Blue Notes from a Red Zone

Nurturing Our Future

Every year or so, I spend a few months working with early learning coalitions from around the Panhandle, helping them plan their strategies for providing the best possible care for children of indigent families. This is rewarding work, because the women and men in this field are amazingly dedicated, creative, and resourceful. Their dreams help shape the future for thousands of very young children, and they dream big.

Unfortunately, this work is not rewarding for them. In Escambia County, the closest area for which statistics are available, the starting salary for a child care worker in 2003 was $5.60 per hour (the increase in minimum wage has surely driven that number up, though only to $6.15 an hour). Over time, her hourly salary could rise to as much as $6.46. A preschool teacher with a two or four-year degree in early education does somewhat better. She can start at $6.34 an hour, and work her way up to $8.59 (figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as reported by the Center for the Childcare Workforce, http://www.ccw.org). Neither job offers any benefits.

Moving up the ladder does not result in a living wage. The Workforce Development Board estimates that it takes $14.36 an hour for a single person to maintain a minimum existence in our area. The program directors at a local child care resource and referral agency only make about $10.50 an hour.

The reason why child care workers make so little is one of economics: the parents who pay for child care do not have sufficient income to pay child care homes and centers enough money to cover overhead, and the government that subsidizes the children of the working poor does not have the will to do so. But it is a travesty nonetheless.

The result of our wage scale is to leave our children, those small people who carry our hopes into the future, in the care of people who are struggling to exist, and who are forever on the brink of homelessness and despair. It is very hard to provide quality care for other people's children, when you don't know where your own children will be sleeping that night. Staff turnover is extremely high, as even dedicated child care workers have to provide for themselves and their families.

Another issue is the education and skill level of the people who end up taking these jobs. A number of studies have indicated that indigent adults have the same vocabulary and literacy skills of middle-class preschoolers. They lack the ability to speak conversationally, so much of their dialogue with children is "instructional," as in: "no, stop that, don't do that, I said let go." This is not conducive to creating an optimal child care environment.

Compounding the salary issues are the staff-to-child ratios. Each state creates its own laws concerning how many adults are required to care for how many children. As any mother knows, however, it is not possible to provide quality care for the maximum number of children allowed. In Florida, for example, the ratios are as follows: for children from birth to under age one, four children may be assigned to a single staff member; for children from age one to under two, six children may be assigned; for children ages two to under three, 11 children may be assigned; for children ages three to under four, 15 children may be assigned; and for children age four to under five, 20 children may be assigned. Economics means that many, if not most, child care centers assign the maximum number of children allowed.

And finally, child care is one of the least regarded occupations in society, whether it be provided by at-home mothers (I was one for 18 years) or child care professionals. The women, and some few men, who are entrusted with our future are given little respect, and are generally dismissed as nonentities even by their sisters in the "real" workforce.

Many of my more conservative readers will assume that wage scales and work loads and recognition factors matter very little. The idea is that child care workers tend to be women with small children of their own, looking to find a second income for their family that does not entail leaving their own children in the care of others. This is often true of teachers in the preschools catering to the affluent. But it is not true of staff in child care centers, or many of the parents running child care out of their homes. Many of these contribute to the statistics indicating that between 45%-62% (depending on which part of the Florida Panhandle you are studying) of female heads of households with children under five fall under the federal poverty guidelines. Think of the divorce rates, and the number of these single parent homes, before you dismiss those numbers as irrelevant to your own children's future.

If we truly love children, those who live in our house as well as next door, we must do better by the people and agencies that are raising them. It is absolutely true that "quality" child care can be in some instances even more beneficial for children than at-home parental care. It is also absolutely true that you can't reliably get quality child care for $6.15 an hour.

The European model is to provide each child care facility with a stipend for each child, that is in addition to parent fees. Child care facilities accepting children of indigent families are given more. Thus, child care workers and directors have economically viable lives. This may seem like an enormous expense, and I can hear the indignant cries of "nanny state," even as I type. However, is it really more expensive than raising a generation of children who cannot compete in a global economy? And is it less expensive than imprisoning 7% of our population each year?

We hear the platitude, "our children are our future," all the time. It's time to realize this is truth, and act upon it.

posted by Lenore Wilson @ 4:32 AM