Child care shortages weigh on parents, providers
Kelly Hines’ criteria during her long job search were simple: If an employer required even one day a week in the office, she didn’t apply.
For over a year, one frustrating search stifled another for the Beacon resident, a freelance graphic designer and art director. She and her husband struggled to find affordable care for their 2-year-old daughter, floundering in a limbo faced by many families needing child care.
“We’re too wealthy to get any help but too poor to afford care,” said Hines.
Denise Giannasca also faces a challenging search.
Six years ago, she opened Stepping Stones Childcare and Development in Philipstown. On April 29, Stepping Stones broke ground on an expansion that will create room for additional children.
With a waiting list of three dozen families, Giannasca said the challenge isn’t demand but finding qualified employees in a field where the average hourly pay is $16.92, according to the state. “We can’t pay what people are really worth,” said Giannasca, who just posted four job openings for teachers.
Wage and benefits support for workers and the expansion of financial assistance for parents are two key recommendations in an April report from the state Department of Labor and the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), which regulates programs operating more than three hours a day and administers subsidies to qualified families.
In Putnam County, weekly costs for full-day child care range from $245 to $327 and, in Dutchess, from $230 to $343, according to the Child Care Council of Dutchess and Putnam, based in Poughkeepsie. The rates are higher for infants and can be “almost like paying for a mortgage,” said Adeline Arvidson, a counselor for the organization.
The Child Care Council assists providers and parents, offering classes on topics such as first aid, recordkeeping and active-shooter training, and guiding families through the process of finding care and financial aid for children up to age 12.
“Any family you talk to, whether it’s a single parent or a two-parent household with two incomes, child care is a burden financially,” Arvidson said.
Providers are also burdened. Despite $2 billion in federal pandemic aid earmarked in New York for child care programs, Dutchess lost 76 programs between 2020 and 2023, and Putnam County, 19, according to the Child Care Council. “There’s been a few new ones, but not enough to compensate for the difference,” said Arvidson.
Nearly half of the programs that closed in Putnam between 2020 and 2023 have not been replaced. In Dutchess, it’s more than a third.
A shortage existed before the pandemic, according to a March report by Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress. It found that the roster of licensed providers fell by 33 percent in Dutchess and 34 percent in Putnam between 2007 and 2023. Beacon had four fewer providers than the 19 from 2007, according to the report, which provided municipal-level data for the region’s 13 cities.
There would be a need even if all the programs in Dutchess and Putnam operated at the capacity allowed by their licenses — Putnam would have one slot for every 2.5 children under age 6 and Dutchess would have one slot for every 3.1 children, with the gaps widening for older children.
But without enough teachers to meet minimum staffing requirements, some programs are struggling to reach capacity and most have a waiting list, said Arvidson. That shortage is partly why the Child Care Assistance Program has millions in unspent subsidies for care, according to the new state report.
Dutchess spent less than half its allocation of subsidies in 2022 and Putnam less than 20 percent, according to Pattern for Progress, which said problems with marketing, ease of use and other areas have hampered the program’s reach.
“Some providers are telling me it’s a little bit better than last year,” said Arvidson. “But they’re still struggling to get to their licensed capacity because they can’t increase the number of children they care for unless they can hire someone.”
A pandemic upsets a fragile system
On a recent morning at Stepping Stones, one of four state-regulated programs operating within the Haldane Central School District, workers began dismantling an outdoor playset to make room for a second building, which should be finished by September.
On another part of the property, pre-kindergarteners raced around the lawn. They then marched inside, dropped their shoes into a bin beside a classroom door and sat in a semicircle as Michelle O’Meara, the center’s director, read to them.
Artwork, games and toys filled the room. A display of flower petals made from coffee filters ran along a wall, underneath words painted in script: “Masterpieces / Every child is an artist.”
At the Child Care Council’s Champions of Child Care ceremony last month, both Stepping Stones and O’Meara received awards. When the addition is ready, the program will enroll more infants and, for the first time, young students who need care before and after school, or when schools are closed.
“We’re excited,” said O’Meara.
A similar child’s world exists inside the Tioronda Learning Center in Beacon, one of 16 programs within the Beacon City School District, including afterschool programs run by the Beacon Recreation Department at the city’s three elementary schools and its center on West Center Street.
