Dysfunction on all levels

By James Card

On the evening of May 8, people gathered at the Waupaca Middle School theater to view a presentation on problems afflicting the child care industry.

A panel discussed how this causes an enormous amount of stress and frustration in the Waupaca area.

This event was part of “A Day Without Child Care,” a national campaign to bring attention to the issues of child care, especially in communities with little or no available spots for children so that parents can work.

Starting the conversation was a slideshow and video presentation that highlighted the trials of both early childhood educators and also owners of day care centers. All of the people interviewed were from Waupaca County.

The child care providers told stories of low pay, no health insurance and struggles to make ends meet. The owners and operators of child care centers broke down the costs and hardships of staying afloat.

Retention was a large problem. Early childhood educators often left to work for kindergartens that had better pay and benefits. Some mothers with young children would take jobs to get free child care but as soon as the children were old enough to go to school, they quit and moved on.

For parents, it is a nightmare of waiting lists and the costs are rising to levels that are comparable to college tuition. Day care hours do not match up with the wide-ranging work schedules of parents.

The presentation was prepared by Child Care Resource and Referral (ccrrfoxvalley.org), a group that serves Calumet, Green Lake, Outagamie, Waupaca and Winnebago counties.

The solution that was proposed to help fix this conundrum is to formalize early childhood education as a professional occupation and treat it like something similar to elementary school.

Panel discussion

The panel discussion had managers from the Wisconsin Veterans Home, ThedaCare and Bethany Home. They spoke of the organizational difficulties that lack of child care causes in the workplace.

“The majority of my employees are female. It’s the nursing field. We’re facing major challenges trying to find nursing staff for second shift. Part of the reason is there is no day care that runs into those shifts. We’re 24-hour care. You have to have that staffed. What happens is we end up having to force staff onto the second shift which isn’t what they wanted to do and that causes a problem for their day care hours,” said Tammy Servatius, commandant at the Wisconsin Veterans Home.

“I did a poll of my staff and 63% of the staff that have day care, 24% of them cannot find day care. So they rely on family and if the family cannot do it, then they are calling in sick,” Servatius added.

Another hurdle pointed out was seniority: the most desired shift is first shift (day care hours) and those tend to go to employees that have experience (older people with older children). Second and third shifts are staffed by recent hires and they tend to be in the young mother demographic—the ones that need day care the most.

“The shortages of day care in this area make it incredibly difficult to staff a facility. To be able give quality care you need to have a full shift. If you don’t have a full shift, everyone is just running trying to make due with what you have for that night or that particular shift,” said Casey Brown, Director of Life Enrichment at Bethany Home.

Child Care in Waupaca County

• 24 child care providers are in Waupaca County.

• 2,578 children are under the age of 5 in Waupaca County.

• 80% of the programs report an extended waitlist of over one year.

• 18 child care providers report the need to raise tuition in 2023.

• 60% of group child care providers report not being fully staffed.

• 100% of programs are open at of before 7 a.m.

• 40% of programs open before 5:30 a.m.

• 100% of programs are open until 5:30 p.m.

• 0% of programs are open for second shift care.

• 0% of programs are open on Saturday or Sunday.

• The average monthly fulltime costs for a child from 6 weeks old to 4 years old in group child care is from $632 to $748.

• $16.78 is the average wage for a child care director.

• $13.15 is the average wage for a lead teacher.

• 32% of child care programs in Waupaca County offer health insurance.

• 0% of child care programs offer paid family leave.