News

Jun 21, 2023

Nashville’s Child Care Crisis

If you’re pregnant or may be pregnant, it’s past time to get on wait lists for child care centers in Nashville. Cortnye Stone has been looking for child care for a year. It’s not uncommon for parents

If you’re pregnant or may be pregnant, it’s past time to get on wait lists for child care centers in Nashville.

Cortnye Stone has been looking for child care for a year. It’s not uncommon for parents to join such lists when they find out they are pregnant, just to be told they should have started looking before conception. Stone started searching when she was three months pregnant and has not yet risen to the top of any of the six wait lists she paid a collective $700 to join. One local center, Bloom Academy in East Nashville, didn’t make the cut because it now famously advertises a three-year wait list.

“I have friends in major urban areas all across the country who are encountering this same thing,” Stone says. “And honestly, if I could give somebody a piece of advice, it would be if you plan to have a child anytime soon, start researching day cares and figure out how to get on the list. Because every month counts, every week counts, so that you can have an advantage over somebody else.”

Stone’s son is now 3 months old and her maternity leave has come to a close, and she’s been fortunate enough to find a nanny to care for him four days per week. She’s hopeful about one day care center, which told her they may have an opening in the first quarter of 2024.

Cortnye Stone

Inglewood’s Fannie Battle Day Home, a nonprofit that is committed to enrolling 70 percent low-income families on a sliding scale, closed its wait list in 2021 and has been whittling it down since. At best, says executive director Kristie Ryan, they’ll be able to accommodate the pandemic baby boom of younger siblings to their current students.

“We have to really work hard to maintain that 70/30 [balance], because the demographics of East Nashville have shifted so much in the last 10 years,” Ryan says. “The biggest majority of the people who are on that wait list are full-pay. We could fill another center tomorrow with full-pay families, but we wouldn’t be meeting our mission. Those [low-income] families are the ones who are going to get called first. The ones who don’t have any other options and financially meet our criteria.”

Child care scarcity and cost burden are issues families have dealt with for years, but they appear to have reached a tipping point. Parents need assistance to support their dual-career lives, the care is more sophisticated and costly than ever, and the demand isn’t likely to slow down in a state with a nearly complete ban on abortion. Meanwhile, the underpaid child care workforce has struggled to fill the gap, and the state is getting more involved.

According to Feroza Freeland of local work-life-balance advocacy organization A Better Balance, the pandemic didn’t cause the scarcity but rather laid bare the issue.

“I think the pandemic really brought this issue into the public conversation in a way that it had not been before, because so many more people were impacted,” Freeland says. “When a family is not able to access child care, of course, it negatively impacts their ability to work, to put food on the table. It leads to worker shortages and has a lot of effects on the economy as well.”

One contributing factor to the child care crisis: Family structures have changed over the past several decades. According to 2019 data from the Center for American Progress, most children will grow up in families in which all of the adults work. The share of breadwinning or co-breadwinning mothers (not taking into account stay-at-home dads or gender-queer couples) has more than doubled from 1967 to 2017 — from 11.6 percent to 23.2 percent, and 15.9 percent to 41.0 percent, respectively. In Tennessee, 44.2 percent of mothers are breadwinners, and 20.4 percent are co-breadwinners, meaning an overall 64.6 percent of mothers work outside the home. Nationally, Black mothers are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group to be their families’ breadwinner, with 68.3 percent of them breadwinners, and 16.1 percent sharing the load.

According to a recent survey of Davidson County families by Tennesseans for Quality Early Education, 75 percent of parents with a child younger than 6 say access to child care is a significant challenge, and 51 percent also name affordability as a challenge. According to the same study, child care in Tennessee costs more on average than in-state college tuition. The average annual price of center-based care is $11,068 for infants and $10,184 for toddlers. Home-based care is a bit cheaper, at $7,194 for infants and $6,749 for toddlers. At the same time, a third of children younger than 6 live in families with incomes below $40,000, and nearly half with annual incomes of $60,000 or less.

The Tennessee Department of Human Services’ child care payment assistance program served 3,097 families in fiscal year 2023 in Davidson County.

