SCARBOROUGH, Maine — Child care providers in Maine are concerned a potential decrease in federal money to pay employees could worsen staffing levels amid a hiring drought.
Right now, child care providers in Maine receive a $200 per month stipend from American Rescue Plan Act funds on top of their normal wage from their employers. That stipend is set to change in June to a tiered system based on the employee's educational background and training in early childhood education.
State statute shows those payments will change on July 1. DHHS will implement a three-tier system for those payments: Tier 2 must provide a salary supplement that is at least 50% greater than Tier 1, and Tier 3 must provide a salary supplement that is at least 50% greater than Tier 2.
It is unclear whether those payments would increase of decrease from the $200 per month all staff currently receive. NEWS CENTER Maine has reached out to Maine's Department of Health and Human Services for clarification but has not yet heard back.
Co-directors of Heidi's House Childcare and Preschool in Scarborough told NEWS CENTER Maine in January that those stipends were crucial in retaining staff during the pandemic.
"It's not quite enough to incentivize people to join the field of early childhood education, but it has been really helpful to keep the people who are here," Will Newburn, co-director at Heidi's House, said. "It needs to be more money, too. We're hoping that that $200 is the floor and that it goes up from there."
Newburn and co-director Sara Perrigo said they offered 12 interviews since Thanksgiving, and 11 of the 12 did not show up. The other person canceled.
Owner Heidi McDonald said they offer an average of $20 per hour for staff, and $28 per hour for administrators, which she said are some of the highest pay rates in the region.
"For the last couple of decades, people have not been joining early childhood education programs in local colleges and those enrollment rates have just been dropping, dropping, and dropping," Newburn said. "We're at the point where they're just not the qualified people to do this job. They're just not out there."
Staff at Heidi's House said the field simply does not pay staff a living wage.
"What's the incentive to do it? Can I pay back my bills for loans to go to school for this?" co-director Sara Perrigo said.
"We need to make it a field that is going to actually not just be enjoyable to work in, but also be able to pay your bills," Newburn said.
Heidi's House charges families $428 per week for infants attending full-time; $392 for toddlers; and $352 for preschool.
The cost of infant care in a Maine center averages $14,248 per year, more than public college tuition ($10,230), according to a report from Council for a Strong America.
"I don't think anyone in the country is going to say, 'Oh, I got a really good deal on child care somewhere," because that's not available anywhere," Newburn said.
Maine lawmakers are making efforts to increase access and affordability of child care.
- Expand outreach and programming to families with young children
- Create pilot projects to make pre-K more accessible
- Increase professional development for early childhood educators
- Increase financial support for child care providers to improve their program offerings
The grant will also support the development of an Early Childhood Integrated Data System to help make data-driven decisions about programs and policies to benefit Maine children. It lasts three years.
"This Federal grant will build on the significant work my Administration is doing to expand the availability of these crucial programs, along with much needed child care and pre-K options across the state,” Mills wrote in a statement.
"This grant will enable more Maine children to access those vital early learning opportunities and it helps further the progress we’ve made to expand pre-K across our state,” Pender Makin, Commissioner of the Maine Department of Education, wrote in a statement.
Over the past three years, the Mills Administration has provided more than $100 million in Federal funding for child care. Through her Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan, approved by the Legislature, Mills is investing $15 million to help renovate, expand, or build new child care facilities.
Senate Republicans announced measures Tuesday to decrease regulations for family child care centers, which are typically operated out of a home.
Sen. Marianne Moore, who serves on the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, submitted a bill that she said would bring some comprehensive reform to several key areas that will increase access to affordable child care.
In addition to increasing subsidies to the 75th percentile of local market rates, her bill would also increase the level of children who can be supervised without having to obtain a state license.
Sen. Lisa Keim, R-Oxford, said the lack of child care has hit rural areas disproportionately, especially for new or expecting parents who work and must call a child care provider months in advance to try to get on a waiting list. Keim said the state has essentially increased costs and regulations so much for family-care providers that it has forced providers out of the industry. That has steadily eroded capacity in rural areas for over a decade and only made worse during the pandemic.
Senate President Troy Jackson and Senate Majority Leader Eloise Vitelli, D-Arrowsic, have proposed legislation to raise wages for child care professionals and improve access and affordability for families seeking early care and education. Both bills will have a public hearing in the next few weeks.
From February of 2020 to September of 2022 Maine experienced a 3.3% decrease in the number of child care providers, from 2,337 to 2,261, according to DHHS.
"While the decrease in the number of providers has been concerning, the data reflects that the number of approved child care slots has increased slightly since 2019," the report said.
In 2019, Maine participated in a gap analysis on the need for child care versus available child care slots conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). That analysis showed there was a 9.2% gap in demand versus supply across Maine for children under the age of six with all available parents working, equal to 4,920 children.
Twenty-two percent of Mainers live in a child care “desert,” where there are more than three children under age 5 for each licensed child care slot, but in rural communities the figure is 26 percent. The Maine Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Child and Family Services has identified the lack of child care in rural areas as a particular challenge, the CSFA report found.
Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation "Kids Count Data Center" show 70 percent of all Maine children under the age of 6 live in families with all available parents in the workforce. About two-thirds (66 percent) of
Maine children under age 6 have all available parents in the workforce, according to the CSFA report.
"We are the workforce supporting the workforce," Perrigo said. "We can't open our classrooms to full capacity because we can't hire. If you need to be at your job at 7:30 a.m., well, you need to figure out some alternate plans, because we don't open until 7:30 a.m. right now. If there are times where we had to close at 4:30, your job ends then."