Miniature chairs and tables fill part of Tioronda’s space, along with books, Legos, crayons and a wall painted with a sylvan scene depicting animals, grass-covered hills and a blue sea.
Meredith Hairston’s resume included 20 years at a “prestigious” preschool in Manhattan when, in 2019, she took over the half-day nursery school Christ Church United Methodist in Beacon operated out of its building on Union Street.
She scheduled a series of open houses the following January, and learned that some Beacon parents had enrolled their children in child care programs in East Fishkill and Wappingers because they could not find openings in the city, especially for infants and toddlers.
Those conversations also revealed “an outpouring of interest for more all-day facilities in Beacon,” said Hairston.
In addition to Philipstown, Stepping Stones’ children come from Beacon, Fishkill and as far away as Mahopac, said Giannasca.
Two months after Hairston held her first open house, the pandemic shut down schools and child care. Providers had to furlough staff just when child care was still needed by emergency responders, health care workers, grocery cashiers and others whose jobs were deemed essential. Calls from those employees “flooded” the Child Care Council’s phones, said Arvidson.
Hairston closed the Tioronda Learning Center on March 13, 2020. “We Zoomed our preschoolers in for daily, routine stuff, just to kind of keep them grounded at home,” she said. “I would bring out my sock puppets and do all of the songs we did together.”
Federal funding flowed to providers nationwide. Stepping Stones and other programs in Beacon and Philipstown received, in 2021 and 2022, a combined $1.2 million to pay rent and utilities and boost wages for employees.
There has been some relief for the parents of 4-year-olds because of pre-K programs offered by the Beacon and Garrison school districts. Most private programs have openings for 4-year-olds, said Arvidson.
Parents fortunate enough to win a pre-K seat avoid the cost of child care but private providers lose “an important segment” of revenue, according to Pattern for Progress. Child care programs can earn twice as much from 4-year-olds because the staff-to-child ratio can be 1-to-8 compared to 1-to-4 for younger children, the nonprofit said.
Before Beacon began accepting applications in March, Hairston said she had “families calling my phone off the hook, showing up at my door, emailing me” because they feared missing out on a spot in Beacon’s program.
Mandated staffing is part of the reason why infant openings are the hardest to find. According to the Child Care Council, Dutchess, with 361, and Putnam, with 162, have fewer slots for infants than any other age group.
“Sometimes, it’s not cost-effective, and that’s really what it boils down to,” said Hairston at the Tioronda Learning Center, which also has a waiting list. “You can’t ask people with an infant to pay double the amount that someone with a preschooler is paying.”
A dearth of workers
At Stepping Stones, the waiting list for toddlers is “out of control,” and some of the families who use the center are expecting another child, said O’Meara. Expanding will bring room for infants, along with space for school-age children needing care before and after school.
It will also require front-line teachers, who are required by state law to undergo 15 hours of training in their first six months and 30 hours of additional education every two years on topics ranging from the principles of childhood development and nutrition to identifying abuse.
“It’s so important because the role you’re playing can impact a child for the rest of their life,” said Giannasca.
That is why providers identify a shortage of teachers as their most pressing issue, and the state considers bolstering those employees as an important step in expanding child care.
A survey of child care centers and afterschool programs by the Empire State Campaign for Child Care found in March 2023 that they enrolled 28,000 fewer children than their licensed capacity and had 3,800 unfilled positions and 750 unused classrooms.
Salaries that leave an estimated 12 percent of child care workers living below the federal poverty line — more than twice the rate of workers overall in New York, according to the state report — is not the only reason.
“People working 10 to 11 hours a day, in a classroom all day with 10 to 11 children, it’s a tough, tough job,” said Giannasca.
The federal pandemic funding, which expired in 2023, was “a one-shot deal” that allowed Stepping Stones to increase its pay, said Giannasca. But once the money is gone, “I can’t sustain” those increases, she said.
In 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that the state’s 2023-24 budget included additional funding to underwrite bonuses of $2,300 to $3,000 and to help programs recruit new staff. As of January, New York had distributed $330 million to providers, who can also use the grants to award bonuses to staff who refer new workers and to reward new hires.
Immortalizing such support is one of the recommendations from the Office of Children and Family Services and the Department of Labor, who say that a permanent funding stream will “curtail the flight of educators from the field and encourage others to enter the field.”
