From her position as the director of ABC Academy in Palm Bay, Amanda Lebron has seen the economy's effect on families and the child-care industry on the Space Coast.
"We're in the same boat as everybody else," she said.
On Port Malabar Boulevard alone, where ABC is located, two child-care centers have closed down within a month. A third, KinderCare, part of a major national chain, sits empty just off Malabar Road, its playground overgrown with grass. Other child-care businesses have closed across Brevard.
And the trend is a national one. Nearly half the child care centers that are members of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies closed classrooms in the last six months of 2008, according to the group's survey.
And with the cost of caring for infants younger than 4 averaging $7,600 a year in Florida, in this down economy it's not hard to see why parents are having to make choices on their child care -- which in turn has meant harder times for providers.
Home-based child-care businesses have really felt the sting, according to statistics from Jan. 1, 2008, through June 30 compiled by the Brevard County Health Department.
During that year, three standalone day cares closed in the county, but 14 in-home child care centers also closed, said Vern Buchanan, environmental supervisor at the health department.
Buchanan said the economy can take a greater toll on home-based child care businesses because losing just one child can have a bigger impact on those operations with smaller numbers of clients.fewer mean losing as much as $140 in income a week, which is about $560 a month, equal to the average rent on a one bedroom apartment in the county.
The loss of bigger, nationally accredited day care centers such as KinderCare is another sign — along with foreclosures and unemployment rates — that the area has taken a significant economic hit.
The KinderCare off Malabar Road in Palm Bay closed in February. Spokeswoman Beth Woodward declined to offer specifics on the closing but did say it was a move based on a “multi-year history of the center’s financial performance.” The 5,241-square-foot building and surrounding property is now for sale for $495,000.
Some closings may be linked to job losses and layoffs that affect working families who depend on child care assistance from the Early Learning Coalition of Brevard County, funds that many child care centers also depend on. According to estimates from the federal Child Care Bureau, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 90 percent of children in licensed day cares in Florida received some sort of child care assistance in 2007.
Until recently, the subsidies were available only to working families, so if a parent lost his or her job, the assistance was lost, as well. But the state has received $8.7 million in federal stimulus funds targeting child care assistance for parents who are not working to allow them to provide for their children while they seek employment.
Assistance programs such as these have helped Yolanda Rivera, 25, of Melbourne, a single mother of two, keep her job while also attending Brevard Community College .
Rivera’s 2-year-old and 1-year-old both attend Wish Upon A Star Child Care in Palm Bay. She would usually pay $275 a week for her two children, but with the ELC program, she only pays $20.
“I didn’t have it the first year, and it was really hard for me. I was working just to pay day care,” she said. “I didn’t even make that much in two weeks, and I couldn’t do it anymore; I almost got evicted; it’s a domino effect.”
Melissa Murphy, executive director of the Early Learning Coalition, said the federal funds will provide a positive impact for child care providers because unemployment won’t force parents to remove their children.
The ELC has a 6-month long waiting list for parents requesting assistance with childcare. Childcare centers are also reworking the way they serve parents in order to help with the economic need.
At The Wellington Academy in Palm Bay, which serves many Harris Corp. employees and where fees can run as much as $200 per week for an infant, owner Faye Jones said she takes each parent’s needs into consideration.
“We’ve focused on making parents feel secure if they’ve lost their jobs,” she said. “We will work and help them in any way to keep their child in the educational program that we provide.”