(C) Tennessee Lookout
This story was originally published by Tennessee Lookout and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
End of pandemic era subsidies puts thousands of Tennessee child care centers at risk for closure – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['Anita Wadhwani', 'More From Author', '- October']
Date: 2023-10-04
Pandemic era federal funding proved to be a game changer for Tennessee child care centers like Fannie Battle Day Home, which traces its history to single room rented by its namesake in the 19th century to take in low income kids.
With nearly $800,000 in funding provided through the American Rescue Plan, the center has been able to increase salaries, add first-time benefits and offer retention bonuses to keep a critical workforce in place. The money freed up other income to use on pressing needs, including upkeep on a 130-year-old building teeming with kids every weekday.
A last round of funding – about $290,000 soon to come – will tide the center over for another two months, but director Kristie Ryan says the wind down of the federal Child Care Stabilization Program in September comes at a perilous cost to child care centers, working parents and the companies that employ them.
“It’s unsustainable,” Ryan said. “We cannot continue to meet expectations that any parent would want and pay our staff fairly. We are lucky in that we’re a nonprofit that can fundraise. But in many cases, centers will be unable to sustain staff, and losing just a few would be a huge burden.”
The expiration of pandemic child care relief that helped keep many child care providers afloat – $544 million thus far in Tennessee, with a last round of $195 million currently being distributed – is expected to hit the state hard.
One dire estimate by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, warns that without immediate intervention nearly 1200 Tennessee child care centers could close, leaving 90,000 kids without care and 3,900 child care workers out of a job.
Those estimates are “certainly on track with what we’re hearing,” said Feroza Freeland, policy associate with the Nashville-based office of A Better Balance, which operates a hotline for working parents.
The pandemic brought a sharp focus to a fractured system that parents and child care operators have experienced for years: child care math is unsustainable. Quality care critical to early childhood development comes with a steep price tag in child care worker pay and overhead that many working parents struggle to afford.
“All of a sudden issues of caregiving were a public issue. Businesses started to get more involved. They realized child care is critical,” Feroza said. “Previously families had to deal with them on their own.”
Since the pandemic’s onset, a series of state and federal supports have shored up child care infrastructure in Tennessee. More than 40,000 Tennessee parents who are essential workers got subsidized or free child care. Tennessee officials increased state subsidies for working parents.
“The loss is going to be significant for us because we’ve already raised staff wages and we don’t know how we’re going to make up for that. – Kristie Ryan, director of Fannie Battle Day Home
Some of the new policies are permanent: the Tennessee legislature set aside $15 million annually to provide public school teachers and administrators with 6 weeks of paid parental leave. Lawmakers also passed a similar policy for state government employees.
Beginning October 1, the Tennessee Department of Human Services will increase the amount of subsidies given to child care centers caring for kids from low income families.
But while advocates welcome policy decisions that begin to provide a wider safety net for working parents, they fail to make up for the $25 billion in federal funding losses to child care centers.
“It is really concerning to think we may be on the brink of losing ground,” Feroza said.
Thus far, a $16 billion stopgap measure to provide continued federal child care funding has stalled in Congress.
“The loss is going to be significant for us because we’ve already raised staff wages and we don’t know how we’re going to make up for that,” Ryan said.
Child care centers are already at capacity. At Fannie Battle, 170 families are on a waiting list.
Robin Reid, a 22-year-old mother of a two-year-old toddler, is among the lucky ones.
Reid works full time at a call center. Her son’s father is absent from their lives while every other adult member of her family holds down their own job. She got a spot at Fannie Battle, with the help of a state subsidy that reduced her share of costs to $40 per week.
“If I don’t have daycare, I’d lose my job and couldn’t support my child,” she said. “How does that make sense?”
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://tennesseelookout.com/2023/10/04/end-of-pandemic-era-subsidies-puts-thousands-of-tennessee-child-care-centers-at-risk-for-closure/
Published and (C) by Tennessee Lookout
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/tennesseelookout/
