“A Day Without Childcare” in NC seeks to stress the importance funding needs
Child care centers are facing a financial cliff when stabilization grants expire June 30, 2024. (Photo: SDI Productions/ Getty Image)
Losing childcare triggers a mad scramble for parents. It may mean missing some work while trying to patch together temporary childcare arrangements with family or friends.
Childcare providers are warning that what is a tremor shaking individual households is about to be felt statewide as federal COVID-19 relief money runs out and more childcare businesses have to shut down or raise their fees to stay afloat.
Childcare providers, workers, parents, and officials with Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration have been warning for months that the childcare system is sliding down a financial cliff. They have been pleading with the state legislature to help fill the funding gap.
About one-third of childcare programs that responded to a North Carolina Child Care Resource and Referral Council survey in February said they would have to close within a year after the federal money runs out.
Bipartisan House and Senate bills that proposed spending $300 million to compensate for the end of the federal support did not make it into the final budget last year.
To help get a taste of life without childcare, centers around the state are closing Thursday while parents and childcare workers gather in Raleigh to talk to legislators about the funding needs.
At least 47 childcare centers around the state plan to close as part of “A Day Without Childcare,” according to the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Seventy-one centers that could not close are sending representatives to the gathering. The alliance is expecting hundreds of people to meet on Halifax Mall behind the Legislative Building.
Dee Dee Fields is closing her center in Durham on Thursday as she worries about the trajectory of her own business and others like hers, as well as the working parents who struggle to pay to have professionals watch over their children.
Fields, the owner of Landeeingdam Dosland Daycare in Durham, started her business 32 years ago when she had trouble finding reliable care for her young daughter. The daycare has the capacity to care for 17 children, but enrollment is down to five children.
Fields can no longer afford to pay employees she hired with COVID relief money.
The inability to pay teachers means childcare centers must close classrooms.
“That means fewer children are being served,” Fields said. “That’s wrong. That’s so wrong on every level.”
At the same time, low-income working parents are struggling to make up the difference between the subsidies they receive and the cost of tuition.
Fields said legislators just don’t want to spend enough on education.
“The money is there,” she said. “You have the expectation of us being high-quality providers without providing the support. It just doesn’t make sense.”
As for falling over the financial cliff, Fields said that’s already happened, with childcare centers having already shuttered and more expected to close.
Childcare operators are passionate about quality care and education, Fields said.
“While the passion may fuel our mission,” she said, “it doesn’t pay our bills.”
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