Shepherd University hosted a panel discussion titled “A 360 View of Child Care in Jefferson County” on July 24. The event was organized by the University’s Stubblefield Institute as part of its Community Engagement Conversations program that works to bring state and local leaders together for civil conversations about complex issues that affect the local community.
The panelists for this event (left to right in the image) were Eddie Benities-LM, the Executive Director of the Jefferson County Development Authority (JCDA), Kelly Chaney from the WVU Medicine Jefferson Medical Center, Wayne Clark, WV Delegate for the 99th District, and Nickie Haines, Director of the Children’s Tree House, a local non-profit child care center.
Benites-LM started the discussion with a description of the local economy, emphasizing the link between the expected employment growth in the Eastern Panhandle over the next decade with an expanding need for childcare services to enable parents to participate in the workforce to fill these jobs. She shared a summary of recent research done by the JCDA that compared the available child care capacity in Jefferson County with the capacity available in surrounding counties, reporting that the average wait time for a child care slot in Jefferson is over 13 months, compared to 6 months in Berkeley County and 3 months in Frederick County (MD).
Chaney spoke of the difficulties she sees at WVU Medicine with attracting and scheduling staff, drawing a direct connection with the difficulties in finding child care. She noted that a lack of child care services forces many of the center’s younger staff to keep to a part-time schedule.
Haines highlighted the issue of staff compensation. She noted the societal value of early childhood development programs and noted that her staff needs to have education and training that is similar to that of public school teachers — but are compensated at a much lower rate. Delegate Clark supported that observation as well, noting that the hourly wage at local fast-food restaurants are higher than the state average wage for day care workers.
Haines also mentioned Mountain Heart, the state’s program to assist with child care expenses for qualifying households. During the pandemic, the program reimbursed centers a fixed amount for each enrolled child, but is scheduled to switch back to the prior payment rules where centers are reimbursed only for “days in attendance.” She pointed out the fundamental concern with this fluctuating reimbursement model — her costs to staff a classroom for 5 children with 1 teacher are fixed regardless of how many of the kids call out sick and she can’t just call up a list of parents to offer an empty spot for a day.
Delegate Clark echoed this concern about how Mountain Heart works and circled back to the connection between enabling a pool of local workers to show up for work and the interest of companies to set up shop and create jobs in the state. He noted that in the past, the Republican-led state legislature has been philosophically opposed to getting involved with child care. However, he noted that his fellow Republican legislators do seem to be more supportive of funding education. He offered some optimism that his colleagues might note the success that neighboring states have had with investing in early childhood education to attract employers and boost workforce participation.
A recording of the panel discussion is available online at YouTube.com/@StubblefieldInsitute.
Information about the institute is at StubblefieldInstitute.org.
By Staff Contributor