The agencies also recommend that the funding give providers the flexibility to not only supplement wages and give bonuses but to fund health insurance and retirement benefits.
Expanding subsidies
An estimated 94 percent of child care workers are women, according to the state Department of Labor. Women are also most likely to own a child care center or home-based child care program and more likely to have to sacrifice work when families cannot afford or find care.
“Women have the children and, unfortunately in this country, we’re still expected to stay home with them,” said Hairston. “But we don’t have means, fundamentally, to support us to do that, so it’s a catch-22.”
In 2022, full-time care for an infant at a center cost $21,826 annually, 155 percent more than full-time, in-state tuition at public four-year universities in New York, according to the state Department of Labor.
To make care affordable to more families, New York has been steadily expanding eligibility for its Child Care Assistance Program, which covers some or all costs for eligible families.
Under expanded income limits issued in October, a two-person household that had been limited to $54,900 annually can now make up to $67,400, and the ceiling for a family of four rose from $83,200 to $99,200, according to Arvidson.
In their report, the Office of Children and Family Services and the Department of Labor recommend that the state continue expanding eligibility, and set a goal of universal child care.
Hines priced programs in Beacon, and even in Queens, near her husband’s job, where their daughter could be dropped off in the morning. Enrolling there would have required her husband to leave home at 5 a.m. and return to Beacon, with a toddler, at 7:30 p.m., she said.
She posted about her search on a local Facebook page and someone suggested that she look for a person providing informal care in their home. That led to a woman in Fishkill who, said Hines, has years of child care experience and a large home where she looks after children for $65 a week.
Hines said she is now working remotely full time, using the woman for three days a week and caring for her daughter at home on the other two days. “For now, we’re in a good place,” she said.
Resources
Families can search for licensed child care programs at the state Office of Children and Family Services website (ocfs.ny.gov). Search by program type, ZIP code, county or school district to view inspection results.
For information about subsidies from the Child Care Assistance Program, call the Dutchess County Department of Community and Family Services at 845-486-3190 or the Putnam County Department of Social Services at 845-808-1500, ext. 45304.
Residents in either county can visit hs.ocfs.ny.gov to complete an eligibility questionnaire.
I’m disappointed The Current presented such a one-dimensional view of a complex issue such as child care. Frankly, I’m baffled that an article titled “Who Will Watch the Kids?” did not even consider an obvious, uniquely qualified and readily available pool of candidates: How about their mothers?
While there will always be situations and preferences that necessitate child care for very young children and infants, there are many of us out here who need to use these services but don’t really want to.
Those of us who have faced the heartbreaking prospect of leaving our infants in a care facility — lest we give up a salary in what is now a squarely double-income society — can speak to what an additional three, six or even 12 months of maternity leave would mean to us and our families’ well-being. We don’t want more child care centers; we want more time with our children.
Perhaps future investigations could provide a more balanced analysis of what drives demand for these services and other possible solutions. For example, perhaps further expansion of New York State Paid Family Leave would allow more mothers to remain at home with their children during those critical early months and years, freeing up more capacity in the child care system for older children.
Thanks to Leonard Sparks for his excellent and thorough report on the child care shortages in the Hudson Valley and across the state. He told the story through the eyes of both the consumers and providers and highlighted the workforce problems that are at the heart of the crisis. As a pediatrician who has worked in the area for more than 40 years in private practice and at the Beacon Community Health Center, I know how important quality child care is to the healthy development of young people.
I also wanted to comment on the response from Kathleen Taylor. She is correct about the need for a robust Paid Family Leave policy in our state and nation to support parents who want to stay home with their young children. We’re in last place among developed countries when it comes to paid family leave. The two programs go hand-in-hand and allow families to make the choices that meet their personal and financial circumstances. Supporting families in early childhood and allowing them to make the choices best for them leads to lifelong physical and emotional health benefits. There’s solid data to support that.
If New York leaders are serious about making New York welcoming to New York families, they should prioritize expanding and strengthening paid family leave, and make child care and afterschool accessible and affordable to all families, which cannot happen without investing in the child care workforce.
For more information about how vital family-centered state policies are to young children, visit the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy at scaany.org. Thank you again for highlighting this issue.