Child Care Centers Want Change; Officials Unsure What That Looks Like

It’s estimated that one-third of children in the state who need child care are not receiving it. Gov. Jim Justice, who is running for United States Senate, said he will call the West Virginia Legislature into a special session on Monday to address child care in the state among other things. 

A Place to Grow in the Fayette County city of Oakhill struggles to pay its employees a competitive rate, and even keep its doors open. It’s one of many child care facilities that faces an uphill battle in staying afloat, while many others in the state have closed. 

As the supply of child care is decreasing, demand is high. Parents in the state are struggling to find support. In West Virginia, there are an estimated 20,000 children who need a spot in a child care facility. 

In a normal, functional market, when demand is high the cost of a product rises. Typically, so does supply.

However, the child care market is laden with failures. 

Katelyn Vandal, who runs A Place to Grow, says she is caught between an economic rock and a hard place. 

“Families can’t afford to pay more, and we can’t afford to operate for less,” Vandal said.

Most enrolled families couldn’t afford a price increase and would opt for alternative care options like leaving the workforce and staying home, Vandal said.

But that’s complicated too. If parents aren’t working, they might not qualify for government assistance like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

“It’s a vicious cycle if you can’t afford it, or if you can’t find it,” Vandal said. “Either one leaves parents in an impossible position, which sometimes leads parents to making desperate decisions with their children.”

Many of Vandal’s clients get a fixed government subsidy, so the state and federal government decide how much daycare centers will be paid for each child. That is referred to as the child care reimbursement rate. 

So Vandal’s daycare center — and most others — operate with extremely thin margins, barely able to cover their monthly expenses. They can’t afford to have a vacant spot for long, so they need a waitlist.

And they have them. To the point that expectant mothers are already getting in line for child care, and still aren’t guaranteed a spot.

“I have six infants on my waitlist that are not even born yet,” Vandal said. 

Finding Workers

Meanwhile, Vandal says it’s hard to hold on to workers because their pay is so low. But she can’t afford to pay them anymore.

“I haven’t been able to give my employees the raises they deserve, and they deserve raises,” she said. 

Vandal said she has lost many of her best teachers because they had to take higher-paying jobs. 

“If I said to you, ‘I’m going to give you eight two-year-olds and pay you $12 an hour,’ most people are going to run for the hills,” she said. “That’s a whole lot of work. And it’s hard if you want to do it for $12 an hour, when you can make $14 at Sheetz.” 

In West Virginia, the average child care provider who has state accreditation makes less than the average retail worker or fast food worker. They make around half of what preschool and kindergarten teachers make in the state.

Child care is often referred to as the workforce behind the workforce. One child care provider can make it possible for around 4-12 parents to go to work.

In West Virginia, 97 percent of this industry is women, making it the most female sector of work in the state.

There are federal and state safety requirements for the ratio of children to adult caregivers. For every four infants in care, there has to be at least one adult. For two-year-olds, the ratio is eight-to-one.

If Vandal doesn’t have enough staffers, she can’t take as many children, which is the reality for many child care centers in the state. Some facilities have the capacity, but don’t have the staffing. So they operate with less children, which hurts their bottom line. It also means fewer spots for parents who need them. 

“So that wait list is there, and it looks like there are openings available, but there’s not, because there’s no staffing to maintain it,” Vandal said.  

Making It Make Sense

For parents of young children, child care is often the variable that dictates how much they are able to work. With subsidies factored in, Mountain State families pay an average of $10,000 per infant, and $9,000 per four-year-old for child care.

For some low-income families, it doesn’t make fiscal sense to pay this amount, especially if it outpaces their wage. The group of people who leave the workforce to raise children is mostly women. In fact, the main reason women leave the workforce is the availability and affordability of child care. 

Getting To Work

The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce has advocated for greater subsidies in child care as part of its initiative to make West Virginia more business friendly. 

Kristy Ritz is an advocate for child care in the state. She says that without reliable, accessible and affordable child care, the state’s economy suffers. 

“It’s such an extremely important part of infrastructure,” Ritz said. “So it’s, it’s just as important as transportation on roads. Because without that piece of infrastructure, we’re not going to have people working.”

Balancing The Budget

Next week, legislators will have a chance to address some of these problems. Namely, the 20,000 children in the state waiting for a spot in a child care facility. 

Legislators on both sides of the aisle have indicated they would like the state to do more to address the child care crisis.

Cabell County’s Del. Sean Hornbuckle is the Democratic majority leader in the West Virginia House of Delegates. He says that addressing child care is the number one priority for Democrats. He is focusing on increasing reimbursement rates — the fixed amount that child care providers are paid for children that are on a subsidy. 

“We want as House Democrats to be able to work in a bipartisan manner looking at our reimbursement rates. I mean, that is at the core of this issue, the reimbursement rates that are preventing providers from being adequately staffed,” Hornbuckle said.  

Gov. Jim Justice has said that he would ask the legislature to consider legislation similar to a bill that was introduced during the last regular session. The legislation would give parents whose children are in child care a tax credit. 

The credit would reimburse families for approximately two weeks of child care per year. Families who receive a child care subsidy would not be eligible for the tax credit. 

Other child care tax incentives might also be on the governor’s agenda, including tax incentives for child care providers and state businesses. 

Hornbuckle and other Democrats, like Del. Joey Garcia of Marion County, say that won’t be enough.

“Thank God the governor is calling this. But it cannot just be this tax credit,” Garcia said at a Democratic Press Conference in Parkersburg on October 10. “We have a number of different solutions that we’re ready to work on.”  

Senate Finance Chair Eric Tarr, a Republican from Putnam County, says he is not totally on board with the tax cut or subsidies towards child care. He says the budget is already tight, and he’s not convinced that subsidizing child care will help the state’s economy. 

“You’re playing favorites when you do tax credits,” Tarr said. “To me, that doesn’t help with West Virginia’s competitive ability in the market nationally to attract people and to attract businesses.” 

Tarr said he has questions around whether there really is a crisis, where child care deserts are, and if money will fix the issue.

“I want to be able to be helpful to the people who need this,” Tarr said. “I don’t want to be wasting it for the people that don’t, that could take care of their own family if they just made that sacrifice to do it.”

Currently, the state’s budget is tight, and could get a lot tighter. The governor has proposed another income tax cut, along with the tax credit for child care. 

This comes while federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds, which the state has been using to pay for child care, are expiring. Soon, the state will have to find new ways to cover child care.