Lack of child care a ‘crisis’

A group of several local, state and national entities are joining forces to brainstorm solutions to the child care crisis in the area, and county library director Jessie Phelps said Early Learner South Dakota is inviting more entities, including the Custer County Commission, to join in the fight to secure more child care for communities, including Custer.
At the Nov. 30 meeting of the Custer County Commission Phelps told the commission about Early Learner South Dakota (ear
lylearnersd.org), which has a stated goal to have all children have access to high-quality early learning experiences and environments to create a solid foundation for lifelong success.
“It’s a statewide movement and local communities are working toward the same goal,” Phelps said. “I know you all have been focused on the workforce issue, such as a lack of affordable housing, (but) another issue is the availability of child care.”
Phelps gave members of the commission a hand out that laid out the issue specific to Custer, pointing out Custer has one licensed daycare center (Custer YMCA) and three in-home daycares. All of the daycares are full, and the YMCA has a wait list 20 children long.
The information Phelps distributed says there is a 31.7 percent gap between childcare supply and demand nationwide, and that gap is even higher in rural areas and is projected to be even greater in South Dakota, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The YMCA serves 40 children ages 6 weeks to 5 years at a cost of $170 per week, which is $8,840 per year, per child. That figure is actually considered relatively cheap, as Phelps said she expected to pay between $12,000 and $24,000 for her child.
Phelps said if you take the average grade size of 48 students at Custer Elementary School and assume that same average for young children ages birth to 5, that would mean there are 280 children in the city ages 0-5, and there are only 81 available child care slots available.
She said pay for child care workers is another issue, as the average is $10.39 per hour, which she pointed out is not a liveable wage.
“I know personally, it’s very difficult knowing you’re sending your child and having people watch your child and that’s what they are earning,” she said.
The information Phelps distributed points out South Dakota employers lose $146 million annually due to child care challenges faced by their workforce, and that parents and related family members who would otherwise work are staying home with children due to the lack of child care options.
Phelps also quoted Erica Van Horn, who operates the YMCA’s daycare, who said the “child care business model is broken and always has been.”
Tuition at a daycare only covers the cost of staff wages, Phelps quoted, and those wages are often not a liveable wage. The tuition does not cover things such as staff benefits, training, food, supplies, electricity and other bills that are required to run a business.
“We cannot charge parents enough to cover these costs because they simply cannot afford it,” Phelps quoted. Child care must be subsidized by other funding sources.
South Dakota has the opportunity to be one of nine states to work with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the Bipartisan Policy Center to come up with a solution for the child care crisis, Phelps said.
Phelps relayed her own experience with finding child care in Custer, saying she was on the wait list for the YMCA for six months before she was offered a spot, and when that came up she didn’t yet have a job so the family had to defer even longer.
Currently at the library two of the employees have children at the YMCA and a third employee is expecting a child soon.
“When I asked her what her child care concerns were she said the cost, waiting for a spot at a certified facility and that library hours will create obstacles for her moving forward,” Phelps said.
The YMCA charges $5 for every minute a parent is late picking up their child after 5:30 p.m. If the two library employees are the only two employees working at the library on a day when it closes at 5:30 p.m. (which it does four days of week) they must close early to avoid the late fees. Even being four minutes late means wiping out an hour of money from work.
YMCA Child Development Center director Erica Van Horn said the late charges are necessary because if staff has to stay at the center later they begin to get overtime, which costs the YMCA money on top of its already tight budget.
“There isn’t a winner in that scenario,” she said in a later interview.
A West River Child Care Business Collaborative meeting will take place Tuesday, Dec. 20 from 2-4 p.m. at which time a variety of entities will discuss the issue. Phelps encouraged members of the commission to try to attend the meeting.
“It’s very hard financially for families and we would really like community input and especially your input to talk about this issue,” she said.
Van Horn said it is important to get the message out to the community that the community has to help current and future child cares.
“So many people think poorly about the ‘Y’ and that we are always asking for money, but they don’t understand that we charge less than many other licensed child cares and also what we charge doesn’t cover all of our cost,” she said. “This isn’t just a ‘Y’ problem. Any care facility will run into the same problem. If Custer wants to grow and thrive we have to continue to support current  and future child cares.”
Van Horn said she is appreciative of the support the Y has received. Without it, she said the center would have closed two years ago.  
“There are many parents who call me looking for care and say ‘we would move there but we need child care first,’” she said.