WALLBACK — When her husband worked in another state, Autumn Mays had to give up her job at the nearby Family Dollar. There was no one to watch their son, Oliver, and nowhere in Clay County to take him.
Now, instead of clocking in at the store, she spends her mornings helping kids at the Taylor Tots Daycare Center trace letters, shout out their favorite colors and finger paint under-the-sea animals.
Oliver finally made it off the center’s months-long waitlist, and Mays took a job at the center so she could work while he learns.
“I had a management job, good pay and all,” she said. “But it’s not great when you have to pay for childcare. It’s just hard to work as a mom.”
Taylor Tots is the only licensed provider in Clay County, with room for about 27 children at a time.
In a county where more than 90% of kids lack access to formal childcare, and in the home district of House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, one of West Virginia’s most powerful lawmakers, parents are either stuck on waitlists or have to travel to other counties for care.
As he and other lawmakers run for reelection, parents in his home district say they’re still waiting for meaningful action and lasting fixes to West Virginia’s childcare crisis.
Mays said she wants lawmakers to invest in more childcare centers, after-school programs and grow the number of childcare workers in the industry.
“It’d be really nice if we had a bigger daycare and more employees,” she said.
Behind one small center in Clay County is a statewide childcare problem
The shortage isn’t unique to Clay County. More than 26,000 children lack access to childcare across West Virginia, because there aren’t enough available slots, and parents often wait months or even years for openings, if they find one at all.
Meanwhile, nearly a hundred providers have closed in the past year, as rising costs, staffing shortages and policy changes make it harder for centers to stay open.
Two years ago, House Speaker Hanshaw, R-Clay, said childcare was one of his top priorities for the Legislative session. But he did not introduce any legislation, and the session ended without any initiatives to expand access.
Hanshaw did not respond to questions about childcare in his district.
In his county, more than 160 children don’t have access to childcare. That shortage shows up in daily life for parents like McKenzie Osborne, a special education teacher who lives just a few minutes from Taylor Tots.
She put her daughter, Collins, on the waitlist as soon as she found out she was pregnant. Collins was born prematurely at 33 weeks, and Osborne hoped to keep her home for at least a year because of health concerns.
But after five months, the family’s patchwork plan of texting relatives and friends each week to see who could fill gaps had fallen apart.
“It was chaos,” she said. “Sometimes my husband would have to stay home from work, or I would have to stay home from work.”
They briefly looked into in-home care in another county and even discussed moving closer to more centers.
“Teachers are needed everywhere,” Osborne said. “If it had come to it, we would’ve had to move just so we could both keep working.”
Osborne finally got a spot for Collins last year.
She said there aren’t enough opportunities for other parents who aren’t as fortunate to find childcare, and she wants lawmakers to invest resources and funding to help create more centers in the area.
Owner Allie Taylor has been the only licensed childcare provider in Clay County for over five years. Her building can hold at most 27 children at a time, which is a tiny fraction of the kids who live there.
She said the center currently has seven or eight toddlers waiting for care, with little space left for infants and newborns.
“For some families, they have to go to Charleston if they work that way,” she said. “It’s not easy to find people around here that can babysit your kids Monday through Friday.”
Families who live on the far ends of the county face an even tougher choice. Getting to Taylor Tots can mean a 30-to-45-minute drive each way, and if the center is full, the next closest option is often in Kanawha or Braxton County.
Kayla Keen, a nurse who works in Charleston, makes that drive every day from Clendenin to drop her son off at the center before heading to work because it’s more affordable.
“To me, it’s worth the big loop I’m making every day, because this is the best place for him,” she said. “We checked Charleston, but it was double the price.”
Taylor Tots charges private-pay families $165 a week for childcare. However, it accepts subsidy payments through the state’s Connect program, and 13 children are enrolled.
Lawmakers slow to pass childcare solutions
In Charleston, lawmakers across party lines have acknowledged West Virginia’s childcare problems and the role it’s played in keeping people out of the workforce.
But in recent years, few proposals aimed to stabilize the childcare industry have made it across the finish line.
This year, lawmakers again introduced a handful of bills to address the issue.
Sen. Ben Queen, R-Harrison, introduced legislation to increase and retain childcare workers by subsidizing their own childcare costs.
But Sen. Brian Helton, R-Fayette, never put the bill on the agenda for the Senate Health and Human Resources committee, which he chairs. During the session, Helton said it was a “good bill,” but he was focused on child welfare reform.
Del. Bob Fehrenbacher, R- Wood, backed a bill to create a new childcare tax credit for employers and clarify how providers are paid, which became law. He said the changes were meant to bring stability.
Still, he said, more work was needed to address the broader shortage and keep parents in the workforce.
“If we don’t support childcare, the impact to families, employers and the state’s economy will be felt,” he said.
But broader proposals to lower costs for families or increase state funding have continued to stall; lawmakers never put them on agendas for discussion.
Meanwhile, childcare deserts have persisted.
In places like Clay County, that lack of action shows up in daily decisions families and providers have to make. It leaves Taylor and her staff trying to solve a math problem they say they can’t fix on their own.
She said she’s tried to grow to meet demand. She recently raised tuition and hired more staff, but still struggles.
“Everything is so expensive, and it’s hard to keep staff,” she said. “Our pay is not great, but if we charge parents more, we’ll lose them. The whole system is tough, and daycares are struggling.”
Because Taylor Tots is a for-profit business, Taylor said many grants are out of reach, limiting her ability to expand even as demand grows.
For parents in Clay County, the shortage determines whether they can work, where they can live and whether they can stay.
And as lawmakers campaign for reelection, many say they’re still waiting for solutions that match the scale of the problem.
In a county with just one option, parents say even small changes could make a difference. Foster parent April Taylor said she wants lawmakers to invest more money into childcare.
“If there were funds for a bigger facility or more facilities in the county, we could get more people working,” she said.
Some workers at the center say low wages and a lack of state support are driving childcare workers out of the field.
Macaiah Hensley, who works in the infant room and brings her own toddler, Everleigh, to the center, said she wants lawmakers to support bigger centers or more centers in the county, along with better pay and training for staff.
“We definitely don’t make the money that we should watching kids all day long,” she said. “We’re basically helping raise these children and get them ready for school, but it’s hard to find people who can afford to do this work.”