Chris Bjurstrom hesitantly celebrates some wins as ABCD Daycare owner.
“For the first time since the onset of COVID-19, we are at full staff and capacity,” Bjurstrom said. “But I’m afraid that in the next breath someone will stop and go somewhere else.”
It has been a series of challenges for her and other local daycares.
Bjurstrom decided to sell their Coeur d’Alene branch from ABCD to better manage the Hayden location and the challenges of 2020.
And she’s not alone, as 13 other daycare centers in Coeur d’Alene have closed since 2019, said Kelley Setters, deputy city clerk of Coeur d’Alene. During this time, only four day-care centers were opened. With the closure of ABCD’s Coeur d’Alene daycare, Kootenai County lost capacity for 100 children.
Now, filling the Hayden ABCD center has been a major challenge for Bjurstrom as wages have doubled since the outbreak of COVID-19.
“The grant money was big,” Bjurstrom said. “It was a struggle, but without it it would have been ten times harder.”
Federally funded state grants help keep daycares running or supplement wages for childcare workers. But even with wage subsidies that make payroll manageable, the demand for childcare continues to outstrip the places Bjurstrom makes available for children.
“I’ve got a mile-long waiting list,” said Erika Starkey, owner of the Kinder Prep Learning Center in Post Falls. “Child care is scarce in this area.”
Starkey is in the process of building a new childcare center in response to the childcare shortages revealed by COVID-19. Kootenai County is seeing tremendous demand for childcare access, Starkey said, and the new center will add 190 new openings for children ages 18 months to 5 years.
“Ever since COVID hit, getting any kind of day care for my eldest daughter has been a nightmare,” said Lacey Dorn, a mother in Post Falls. “The price has doubled in two years. I don’t know how people do it. It forces the parents to have an income and I don’t know how anyone can do that. $1,300 a month pays a day care mortgage.”
Parents tell daycare owners like Starkey and Bjurstrom that they’re on every local waitlist — and they say every daycare has a waitlist.
Some childcare facilities see up to five times as many applicants as they have vacancies each season.
“We turn people away,” Bjurstrom said. “We’re at full capacity and it breaks my heart to turn people away.”
North Idaho College is helping to fill some of the staffing needs with the largest early childhood development course they’ve ever had. Of those nearly 80 students, most are already enrolled in a work-study program that provides day care in the community, said Kathleen Miller Green, professor of child development at NIC.
“Nationwide, childcare staff changes by 50% every year,” said Miller Green. “It’s low pay, long hours and if you do it right, it’s hard work. Many programs cannot offer benefits or insurance.”
Employees will often step out of childcare and into higher-paying jobs, Miller Green said.
“There’s both a labor supply and a labor demand constraint,” said Sam Wolkenhauer, regional economist for the Idaho Department of Labor. “A lack of childcare, or when childcare is very expensive, constrains labor supply because it discourages parents from working. But it is also an industry that is very difficult to fill.”
Access to childcare is directly related to participation in the labor market, said Wolkenhauer.
“We are definitely facing a situation where labor shortage is one of the biggest economic problems,” he said.
Workers’ ability to gain a foothold in the labor market often depends on access to affordable childcare.
“Child care is an industry that cannot become more efficient,” said Wolkenhauer. “Because of the legal relationships and limitations placed on day care standards, the only way for a day care to serve more children is to have more space and a larger workforce.”
Day care centers have legal limitations on the number of children a staff member can care for and the amount of space they require. These restrictions distort the natural balance of supply and demand in the industry by limiting supply.
“Part of the problem with child care, and not having enough of it, is that it doesn’t pay as well as school districts,” said Wolkenhauer. “The median wages for childcare workers are less than half the median wages for elementary schools.”
Childcare facilities across Idaho will have 1,200 job openings for childcare providers in 2022, Wolkenhauer said.
That means a current shortage of 20,000 child care places statewide, where 74,000 child care places are needed, said Keri Cederquist, community impact director at United Way of North Idaho.
United Way is working with the local private sector and childcare providers to find solutions to the looming financial cliff when grant funds are expected to end on June 30, 2023.
“We’re working across the country to upgrade the profession,” Cederquist said. “There aren’t many people who have a career in this field in the long term because the pay is so low and it’s a really demanding field. United Way was designed to empower local people to improve early childhood care and education systems. Our long-term strategy is to increase business and community engagement to be a partner in solving this truly huge challenge.”
United Way supports access to child care through a state pilot program for a human resource development council, the North Idaho Early Learning Collaborative. The goal of the collaboration is to expand access to quality, affordable childcare for working families in Kootenai and Bonner counties.
“Access to childcare is an infrastructure, and without it people cannot work,” said “Government reimbursement for childcare covers only what is necessary and is insufficient to provide a quality program.”
The council manages grant funds to connect local businesses with local childcare providers and encourage collaboration in the provision of childcare seats. These collaborations can then obtain reimbursement funds from grants.
“In light of the nationwide research, it is clear that childcare cannot be self-sustaining; There’s too big a gap between what people can afford and the cost of childcare,” Cederquist said.
With higher wages, higher demand and higher costs, prices would not be sustainable without access to subsidies.
Parents can also apply for grants, federal grants, or assistance to make childcare more accessible, Cederquist said, but often these thresholds are lower than federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SN`), and parents earn too much to qualify, however not enough to cover childcare.
Starkey directs people to United Way grant applications on her website and encourages families to access resources.
“It’s always seeping down where every time something is increased, it has to come from somewhere,” Bjurstrom said. “The middle class is feeling it now.”
She has tried not to hike prices despite increases in costs ranging from groceries, janitorial supplies and school supplies to utilities and property taxes.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on providing quality care to all these children and their families, and it’s getting harder and harder,” Bjurstrom said.
If Bjurstrom and Starkey are forced to raise prices due to continued rising costs, they will price out much of the middle-class market, further hurting low- and middle-income families.
“Grant money supplements wages, and when that runs out, it comes out of our pocket,” Bjurstrom said. “We will do everything we can not to make any further layoffs.”
If the supply of access to childcare falls further, the labor market will continue to tighten.
“Often parents come to enroll their kids who have adjusted their personal lives to revolve around working from home while still having their kids there,” Starkey said. “The most common feedback I hear from families is the challenge of being productive when their kids are around and they don’t have anyone to entertain them or give them undivided attention.”
Bjurstrom cleared some of the pandemic’s early hurdles in her business, but now she sees other challenges with children. She has seen increased cases of behavioral problems and more children with anxiety or difficulties with language development.
“There used to be three to five kids in the whole school that were more difficult, and now we’re looking at that in every class,” Bjurstrom said. That pressure is then felt by their employees, “and if these guys can flip a burger, why take the stress out of it?”
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