For Chelsea Boggus, a single mother, supporting her two young children hinged on finding child care.
“My family lives three hours away,” Boggus said. “If I didn’t have child care, I couldn’t work.”
But it’s a tenuous balance. After a career change, Boggus now works as a traveling English as a Second Language teacher in Harrison County. She estimates she pays 10-15% of her salary — with income-based subsidies — for child care, but said if the cost goes up, that would quickly become difficult.
“Right now it’s at a fair price,” Boggus said about child care. “If there was an increase in price that would make it hard for me.”
Child care access and affordability in West Virginia are ongoing problems. As of November, there were an estimated 25,828 children under age 6 who needed care but didn’t have it, according to data from nonprofit TEAM for West Virginia Children. And the problem is likely to get worse.
The state’s child care centers are losing federal funds, as COVID-era programs end. They’re also losing teachers, who are moving into newly-created, better paid jobs as classroom aides in elementary schools. Now, many child care and early education centers are struggling even more to stay afloat.
For Anna Runner, a year-long wait to place her child in an adequate center that provided early education and quality care in Harrison County began when she was five months pregnant.
“It was a long wait because they didn’t have enough staff, or they didn’t have enough room,” Runner said. “It was very hard to find daycares.”
State-mandated hiring in elementary schools siphoning staff from child care centers
Some child care providers are cutting back, rather than expanding to meet the need.
At Cubby’s Childcare Center in Bridgeport, there are the sounds of toddlers in classrooms playing with building blocks, puzzles, clocks and alphabet toys as they learn the social and emotional skills that will set them up later in life. But interspersed with the busy rooms are quiet, empty classrooms, filled with pristine dolls and neatly-ordered building blocks, waiting for children to occupy them.
Owner Jennifer Trippett says she’s struggling to pay her staff and keep classrooms open. Trippett, who owns four early childhood education and child care centers in Harrison County, had to close seven classrooms in August — not for lack of demand, but lack of staff. She’s currently working with 85 staff members, where she should be at 105 to be fully operational.
“I really thought that by the beginning of November, they would be open,” Trippett said about the closed classrooms. “And yet I sit here in November, still not able to open any rooms, and I have staff interviewing for jobs with the Board of Education.”
Trippett says she’s losing staff to the public schools, who are under a state mandate to hire 2,500 teacher’s aides for elementary classrooms. The hiring was spurred by The Third Grade Success Act, which lawmakers passed during the 2023 legislative session.
The bill was meant to improve math and literacy skills around the state, and versions were championed by both Senate Education Committee Chair Amy Grady, R-Mason, and House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay. But its newly-created teachers aide positions — which typically pay more than day care or preschools — have also drawn workers away from child care centers around the state.
The low pay for child care workers is one of the many factors that needs to be addressed, said Lisa Ertl, director of early childcare education for the state Bureau of Family Assistance.
“Child care providers just nationally, and statewide, that’s one of the lowest paid sectors,” Ertl said. “In the United States, the average salary is about $12.06 an hour. That’s not necessarily a living wage.”
Starting next year, a recently-awarded $2 million federal grant will enable yearly bonuses of up to $1,000 for preschool development instructors. But for providers like Trippett, who will have already lost many of their teachers, the help can’t come soon enough.
Although the new law focuses on providing extra support in first to third grade classrooms to help set children up for academic success, West Virginia Association of Young Children Executive Director Kristy Ritz said state lawmakers could be more successful by targeting children earlier.
“If there was a bill to support child care, and we were able to build that system and make it stronger, then there would be less need for aides in first grade classrooms because those children would have been ready when it was time to go to kindergarten and first grade,” she said.
Studies show that children who have had an early childhood education are more likely to obtain college degrees and are less likely to experience unemployment, homelessness or imprisonment.
But to get the attention of lawmakers, child care advocates are uniting their message with a different issue: access to child care and its direct effect on the West Virginia workforce.
West Virginia lawmakers recognize importance of child care, but disagree on solutions
For Erin and Austin Martin, child care and their jobs are directly intertwined.
Austin works as a police officer with the Grafton City Police Department, while Erin is a server at a restaurant and is studying full-time to earn a criminal justice degree. As it is, they can barely afford the cost of child care for their three children. If prices went up, Erin would have to quit her job and drop out of school to stay home with their youngest.
“I feel like they [legislators] don’t care,” Erin said about the costs of child care in comparison to the average salary for first responders. “We should be more respected.”
According to Erin, she and Austin would be paying around 30% of their monthly income on child care if it weren’t for the subsidy they receive. But they barely qualify for it and if one of them gets even a slight pay increase, they’ll lose the subsidies altogether.
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Now, some of the conversation is shifting in an attempt to help address child care access and affordability.
“For our economy to grow, we have to address the issue that is affordable child care,” West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner said, during his remarks at the Early Childhood Education Impact on Business and Family forum held last month in Fairmont.
And legislators have made some early indications they agree. Hanshaw said through a spokesperson that he “recognizes that early childhood education plays an important role in economic advancement.”
Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, plans to propose a bill during the upcoming session that would offer a child care tax credit for working families. Earlier this week, lawmakers heard testimony about the lack of child care options and its effect on state manufacturers from Kim Menke, Toyota’s regional director of government affairs.
“Child care is important in manufacturing because it supports our team members, our local and state economies, and our children and families,” Menke said.
But his testimony received pushback from Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, who said she didn’t believe it was the role of the government to ensure affordable and accessible child care — it’s up to businesses. She said she would rather see the Legislature focus on training child care workers.
“When it comes to the workforce, I actually feel we do need to do a better job of making sure we have easy options for those who would like to be in child care work, to be able to affordably get training so we know we have good quality child care providers,” Rucker said.
Rucker also said that she is working on reducing the existing regulations for child care centers; a move that would potentially lower costs.
But for Trippett, the only way to fix both the affordability and availability problems is by stabilizing the child care system.
”We have to stabilize our workforce before we can help the rest of the workforce across the state grow and prosper,” she said. “If the state Legislature, this year, does not do something to fix the funding crisis in early childhood, it doesn’t matter what kind of tax credits they offer families, there won’t be child care centers open to provide care, let alone high-quality care.”