CGCC Public Child Care Center Feasibility Study reveals the complexity of regional child care crisis
Child Care Partners shared that despite the complexity of the challenge posed by the child care crisis, there were ways the County and local organizations could help.
A graph shows the current state of child care availability in Wasco County.
by Cole Goodwin
Nancy Patten, of Child Care Partners, gave a presentation about the state of child care in Wasco County and the feasibility of creating a public child care center to Wasco County Commissioners on May 18th, 2022.
Child Care Partners are the child care resource and referral agency of Gilliam, Hood River, Sherman, Wasco, and Wheeler Counties.
Patten presented County data, including a Public Child Care Center Feasibility Study completed by CGCC and their partners, and compared it to state data.
The study found that availability, affordability, and ability to provide quality child care were all major issues facing families in Wasco County and across the region and the state.
The first issue facing Wasco County is availability.
There simply haven’t been enough child care providers to go around, a problem that has been greatly exacerbated by the pandemic.
Currently, only 34% of 0-5-year-olds in Wasco Count had access to a regulated childcare spot.
A graph shows the percent of children in each county that have access to a childcare spot.
A graph from the feasibility study shows the number of available slots in each county in the region.
The second barrier to child care access in Wasco County is affordability.
This barrier peaked the interest ofCommissioners, who had questions about how child care could be simultaneously too expensive for Wasco County families to afford while also not being expensive enough to provide for childcare workers.
“You hear it all the time: the cost of child care is too high,” said Patten.
The price of child care in The Dalles area runs about $325-$1000 a month, while the cost to Hood River families is in the range of $410-$1175 a month.
That means that middle-income families spend 14% of their income on child care, while low-income families spend more than 1/3 (35%) of their income on child care.
Meanwhile, the problem is further complicated because while families are struggling to pay so much of their income, the average family child care worker is also struggling to live on their wages.
Patten revealed that the average family child care worker only makes $12.00 an hour.
Family child care providers make up the majority of child care providers in Wasco County. However, many family child care providers do not have the same access to funds as other child care facilities, such as preschools like HeadStart Preschool, which are federally funded and can pay their employees a living wage.
In addition, Patten reported that nearly 98% of the child care providers had received some form of emergency stabilization grant assistance to survive issues created by the pandemic, such as reduced enrollment and capacity.
Commissioner Hege asked whether child care workers could charge more for child care to offset costs.
Patten responded by saying that the study had found major gaps between the cost of early care and education and what families could afford.
“Parents can’t afford more. It costs parents about $4-$5 an hour per child. The actual cost of care is closer to $10.00 an hour. But families can't afford $10.00 an hour,” said Patten.
Patten confirmed that the child care providers that serve middle to low-income families also struggle with those costs and with charging more the most.
“Most people don’t go into child care to make money,” said Patten, “They do it because they love kids. The programs that are doing really well are serving our upper-income families.”
The feasibility study stated that a Public Child Care Center that used a traditional business model would not be sustainable for the College, as such a model would lead to an annual deficit, and that innovation would be required.
The start-up cost for cribs, changing tables, and other furnishings for a center with a capacity of 53 slots would start at $115,000. A center with an enrollment capacity of 91 kids would have a start-up cost of $155,000. In addition, CGCC would need to secure at least an additional $1.5 million to offset the capital costs of new construction.
Start-up cost, and lack of funding are only some of the barriers, however.
Additional barriers to increasing child care in the region included:
A lack of usable space for publicly accessible child care centers.
Lack of qualified staff to keep classrooms open.
The study acknowledged that keeping qualified staff would be difficult due to low wages, and a regional workforce shortage.
The study made several recommendations to address some of these barriers including:
Locating the center on the CGCC campus.
Having CGCC manage the center as an early education lab.
Securing employer reserved spots and partner funders to cover start-up and operating costs. $10,000 annual contributions from ten partners could help close the gap for a publicly-staffed center with 91 slots.
Diversifying funding and services.
Developing an annual campaign fund to resolve gaps in annual operational costs.
Developing a scholarship fund to provide scholarship opportunities to families in need.
Implement shared services to sponsor more than one small center and partner with the emerging statewide Oregon Child Care Alliance to develop a regional approach.
Identify opportunities to scale for efficiencies by achieving a 91 slot or more center.
Establish an advisory committee to monitor the program budget.
Dan Spatz said they felt that a sustainable childcare program would require at the very least, a continuous enrollment of 200 children.
Patten said that even at 200 kids, the center would not necessarily be feasible.
“That would be a huge center, that doesn’t fully make it self sufficient but it gets a lot closer. The smaller the program the higher the deficit,” said Patten.
Patten said that the child care center would be impossible without community support.
“Finding those operational funds to support those programs is very challenging, and that is what Dan is working extremely hard on doing: making this a community effort because it’s going to take all of us to do it,” said Patten.
“And it’s needed. One of the questions we hear most often from families moving into the area is, where is your child care center? And we don’t have one. So their options are family child care, and that’s not what a lot of families are used to,” said Patten.
A summary of CGCC’s survey findings about the need for child care in Wasco County.
Patten said a child care center has more reliability due to increased staff as opposed to a single-family child care provider who has to close when they get sick.
Keven Lewis, Maupin City Manager, expressed that he felt a child care center was absolutely necessary to secure a future for rural communities.
Suze Riley, the Executive Director of the Chamber of Maupin said she felt the presentation was “humbling.”
“It’s really humbling to listen to this conversation and really distressing,” said Riley.
Child Care Partners shared that despite the complexity of the challenge posed by the child care crisis, there were ways the County and local organizations could help.
A slide from the presentation showing examples of child care solutions in other counties.
Ways you can help:
Raise awareness and build support for child care in your community.
Write grants to support operational costs for child care providers.
Donate space or fund remodeling of existing spaces to meet child care regulations and needs.
Commissioners agreed that they would be willing to help participate in advocating for the County's need for a solution to the regional child care crisis. They also said they felt the issue was far too large for any one agency to address and that the issue would likely have to be pushed at the state or even federal level.
Watch the Wasco County Commissioners meeting: Watch Livestream here.
Read More: May 18th, 2022 Agenda & Board Packet.
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