We are having the same struggles with staffing. I have been covering the classrooms, as a lead teacher on and off since 2019. Which is around the time that I think that the staffing issue started in the child care field. I am working well over 60 hours a week plus weekends to take care of my own work as a director. Our center, I feel has been interviewing and hiring pretty consistently since then. I am on the verge of completely leaving the field due to this. There doesn't seem to be any help on the horizon, from anywhere.
I have noticed the same thing on Hello. I am glad that there is a support group for early childhood, but I feel that child care gets left out of the conversation again and again. Usually, child care is the villain of the early childhood field. If we are such an important part of society, then why is there no help for the staff and centers. The focus is always on making it more affordable for families. Staff in the childcare field work long hours, deal with behavior problems, etc., with little to no support from families or other resources. The majority of our children are here an average of 10 hours a day. We are only open 11.5 hours.
Early childhood programs that are part of a larger elementary school system or private schools have those resources. Those of us working in a privately owned facility do not have those types of luxuries.
Our state just turned over monitoring of the child care field to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. They have no experience in working with child care and are having a difficult time in relating to centers. In addition to that, they are short staffed. We have been waiting on our renewal inspection since June. Our license "expired" in September. We have spoken to other centers and this is happening to them also.
I apologize for rambling...thank you for allowing me to vent.
------------------------------
Cynthia Bohrer
Director
Kids International Early Childhood Education Cente
Ellisville MO
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 10-06-2021 01:51 PM
From: Tim Kaminski
Subject: On-going challenges of the Pandemic
Hello to everyone,
Lately on hello, I have been seeing the same kinds of threads that I used to see prior to the pandemic that were focused on changes and improvements that needed to be made to the childcare industry such as what are best practices for classrooms, what are some good books for different age groups, clinical findings on child development, etc., etc. All of these things are fine and I'm sure for many it is helpful information, however it almost makes it seem like the Pandemic is over and we have moved on to the same old conversations that we were having before and less of a focus on the fact that there are still major challenges facing childcare providers. I am just wondering if other providers, directors and owners are feeling as frustrated as I am, that overall things do not seem to be improving or that the general public and people that advocate for ECE have a clue as to just how bad things are right now.
We continue to have major staffing issues to the point that on some days we have had to close early because we knew that we were not going to have enough afternoon staff to stay open until 6:30 so we closed at 4:00. For one of our after-school programs that has been closed for over a year, we were unable to find any staff to open the program in August, so after 18 years of having that license, the State made us submit a permanent closure status and return our license. For our other locations that have remained open, we are still operating at around 50-60% when we would normally be at 80-90% of our capacity by this time of the year.
It's all fine and good to continue to talk about the changes and upgrades that need to be made to childcare, but none of that will make a difference if we can't keep the doors open now. Without an adequate labor force for childcare, all other discussions are a mute point at this time.
Again, just wondering if anyone else is feeling the same frustrations or has found any solutions to get us past the pandemic.
Tim Kaminski
------------------------------
Tim Kaminski
Director/Owner
Gingerbread Kids Academy
Richmond TX
------------------------------