“I get it, because he does take a lot of time, and we should be paying people fairly for the work that they’re doing,” Stone says of her infant. “It is an enormous cost burden for families. My family is a dual-income family, so we rely on my salary and we rely on my husband’s salary, and neither of us is able to leave the workforce to be full-time stay-at-home parents.”

The economy has taken a blow because of a lack of access to child care too. Of those Tennessee families surveyed by TQEE over a six-month period in 2022, 22 percent quit or were fired, 38 percent went from full time to part time or couldn’t increase from part time to full time, 41 percent turned down a job offer or promotion, and 26 percent left the workforce — all due to struggles with child care. The survey estimates a $175.6 million annual loss in earnings for these families in Davidson County, with employers losing $55.9 million from lower productivity, reduced revenue, increased hiring and retention costs, and lost profits.

Looking to be savvy in a child-care-strapped city, some opt to run an unlicensed child care center in their home. This is legal for up to four unrelated children. But in the past year, there have been two infant deaths at unlicensed child care centers in Nashville — one of which made national headlines. Both centers were taking care of far more than the allotted number of children. In total, DHS has taken legal action against at least eight caregivers in the past year.

Courts can hold an individual in contempt if they violate an order to stop operating a center or to cut down on the number of kids, but court records show the lion’s share are repeat offenders. Per child care licensure rules, the license should be displayed by the agency in a place easily visible to parents.

The yearlong Tennessee Child Care Task Force was created by a piece of legislation passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2021, and it released its final report at the end of 2022 with nine recommendations: investing in apprenticeship models; improving data systems; conducting a cost study; introducing tax credits for employers to help pay for child care or establish child care centers; simplifying the regulatory process of creating a new child care center; expanding support for the child care providers as business owners; better communicating with families about available resources; encouraging smaller providers to become regulated and serve more children; and bolstering the pre-licensure unit.

Applications just closed for the inaugural round of annual $5 million Child Care Hub pilot grants aimed at establishing newly licensed child care locations from the $220 million federal Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG). In addition, the state approved a part of a $15 million Child Care Improvement Fund.

“We greatly appreciate the $15 million-a-year pilot program from the General Assembly and governor, as it is the first time we have received state dollars,” says Jude White, assistant commissioner of Child Care and Community Services at the Tennessee Department of Human Services. “We look forward to using it in a variety of ways, such as to assist with staffing needs and capital costs of nonprofit child care agencies. These state dollars allow us to provide assistance in ways that would not be allowable under the regulations of CCDBG.”

Adding at least a few more slots to the pool is the Martha O’Bryan Center, which will reopen its early learning center on Aug. 7 after closing back in June 2017. It’ll operate differently than before in an effort to be more financially stable, says CEO Marsha Edwards. The last iteration of the center survived entirely on state-sponsored vouchers and hosted about 78 children, but the new one will be mixed-income with 126 children and an estimated 60/40 split of low income vs. higher income, she says. It also reflects what the mixed-income public housing neighborhood is becoming under the Metro Development and Housing Agency’s Envision Cayce Project.

A pre-k classroom at The new Early Learning Center at the Martha O’Bryan Center

Edwards notes that child care access is important for low-income families to have a chance at economic mobility.

“Early learning is so incredibly important for kids as they start their educational journey,” says Edwards, “but it’s also just incredibly important for parents to have a great place that they have a lot of confidence and trust in so they can go to work and do what they need to do to provide for their family.”

When it opens, the center will host just 40 to 50 children, until it hires enough staff to reach full capacity. Fannie Battle opted against expanding for a lack of staffing.

To help address the lack of providers statewide, Tennessee State University will recruit high school and community college students to begin an apprenticeship in early childhood education through a new wing of longstanding state program Tennessee Early Childhood Training Alliance (TECTA). The program, funded through DHS and the U.S. Department of Labor, will kick off this fall. The program also offers scholarships for those furthering their education in early childhood education and hosts a child development associate certificate program.

