Op/Ed by Ellyn Okrent, CEO of Fuller Center in Boca Raton
Boca Raton, FL – Childcare programs across the United States are in dire straits. The industry is missing more than 10% of its workforce – the result of its inability to raise compensation and provide benefits to keep pace with fast food and retail. However, these are not the only reasons. Earning the credentials to work as an early educator is extensive and costly, the responsibility is high, the respect is low, and the job is highly demanding with numerous requirements. In addition, many children are exhibiting post-pandemic out-of-control behaviors and mental health concerns for which early educators receive little to no support in addressing and managing.
Nationally, 46% of the childcare workforce qualifies for public benefits. Chronic system and provider underfunding results in low rates of compensation for early educators, the vast majority of whom are female. Even our universities are reducing degree programs in early education, as college graduates cannot secure a living wage post-graduation.
This staffing shortage holds parents back (particularly women) from the labor market, where participation is still not back to pre-pandemic levels, and ultimately handicapping the recovery of local economies. According to Vox, in August, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer went so far as to say he believes “the number one or number two reason in the whole country we are short of labor is we don’t have adequate childcare.”
Massive amounts of neuroscience research tell us that learning begins at birth, and that without developmentally appropriate stimulation and support, young minds will fail to develop to their fullest potential. Studies consistently document that children who begin kindergarten without a specific level of social, emotional, and academic readiness tend to fall behind and stay behind. Yet, we still do not adequately fund, value, or support quality early childhood education – the one proven golden ticket – the strong start that children and families need.
For more than 50 years, the Fuller Center’s mission has been to embrace, educate, and empower hardworking, under-resourced families and children to reach their full potential. We build a positive future through education for more than 800 children annually (infants through teens), as well as their 600 family members. The Fuller Center reaches families in 45 zip codes throughout Palm Beach County, as well as North Broward County. Almost all Fuller Center working parents – 92% – serve as essential or frontline workers, working in hospitals, retail, restaurants, and hotels. They are our bus drivers, store clerks and cashiers, farmworkers, delivery drivers, security guards, bank tellers, office workers, healthcare workers and home health aides, hospital orderlies and cafeteria workers, and childcare and eldercare workers.
Our programs empower children to start school prepared, succeed academically, and break the generational cycle of poverty through quality early childhood education, after-school and summer camp programs, our new private elementary school, a teen leadership program, and a comprehensive system of family support services. They also empower the parents, who are essential to keeping our local economy open and provide the vital services we all count on.
The Fuller Center offers mentoring programs and adult on-the-job training, coaching, and employment support at no-cost, plus transportation from 12 area schools to our campus-based afterschool programs. We serve more than 1,000 nutritious meals and snacks daily. In addition, Fuller Center provides opportunities for local colleges and universities to place undergraduate and graduate students in internships and child development practicums.
To meet the staffing needs of our Center and of the children and families we serve, the Fuller Center created a career path for 32 individuals, empowering them to secure permanent employment in the early education field and move up the career ladder between 2020 and 2022. We’ve embraced partnership opportunities with Boca Helping Hands, FAU, the Center for Child Counseling, local high schools, Palm Beach State College, Lynn University, Jewish Family Services, and local places of worship, to name a few, to bring this Workforce Development opportunity to the community.
According to findings from early childhood education employee surveys, the following are ways to increase satisfaction and retain quality staff:
- Increase funds to run programs
- Increase salaries
- Greater administrative support and respect
- Improve benefits
- Open communication both within the organization and with families
- More relevant, higher quality training
- Opportunities to advance within the organization and beyond
- Recognition of high-performing, qualified staff
- The availability of materials, supplies, and space
Programs like the Fuller Center’s can make a difference, but there’s much work still to do to stabilize childcare, the workforce, and our economy. However, without adequate funding for training programs and consideration of the frontline program staff participating in planning and decision-making, the workforce behind the workforce is in jeopardy. Our community, state, and nation cannot afford for this industry to collapse. It is entirely within our power to prevent that, and at the same time invest in our most precious resource: the children and their futures.
