Loss of child care providers in region: 'That's crisis-level'

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – Early childhood education and child care across the region remains in flux, data indicate.

Roughly 17 providers in Cambria County and two in Somerset County closed from 2019 through 2023, said Jen DeBell, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children.

Those numbers were determined by comparing pre-COVID-19 pandemic numbers to post-pandemic data from the Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children.

To add to that, The Learning Lamp last month shut down its child care center in Northern Cambria. President and CEO Leah Spangler said that decision was not made lightly.

The center was opened four years ago and had to close not because of a lack of need for child care, but because of a staffing shortage caused by low wages for child care workers, Spangler said.

The average child care worker’s wage is about $12 an hour, according to advocacy group Start Strong PA, which said the average cost of early childhood education for one child in Pennsylvania could be in excess of $12,000 per year.

Spangler, an advocate for expanded support for early childhood education, said the situation in Northern Cambria is just another example of Pennsylvania’s broken early childhood education system.

Mandi Paronish, CEO and founder of the Small Town Hope early childhood facility in Northern Cambria, said the impact on a small community when a child care provider closes can be “harsh.”

She has operated her center since 2015 and understands how underserved northern Cambria County is in terms of child care, which is a service families rely on, she said. She acknowledged the struggles to keep child care employees and the continued closings of child care facilities across the country.

Paronish said she wishes she could have accepted some of the 20 children who had been enrolled at The Learning Lamp’s Northern Cambria facility, but her center on Bigler Avenue is at capacity, with about 60 children served.

‘Not getting better’

Cambria County, in particular, has experienced a significant loss of service, with about nearly 400 child care seats lost in the past four years, not including the Northern Cambria closure. Somerset County has seen a decline of roughly 38 child care seats, data show.

Across Pennsylvania, there has been a loss of almost 630 child care providers since the pandemic.

“To me, that’s crisis-level,” Spangler said. “To me ... we need to do something as a community.”

A Start Strong PA survey from September found there are nearly 3,000 vacant child care jobs across the state, and if providers were fully staffed, another 26,000 children could be served.

The Learning Lamp has a waitlist of about 400 children.

“I think the pandemic has really shone a light on what was a problem before,” DeBell said. “Frankly, things are just not getting better.”

She added that one of the largest challenges is recruitment and retention of child care teachers, which has a trickle-down effect on the economy. If parents can’t find reliable care, that can mean they have to leave jobs, she said.

A larger investment in child care from the state could help with the “frustrating” state of affairs, Spangler said.

DeBell agreed, and pointed to increased advocacy at the state level to help curb these issues.

She said she’s appreciative of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed increase in this year’s budget to the base rates of the commonwealth’s subsidized Child Care Works program.

To help with the worker shortage, The Learning Lamp has launched an apprenticeship program that allows entry-level child care staff – child care, preschool or elementary-age class employees – to earn a child development associate credential.

The organization also plans to expand that offering in the future to include associate and bachelor’s degree-level coursework that will allow child care employees to complete college degrees in early childhood education and child development at no cost.

“We’re really just trying to focus on this effort of growing our own workforce,” Spangler said.

The apprenticeship program is an expansion of The Learning Lamp’s pre-apprenticeship offering and is geared toward helping child care providers across the region.