Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware does not have universal pre-K, which is publicly funded preschool for 3- to 5-year-olds. Instead, providers rely on tuition from parents or subsidy payments to maintain their programs. As a result, those in the early child education industry have expressed concern about being able to sustain high-quality programs, while trying to ensure they are affordable for families.
On a hazy morning in August, five young children quietly eat breakfast in Eugenia Mumford’s home-based child care center in Millsboro.
Afterward, they spend a few minutes in free play before gathering on Mumford’s carpet for a lesson. She asks them to name the days of the week and describe the weather.
“Do you want to tell them what the weather is like?” Mumford asks one of her younger students.
“It’s cloudy!” the child exclaims.
The lessons may seem simple, but they are the building blocks to prepare students for kindergarten, where they will expand their vocabulary and begin their math and reading journeys.
For two decades, Mumford has invested her time and money into a business that today is filled with children’s laughter, as well as a variety of toys, books, and crayons. Mumford, whose at-home center opened in 2003, says once the children enter her doorway, she treats them like her own.
But providing such care is costly.
It can be difficult for Mumford to keep up with the expenses, including updating some of the larger playground equipment she has outside. After covering the costs of running her center, Mumford says she can end the month with roughly $600 for herself.
Her experience highlights the strains on the childcare industry in Delaware that pairs with challenges parents face finding affordable daycare.
In conversations with childcare providers in the state, Spotlight Delaware found that several struggle to balance the goals of high-quality education with costs of running a facility.
Additionally, operators of large childcare centers with big staffs said they face difficulties finding and retaining employees, as well as in competing with local school districts that provide childcare.
For Mumford, it all means that she needs to think about her own mental and physical health along with the needs of the children entering her doors every morning.
“It seems like childcare takes over the most of my budget,” Mumford said, “I do it because I love it, and I think that’s what keeps me afloat.”
A hefty investment
Earlier this summer, parents across the state told Spotlight Delaware about their concerns around preschool affordability and access. For some parents, the high costs have caused them to resign from their careers and take part-time jobs to avoid full-time care.
For the childcare providers, many recognized parents’ affordability concerns, but said opening childcare and preschool centers are financial investments that require the hefty tuition.
In an interview, Rhondalin Cannon-Tingle listed out the expenses to operate her at-home childcare and preschool services. There is curriculum, technology, outdoor equipment, insurance, licensing requirements, children’s food, among other expenses.
For large scale-providers, costs can include growing their center’s footprint to provide services to more students.
Beach Babies Child Care has five locations throughout the state and is one of Delaware’s largest private childcare providers. Still, company president Sean Toner described his obstacles to expanding the center’s Rehoboth location because of high costs of buying land and adding another building.
Toner said ultimately he would have to take out a $2.5 million loan to move the expansion forward.
In nearby Georgetown, Casey Christophel, the executive director of Primeros Pasos, also expressed difficulty with wanting to expand her center due to high costs of land.
Christophel said she had turned her center’s parent-meeting room into another classroom in an attempt to meet the growing needs of the surrounding community.
While she was able to take on roughly 19 more students, she still needed a space to host parents. She said she has looked for land to purchase, but is limited by where she can purchase because she wants the additional space to remain within the community she serves.
When she did find a suitable property, Christophel said it would cost $1 million to purchase.
“It’s hard for a lot of people to understand how much risk that we are taking as business owners to be able to provide a service that we love, that we care about, that we really enjoy doing,” Toner said.
‘A slap in the face’
Unlike K-12, Delaware’s early childhood education system is made up of a patchwork of school district programs, private preschools, and even community programs that require parent participation.
Each carries different funding streams and eligibility requirements.
While Delaware does not provide universal preschool, private providers often rely, in part on tuition subsidy funding through Delaware’s Purchase of Care program, according to Kimberly Krzanowski, the former executive director of The Early Childhood Innovation Center, an organization which aims to redesign support for early education professionals.
In all, the revenues a childcare provider takes in will look different depending on where it is and who it serves.
If a program sits within an affluent area, it can charge higher tuition rates and use the money for things like hiring more staff.
Programs in areas with higher needs that rely on childcare subsidies require providers to “blend and braid” different funding structures, like grants, that may be available, Krzanowski said.
Krzanowski said that if the state does not have a dedicated funding stream — like the City of Philadelphia’s soda tax, which funds free spots in the city’s preschool program — the cycle of relying on tuition or subsidies to pay staff will continue.
As a result, early education providers told Spotlight Delaware they feel underappreciated and taken for granted.
Many also said they know colleagues who have gone to work at chain stores, such as Chick-fil-A or Welsh Farms, because they pay better.
The average pay for a preschool teacher in Delaware is $17.86 per hour, according to Indeed.
The problem is not unique to Delaware. Throughout the country, two out of five childcare teachers make so little they need public assistance to support their families, according to a study from The Hechinger Report.
Still, Cannon-Tingle said that after providers like herself were deemed essential employees during the COVID pandemic, she expected their pay to better reflect their importance.
But the pay is “almost like a slap in the face,” she said.
Instead of receiving higher pay after the pandemic, Cannon-Tingle said it feels like those who are not in the industry assume childcare providers do not need the assistance.
“You’re taken for granted, like ‘Oh, they’ll be there, they’ll be fine … they’re not going anywhere,” she said.
Toner also expressed concerns about competing with local school districts, which are able to provide higher salaries than private providers.
As a result, Toner said his company knows which teachers will only be there temporarily while they study to get their associate or bachelor’s degree. While he supports his educators continuing their education, Toner admits selfishly he would want his teachers to stay at Beach Babies Child Care after earning their degrees.
“It’s just a giant line of cause and effect, where without the staff and buildings, you can’t provide [services],” he said.
