In a study done this November, the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance found over 4,000 openings across the 205 childcare centers included in the survey.
“Fundamentally, the problem is there’s not enough money in the system because we expect parents who don’t have much money to be the ones paying for it,” Merrill Gay, executive director of the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance, said.
Those 205 centers made up roughly 21% of the state’s total licensed center-based capacity, but according to Gay, the findings pointed to a larger crisis.
“It shows a pretty consistent picture that programs are struggling to hire staff and retain staff, and that’s having an impact in the number of classrooms they can operate," Gay said. “It’s becoming less and less possible for early educators to survive on the low wages that they earn given the increase in the cost of living in the state.”
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On Monday in Hartford, state leaders stood in front of the nationally recognized Green World Family Child Care, announcing a new apprenticeship program to help combat the work shortage within the childcare sphere.
“This program is designed to bring workers into jobs that are in very high demand, and afford them a life-changing opportunity,” Department of Labor Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo said.
That apprenticeship is specifically meant for family-based childcare. Currently, the state has between 20 and 30 people enrolled for the coming year.
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For center-based childcare, which was the topic of the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance’s study, Connecticut has established work-force pipeline programs at eight sites so far.
“Each of them enrolls anywhere from 10 to 30 students that they pay while they take classes, and then after they take six weeks of classes, on average that’s how most of them do it, they start working side by side with teachers,” Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye said.
According to Bye, those positions would pay $15 per hour. Gay said he welcomes the state’s initiatives, but said the work shortage would not be solved unless wages can increase, without increasing tuition.
“We need to figure out a way in which we can make the important work of building small children’s brains something that is rewarding enough that people will come into the field and stay in the field,” Gay said.
