Running a child care center is not just child’s play. For Amy Vogel, the CEO of Dr. Day Care, it’s a delicate balancing act.
“When you’re supervising and don’t have enough people to work in the industry but you’re receiving all these calls of families that need care, it can stress you out,” Vogel said.
Dr. Day Care is the largest for-profit chain of child care centers in Rhode Island. Vogel said finding and retaining qualified teachers is the hardest part of the job. Without enough teachers, classrooms are forced to stay closed and families are left without someone to watch their children. She estimates about 20 percent of classrooms across Dr. Day Care’s eight locations are closed.
“We have waitlists and sometimes we have to stop tours because we know we can’t service families until 2026, 2027,” Vogel said.
She’s been working in the industry for nearly two decades. She said staffing was always an issue, but the pandemic made it worse. Vogel said she lost about 30% of her workforce during COVID-19. She said low wages make it difficult to keep employees. In 2023, the median wage for a child care provider in Rhode Island was $16.91 per hour.
“For what child care educators do day in and day out, they’ll never get paid enough,” Vogel said. “They deserve more. They deserve more wages.”
Low wages long kept Yeisha Pereira from putting her own children in child care. She’s been caring for other people’s kids at a nonprofit called Children’s Friend for 10 years.
Pereira said it’s frustrating to be unable to afford the very care she’s providing for other families. The single mother of two said it was hard to find someone to watch her now five-year-old daughter while she was working and her teenage son was in school. She said it was so bad she considered quitting her job.
“I was asking … people (to) borrow money,” Pereira said. “It is frustrating and it’s hard because – I’m sorry, it just (reminded) me (of) all the stuff that (happened in the) past. It’s not easy being a single mom.”
Nicole Chiello, assistant director for the Office of Child Care at the Rhode Island Department of Human Services, knows Pereira is hardly the only employee who’s wrestled with quitting her job over child care costs.
“Child care is truly the foundation of Rhode Island’s economy,” Chiello said.
On average in Rhode Island, it costs $16,899 a year to have an infant in a child care center.
“Minimum wage in Rhode Island is $15 an hour, and up until very recently if you were married and had one child and were making minimum wage, you were unable to even qualify for subsidized care because you were considered (to be) making too much money,” Chiello said. “So it made so much more sense for a two-parent household for one of those parents to kind of stay home and watch the child.”
It’s a story Scott Weldon has heard before. He’s the president and CEO of Rhody Rug. The Lincoln-based company manufactures braided rugs and employs about 30 people. Weldon said in the last year and a half he’s lost three employees for reasons beyond his control.
“I lost three employees due to it not being economical for them to work anymore because of the child care for their small children,” Weldon said.
He said replacing a great employee is difficult and expensive. He’s tried to make the workplace friendlier for his colleagues.
“Our hours used to be 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and we took it to a vote to the employees and we went from 6:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. so a lot of our moms could be home in time for their kids so that they don’t have to spend the extra money for child care. And we were totally fine with that. So it’s not a situation on our end that we’re not trying to help out. It’s things that are out of our control,” Weldon said.
State rep. Grace Diaz (D- District 11) said one way to get more people into the workforce is to start with the child care sector. In January, she introduced a bill that subsidizes the cost of child care for child care workers based on their family income.
The Child Care Assistance Program for Child Care Staff began as a pilot program in 2023 and was extended for another year. Diaz hopes lawmakers will soon make it permanent. To date, more than 400 child care workers have enrolled in it.
When asked whether he would support making the program permanent, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi (D- District 23) said in a statement, “I was proud to support the funding for a pilot program to provide assistance to the staff of child care workers. We will carefully consider extending the funding, but it has to be reviewed in the context of the budget challenges the state faces this year.”
Pereira is enrolled in the program. She said it allowed her to put her daughter in child care for free while she worked and finished her schooling. She’s now a lead teacher at Children’s Friend and earning more money, which she said has improved her quality of life.
“I wake up every morning, get my daughter dressed to go to school with no problem. I don’t have to worry about who’s going to take care (of her) every single day. I (have) no worries. I just come to work happy,” Pereira said.
The program has cost the state nearly $5 million. Vogel said it’s been a selling point when talking with candidates. Over the years, she said she’s lost many employees to the public school system where they can make more money.
“It’s a great program because it’s almost like we’re offering an employee benefit,” Vogel said. “So if you come and work for us and you get free child care, you are saving yourselves anywhere from $250 to $350 a week. So if you multiply that times 52 weeks, you can add that on as a benefit to their salary.”
When asked what happens if the program is not made permanent and ends after the fiscal year, Vogel said, “I will be sad. I just think it’s one thing that sets us apart in the child care industry and compared to other industries, and we need that. We need something to set us apart because we need people to come into this industry because if we don’t have them come into the industry, there’s going to be a lot less child care available for families that need it, and you’re going to have ... another economic issue.”
