the case that support is needed now.
Here are some key findings from that study about the challenges providers can expect to face when they reach the funding cliff.
- Approximately 3 in 10 programs (29%) are expected to close.
- About 4 in 10 centers (41%) expect to close or consolidate classrooms, leading to a reduction in enrollment capacity.
- More than half of programs (54%) plan to cut costs, which could reduce the quality of programs that include child nutrition.
- Nearly all programs (88%) expect to increase parent fees in the second half of this year, increasing annual costs for families by more than $1,000 per year.
- When asked to name one thing they could do to help make their programs sustainable, the most common response was increasing funding for staff salaries (38%).
Weathersby asked his members as storm clouds gathered. “Do we want to be cows or buffalo?”
“The cows will try to ride out the storm, but their speed will keep them in the storm longer. Buffaloes will run headfirst into the storm and get out of it faster,” Weathersby explained. “Let's be a buffalo.”
“We know what quality looks like.”
Ariel Ford, director of the Department of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) in the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), provided the committee with an update on the state's efforts to revise its Quality Review and Improvement System (QRIS). did. In addition to addressing the challenges posed by the funding cliff.
In 2023, the General Assembly passed a bill requiring the North Carolina Child Care Commission to make recommendations regarding updates to QRIS. This is a system that gives childcare programs a rating from 1 star to 5 stars based on whether they meet certain standards regarding the quality of their programs.
Ford noted that North Carolina was the first state to implement a quality star rating system in 1999.
“What we've learned over 25 years is that we know what quality looks like, and we know there are multiple paths to get there,” Ford said. Told.
Ford presented an overview of the committee's recommendation to adopt three pathways to quality instead of the previous single pathway.
The first is a modified version of what is currently in place, where programs are evaluated by external consultants and evaluated based on evaluation criteria. The committee will review the size of the new recommended route if it is supported by MPs.
The second pathway will be a new pathway dedicated to programs that fall outside of the typical early childhood education framework, such as developmental day programs that serve children with disabilities.
“For example, if we have multiple children in wheelchairs who are tube fed, their day just looks a little different than our traditional child care program, and we respect that. And we wanted to respect the quality that goes with that,''' Ford said.
The third pathway, which Ford describes as “shovel-ready” or “mission-ready,” is a system that recognizes federal certification in state star rating systems.
Currently, programs such as Head Start, Early Head Start, and programs accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) must go through North Carolina's entire QRIS process, creating administrative redundancies and inefficiencies. is occurring.
At the direction of Congress, the Commission created a crosswalk to align federal accreditation with state evaluation systems to reduce the administrative burden on these established, high-quality programs.
Ford said the committee is prepared to pursue this path at the General Assembly's discretion, saying, “We can basically turn that light on at any time.”
But looming over these potential changes is the June 2024 funding cliff. Ford also cited new findings from the CCR&R Council, noting that North Carolina already has a net loss of 53 programs in 2023.
Here's what some survey respondents in rural areas said about what they would do once stabilization funding ends:
- “Childcare workers have historically been among the lowest paid workers in our county. The end of staff bonuses will provide teachers with retention, other than their undying love for the children in their care. The incentive is gone. Unfortunately, that's not enough, because their loving hearts won't pay the cost.”
- “I don't know. For the last four years, I've been exhausted. I'm doing the same surveys and shouting that we're getting, but no one's listening. It's disheartening.”
One of the interventions proposed by Ford was the need to raise the floor on subsidy rates.
The state's child care subsidy program serves 51,000 children statewide, less than 15% of the children eligible, Ford said. And the subsidy reimburses less than half of the cost of classroom space. This is because prices are based on what families can afford, not on the actual cost of providing the service.
Of particular concern to Ford is what she calls the “rural disadvantage” when it comes to subsidy reimbursement rates.
This rate is based on what local residents can afford, so rates are usually lower in rural areas where the cost of living is lower and the income base is lower.
“What we've learned over the years is that it doesn't really cost that much to run child care in rural areas. It just looks like the costs are different,” Ford said. .
Last year, when the Southwest Child Development Commission announced plans to close seven programs in the western part of the state, Ford asked the commission about subsidies.
“I said, 'What would have happened if there had been a floor on the subsidy rate?' And they said, 'That would work out in our favor,'” Ford said. told the Oversight Committee.
Ford also said the continued lack of funding for NC Pre-K needs to be addressed.
NC Pre-K is a statewide public preschool program designed to support low-income 4-year-olds at risk for negative educational outcomes. It covers less than half of eligible students and costs him $11,330 per student per academic year.
More than half of eligible students attend classrooms operated by the public school system, and each student receives $10,791. But nearly half of classrooms are run by private programs, which receive only $5,450 per student, or 48 percent of total costs.
“I love school districts and I always partner with school districts, but school districts don’t have the space, the space, necessarily even the capabilities to do school districts. [NC Pre-K] across the state,” Ford said. “For that we need private providers [they] It is set for care from 0 to 5. That is their sustenance. ”
This article was first published on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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