By Rod Bacon
The difficulty working parents have finding reliable child care has been an issue for decades. Various government and private sector programs have attempted to solve the problem to no avail. Now that many employers are requiring employees to return to the office, at least part-time, following the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the social services field are calling it a crisis.
According to Abbe Kovacik, executive director of Brightside Up, Inc., a child care resource center that serves Albany, Fulton, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Schenectady, and Saratoga counties, the child care issue is multi-faceted.
“Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic it was a challenge for families to find and afford regulated high quality child care in Saratoga County as well as across the state and country,” she said. “The pandemic had a significant impact on child care centers with two-thirds of working parents changing their child care arrangements.”
She explained that as parents shifted to working at home many disenrolled their children from formalized child care. As a result, income to centers was drastically reduced making it difficult to keep qualified, experienced staff working at the sites. When parents returned to work, child care centers found it difficult to find qualified staff. While most child care centers have returned to full operation, some still have unopened classrooms due to staffing shortages.
While some family child care homes reduced their numbers, they were less likely to close during the pandemic.
According to Brightside Up’s 2024 report entitled Picture of Child Care in the Capital District, child care centers in Saratoga County can currently accommodate 383 infants, 689 toddlers, 1,778 three-to-four-year-olds, and 414 school-age children. Family child care providers can cater to 198 children aged 6 weeks to 5 years old and 66 school-age children. Group family providers have the capacity for 600 children aged 6 weeks to 5 years and 196 school-age children. School-age programs can accommodate 2,151 children.
This results in approximately 6,257 potential child care slots, serving only 16.5 percent of the population. Since not all families require child care outside the home the need for child care is generally calculated at 80 percent of the population. Based on this percentage, which is 30,248 children, only 21 percent of the child care needs are being met in Saratoga County.
In addition to the lack of reliable child care there is the high cost. Brightside Up’s report noted that the average weekly cost ranges from $165.50 for a school-age child to $339.90 for infants and toddlers.
Renee Walrath, president of Walrath Recruiting, Inc., with offices in Albany and Saratoga Springs, said that when her son and daughter-in-law were trying to place their 2-1/2-year-old daughter in a facility there was a waiting list. And later when their son was born there was a six-month wait to enroll him in a center.
Walrath noted that she recently had a candidate call her and say her current employer had told her she had to return to the office three days a week. She was given less than two weeks to comply. She has a 3-year-old at home and has no idea where she will find reliable child care in such a short time.
Dorothy Rogers-Bullis, owner of drb Business Interiors and co-founder of Saratoga CoWorks, said that rising costs affect child care providers as well.
“If you don’t own the building where you have your child care center you have to pay rent and those rents go up every year,” she said. “It’s very difficult for parents to pay three, four or five percent more every year.”
Rogers-Bullis said that one option to address child care needs might be some sort of co-op that would be subsidized by area businesses. She also said the state has to start thinking outside the box and come up with creative solutions for the problem.
Maddie Tesch, director of Creative Sprouts Childcare Center in Saratoga Springs, agrees that child care is a huge problem not only locally but nationwide.
The center cares for 70 children ranging in age from infants to preschool/pre-k. There are 20-25 staff members, depending upon the need at a given time.
The center is at full capacity and has a waiting list. Because of demand in the region there will soon be a second Creative Sprouts center in Clifton Park.
The child care situation in Warren and Washington counties is much the same. According to Colleen Maziejka, executive director of the Southern Adirondack Child Care Network, the organization received 274 requests for child care referrals last year. They operate in conjunction with nine day care centers and 14 in-home programs in Warren County. Washington County has no day care centers but does have 35 in-home programs.
The day care centers in Warren County can accommodate 765 children. The in-home programs in both counties combined can care for 608 children.
A problem across the spectrum is finding qualified staff for day care centers because of low pay, long hours, and lack of benefits. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for child care workers in May of 2023 was $14.60 per hour, putting them in the lowest 4 percent of wage earners.
“There is an increased awareness of this problem,” Maziejka said. “Last year we received a workforce retention grant from the state so providers were able to pay themselves and their staff a one-time bonus, but that was short-term. There is no long-term solution at this time.”
“We are definitely in a child care desert,” she concluded.