In a study conducted in November this year, the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance found more than 4,000 vacancies in the 205 childcare centres included in the survey.
“Fundamentally, the problem is that there’s not enough money in the system because we expect parents who don’t have a lot of money to be the ones paying for it,” said Merrill Gay, executive director of the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance.
Those 205 centres represented about 21% of the state’s total licensed centre-based capacity, but Gay says the findings point to a larger crisis.
“It shows a pretty consistent picture that programs are struggling to hire and retain staff, and that’s having an impact on the number of classrooms they can operate,” Gay said. “It’s becoming less and less possible for early childhood educators to survive on the low wages that they earn, given the increase in the cost of living in the state.”
On Monday in Hartford, state leaders stood in front of the nationally acclaimed Green World Family Child Care and announced a new apprenticeship program to help address the child care workforce shortage.
“This program is designed to get workers into jobs that are in high demand and give them a life-changing opportunity,” said Department of Labor Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo.
This training is specifically for family childcare. Currently, the state has between 20 and 30 people enrolled for the coming year.
For centre-based childcare, which was the subject of the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance study, Connecticut has established workforce pipeline programmes in eight locations so far.
“Each of them enrolls anywhere from 10 to 30 students who they pay while they’re taking classes, and then after they’ve taken an average of six weeks of classes, which is what most of them do, they start working side by side with teachers,” said Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye.
Bye said the positions would pay $15 an hour. Gay said he applauds the state’s initiatives, but said the shortage will not be solved unless wages can be increased without raising tuition.
“We need to figure out a way to make the important work of building the brains of young children something that is rewarding enough that people will come into the field and stay in the field,” Gay said.