Sherrie Jones runs the Highway 90 Day Care and Learning Center in Pascagoula. Her clientele is mostly poor, black and Latino. She and her staff care for 67 children from infancy through age 12, some of them all day, every day, even in the summer.
Through a Mississippi Department of Human Services program, parents of the children can apply for financial assistance for day care. But the need has far exceeded the slots available at her center and others throughout the state. Some of her clients are losing their certificates, and she cannot figure out why.
Her day care is the only way some of her families can stay working, and off welfare.
"They are supposed to be covered one way or another," while they appeal the state's decision, she said. "These are people who really need help."
Child care support is one of the main factors in maintaining Mississippi's recent employment surge and future economic stability, according to a report released today by the Mississippi Economic Policy Center in Jackson.
"Based on all of our research, one of the most critical supports that keeps popping up is child care," MEPC Director Ed Sivak said. "We wanted to dig in on the economic effects of child care on the state, and make the case that it is important to the state as well."
Sivak said that more than one-third of jobs in the state are low-wage occupations, and the expense of child care strains lower income families. The study quotes nine months at Ole Miss at $4,603 and nine months of infant care at $4,960.
"It's not welfare, it's work support," said Carol Burnett of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative in Biloxi. More than help with housing or health care, help with child care promotes independence, she said.
Toward that, there are two bills circulating in the state legislature that would shuffle funds into the day care assistance program and create a grant program for providers to improve their services. Both were overwhelmingly passed in the House.
Jones charges about $25 to $30 less for infant care than the state average of $124 per week, per the study. She has two children she watches free of charge. She said she cannot make improvements without funding, and without improvements, her business and her children pay the price.