As with any small business, the profit margins are slim in child care. Martha O’Bryan will pay staff according to the center’s minimum starting salary of $42,000, Edwards tells the Scene. The Martha O’Bryan pay scale outpaces the average annual pay for child care workers in Tennessee of $23,780. Fannie Battle has reached a starting wage of $15 per hour only within the past year, with limited benefits, Ryan says. The average wage is now $18.79 per hour at the center.

In August 2021, DHS launched its Pre-Licensure Unit, which already claims increased capacity of 1,200 child care slots in Davidson County through adding licensed child care centers. The unit has also awarded $500,000 in grants to programs in Davidson County, which can be used to purchase supplies and curriculum to help them open with less debt.

Over the past couple of years, DHS has focused on creating employer-sponsored child care, White tells the Scene, including a child care center that recently opened near the Tyson Foods factory in Humboldt, Tenn. She calls on employers to support their employees in the cost of care or to establish a center. For example, in 2021, Michigan introduced what’s known as the TriShare Child Care Pilot Program, in which the state, parents and employers split the cost of child care three ways. It led to an increase in employee retention.

“There is no single strategy or solution that can affect all aspects of the child care system,” says White. “We believe the greatest area of opportunity is for more private-sector partners and local governments to actively engage in developing solutions. This includes local government review of zoning and business regulations that may be hampering development of more child care spaces. It also includes more businesses investing in their employees and engaging with us to explore resources that can be used to develop child care that fits work hours and family needs.”

Rhonda Laird, head of TECTA at TSU, says the program, which was created in 1992, was founded in part to help professionalize the industry. Since she began in the field in the ’80s, the licensing has gotten more rigid. She supports this change because people have a better scientific understanding of baby and toddler brains.

“We know that infants don’t just need to be babysat — that they can be read to, and they can be shown items that help stimulate their vision and stimulate their interest,” Laird says. “We know that infants don’t need to just cry it out, and we know that they do need to be held and nurtured so that their brains can develop.”

People work in child care in their late teens and early 20s and then go on to what they see as their “real job,” Laird says. Plus, the sector has lost 10 percent of its workforce nationally compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“I think we have this lack of child care because people never took it seriously,” she says. “Now of course, child care providers do not make enough money. There’s not enough investment in early childhood education or teachers. It’s hard to [work for] $10 per hour and when you walk up to, you know, Lowe’s and they’re paying $15 an hour for a second shift, and you’re still off at 7 o’clock at night. Why would I do that?”

Jennifer Hearn, a provider at Fannie Battle, started working in child care in 2008 and has an associate’s degree in child development. She says it’s been a struggle to find child care for her own children, especially for her younger son, who is autistic and requires one-on-one support. She says summer camps and after-school programs often don’t have the staff to offer that, so she has to adjust her schedule to be with him in the summers and when he gets out of school. Fannie Battle doesn’t have room for him either.

Provider Jennifer Hearn (left) and executive director Kristie Ryan at Fannie Battle

Her salary wouldn’t cover what it would cost to put him in day care over the summer, and she’s taken hour cuts to work only while he’s at school.

“It’s kind of unrecognized about how much energy and effort we put forth,” Hearn says. “I’m definitely not in it for the money, but it would be appreciated.”

Hearn bonds with the parents of the children she cares for — all elementary school teachers as part of a partnership with Nashville Classical School. She takes care of five children of various ages — 6 weeks to 3 years old — and has four more on the wait list. School is already back in session at Nashville Classical, a charter school in East Nashville.

“I enjoy working with my parents,” she says. “I’m a parent myself, and I take my job very seriously. And I just want them to know that while they’re gone at work — because I know they have a little bit of guilt — that their child is in extremely good hands. I care for them as my own.”

Says parent Cortnye Stone: “That is a decision that families all across Tennessee and all across the country are making: How much can we give up? How much money can we spend to make sure that our children are cared for? And my husband and I are in a fortunate position to be able to spend money on his child care, but I know it is a privilege, and there are so many other families that are struggling to try to figure out how to get their kids taken care of. And that’s really sad, and frankly, it’s a pathetic state of affairs for people in this country.”

While Cortnye Stone works as a communications director for the city’s transportation department, she spoke to the Scene for this story in a personal capacity.