'A Childcare Desert': Local Daycare Professionals Talk Staffing Challenges, Waitlists, Ideas To Solve Growing Crisis

What’s life like on the ground for northern Michigan’s childcare workers? Amidst staffing shortages, huge waitlists, COVID-19, and other challenges, The Ticker touched based with three daycare center leaders to ask about staffing horror stories, care availability (or lack thereof), ideas for solving the local childcare crisis, and predictions for the future.

Community Children’s Center

Staffing nightmare: “We had terrible staffing shortages the whole month of January,” says Jackie Jenkins, the center director for the Community Children’s Center (CCC) at First Congregational Church. “We have 23 full-time staff, and there were whole weeks where we had 4-6 people out every day. Luckily, that timed out to when a lot of our families were out with COVID as well. So, it kind of worked out, as far as how many staff we had and how many children were actually here. We only had one day where we had to send kids home, because we just didn't have enough staff to meet ratios.”

Availability: “We are completely full, other than a couple of spots in our three-year-old room,” Jenkins says. “Other than that, we are bursting at the seams, with a one-year-out waitlist for all kids under 30 months.” CCC currently has eight classrooms with a total capacity of 115 kids, though Jenkins tells The Ticker the center will be adding a ninth classroom in May, bringing capacity to “between 130 and 140.”

Silver bullet fix: When asked what would most move the needle for solving the Grand Traverse region’s childcare crisis, Jenkins points to funding. “I would be 100 percent all about opening my own center, but I don't have the funding to do it. I have the knowledge, I have the ability, I have the energy. But I don't have the finances to back me.”

Industry prediction: “I see every center [in northern Michigan] extending their waitlist longer, less needs getting met in the community, and families struggling to find care,” Jenkins says. “I see that happening unless something else can break loose, and we can provide more childcare in this area. I have thought about going to every big company – all the factories, and all the companies with 50 or more employees – and asking for a promissory note to help fund a center that would hold at least 200 Kids.”

Teddy Bear Daycare

Staffing nightmare: “This winter has been the toughest,” says Anna Fryer, co-owner of Teddy Bear Daycare. “A ton of children are getting COVID from their older siblings in the public schools, and every staff member has had COVID in the last month.” All told, the post-holiday-season surge necessitated 2-3 “full shutdowns” across Teddy Bear’s three Traverse City centers. Because of the three-location setup, though, Fryer says Teddy Bear is better suited to weather outbreaks than many other local daycares. “We borrow staff from each location to make sure we don’t have a staffing shortage that would require us to shut down a center or reduce our capacity due to ratio requirements.”

Availability: Overall, Teddy Bear is licensed to care for 145 children, with a waitlist more than 300 names long. “In early preschool, I have a part-time availability at our 14th Street location, and that’s it,” Fryer says. “Infants and toddlers, no way. I probably won't have room for three years.”

Silver bullet fix: “If we could have more community investment into the care that children need, I think that would help solve this issue,” Fryer says, calling on major employers like Hagerty and Britten to invest in opening new centers. “Right now, we're in what’s called a ‘childcare desert,’ which basically means there's more children that need care than there are spaces available. And that’s what happened during COVID. When it was time for everyone to go back to work, they discovered they couldn’t, because there was no childcare. Over 74 childcares [in our area] closed during the shutdown..”

Industry prediction: Fryer’s hope is that COVID will not only spur local business to invest in childcare, but also create more state and federal funding opportunities. As an example, she points to $1.4 billion in federal COVID aid dollars that the state designated last fall for childcare grants and subsidies. “We want to know where [that money is],” Fryer says. “There’s $100 million set aside for childcare startup costs, and if we had access to even a very small portion, Teddy Bear would absolutely be willing to open a fourth facility.”

Angel Care

Staffing nightmare: According to Executive Director Karin Cooney, Angel Care has struggled throughout the pandemic to support its full 44-child capacity. “We were never able to be enrolled any more than about 60-70 percent, just because we didn't have the staff,” she says. Fortunately, as of December, Angel Care has enough staff to get back to full capacity and start “getting some names off our waitlist.”

Availability: As Cooney starts crossing names off the waitlist, she says she’s “calling families who have been waiting since winter 2020 or spring 2021.”

Silver bullet fix: Cooney says a complete “culture change” around childcare is needed to solve the problems northern Michigan is facing. “The issue is a belief that early childhood isn't really important,” she explains. “It's ‘important,’ in that parents need a place for their kids to be while they work. But it's not ‘important’ as a need for a child to grow and develop. If the majority of the community understood the importance of early childhood to a developing child, most of our issues would be fixed. But the culture is that we’re a babysitting industry, and that parents are just looking for people to watch their kids..”

Industry future: “That’s a tough question for me, because I’m leaving,” Cooney says, admitting that she’s so “burned out” with the childcare industry that she’s stepping down from Angel Care this year. “We’ve done a lot of work as a center here [to make a difference],” she adds. “We've raised compensation to a point where it’s going to help people not live in poverty anymore; they're going to be able to have housing, and a car, and maybe the gas that goes with it. But that's not happening everywhere. And until that happens everywhere, this problem is not going to change.”