EXCERPT FROM: The Washington Post
By Donna St. George
There was the stress of the recession, then the record-setting snow. Finally, as February gave way to March, here's how the fallout looked at a Bladensburg child-care center:
Flora Izuka wanted a break on paying tuition for her 18-month-old because Learning World Child Development Center had closed down or opened late for much of the week of Feb. 8. But for the center's owner, it was not so simple. If families didn't pay for the snow days, how would the center pay its staff of 20?
"It's a hardship for all of us," said owner Jean Gilchrist, who founded the center 30 years ago. She said this had been one of the toughest periods in the past decade.
So go the fragile economics of child care in the Washington region and beyond, with the eternal tension between what families can afford and what it costs to operate a day-care center. Striking the right balance has been especially hard, as the recession has claimed jobs and worker hours, leaving many families unable to afford tuition and some providers with too many vacancies to stay in business.
"It's a trickle-down effect: The parents lose jobs; the providers lose children in day care," said Phyllis Waters, president of the Professional Child Care Provider Network of Prince George's County.
Then, in one icy blast, the snows of early February showed anew how razor-thin the economic margins can be. Some parents didn't get paid during the storms and couldn't afford that week's tuition. Others, like Izuka, worked but had to hire fill-in child care that cost extra. Add to such worries those of child-care workers, who earn an average of $9.32 an hour nationally. Some wondered whether they would be paid for the days their centers were closed.
"I have to have that paycheck to catch up with the bills," said Narmala Ayachitula, a teacher at Learning World.
Experts say the storms underscored problems that have long plagued day care's faltering economics. Many parents cannot afford to pay any more for their child care -- with costs rivaling their rent or mortgage payments -- and many workers cannot afford to make any less, with their wages near the poverty level.
"Essentially, when there is almost no profit to begin with, to lose five days to snow or to have five kids pulled out because of the economy, that's a big deal," said Linda K. Smith, executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.
The consequences are serious, Smith said. "Many of these programs are barely hanging on, and if we lose them, we are going to force more children into unregulated and illegal child care," she said. Already, 47 percent of all child care is done outside the licensing system, with no background checks, training or inspections, she said.
National trend numbers are few, but Smith said her organization's surveys indicate a national decline in child-care capacity, as operators shut down low-enrollment classrooms in their centers, trying to consolidate but not close. In Maryland, state data show a slight dip in licensed child-care homes statewide, which may be notable because jobless workers sometimes become home day-care providers.
In Montgomery County, reports of child-care vacancies are up 38 percent in two years, and requests for help with marketing and other business concerns shot up by 113 percent, said Barbara Warman, executive director of the Montgomery County Child Care Resource and Referral Center.
"It's very sad," she said. "I think we're losing some of the capacity we've built up to make sure children are ready for school and parents have a safe and healthy place for their children when they go to work."
The recession has taken an uneven toll on child care, hitting some areas and programs harder than others. Corporate-owned day-care chains may have more ways to make cost-saving changes than many mom-and-pops. For smaller enterprises, "when things get tough, there is not much money to pull from," said Marie Darstein, executive director of the National Child Care Association, which has 5,000 member centers around the country.
"The profit margin for child care is probably one of the lowest in the economy," Darstein said. "A couple of kids can make a big difference."
Not only that, but when families struggle, day-care bills are often placed at the bottom of the stack. At the Campagna Center, which serves 800 school-age children in Alexandria, Karen Hughes has noted a spike of 20 or 25 percent in late payers during the recession. "Visa and MasterCard and the mortgage company are not as lenient," she said.
Family day-care homes in areas affected by the downturn are especially vulnerable, as Sherry Waters, in southern Prince George's, can attest. Her business is off by half, she says, although she has cut her fees and extended her hours, hoping to bring in new families.
"People say the economy is getting better, but for the working class, I just don't see that," she said. "And with this weather we've had, woo-ee."
Waters stayed open every day through the worst of the snow. Her families are required to pay for the week of care, but, she says, "I'm not an ogre. You work it out with people."
Marie Mosby, a home child-care provider in Arlington County, decided to split the blizzard burden with her families; she would absorb two snow days, and they would cover the other two days. Her street was so unpassable, she said, "they would have had to come in a helicopter."
In Alexandria, Diane Profusek, director of Trinity MOPS Preschool, paid her 25 teachers and provided families with three extra days of school by using parent-teacher conference and in-service days. Last month, the students missed eight days of 20 because of weather.
Harriet Berger, executive director of the Peppertree Children's Center in Germantown, said that after being closed a week, she wondered whether she could refund any of the tuition back to parents. But when she reviewed expenses, she found not "a penny" extra, she said. "More than 87 percent of our budget is for salaries and benefits," she said.
Not all centers paid staff for their shutdown days. At Minnieland, which has 50 child-care centers, mostly in Northern Virginia, the weather closed operations for one day. Day-care workers on hourly wages -- about 80 percent -- did not get paid for that day but could use vacation or ask for other hours, spokeswoman Gina Dabney said.
Compared with many other workers, child-care employees are typically low-paid and have fewer benefits such as pension and health insurance, said Marcy Whitebook, director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California at Berkeley. In an annual ranking of U.S. jobs, day-care workers routinely fall near the bottom, she said. Yearly turnover rates are about 30 percent.
At Learning World in Bladensburg, the clashing economic forces have lingered along with the snow.