The Childcare Challenge The pandemic’s effects on the industry in Oklahoma & how to move forward BY ERIN PAGE
While more kids are coming back to childcare, Koos says ongoing issues due to COVID are still causing providers to struggle and their income levels, in general, are not back up to what they were pre-pandemic. When kids have to be quarantined for a week or more, classrooms must be closed and cleaned, and when there aren’t children to care for, teachers may temporarily be without a job or pay. Some providers are having to close their doors. “During the pandemic we saw childcare homes who were really committed and had been serving parents for a long time, even when they weren’t breaking even, they continued to operate,” said Koos. “We heard from a lot of providers who said it totally wiped out their savings. There are people who are leaving the industry who unfortunately probably won’t come back.” Unlike in some other industries where family-owned businesses are passed down through the generations, childcare providers in the 60- to 65-year-old age range who are retiring from their businesses don’t typically have children stepping in to take over, according to Koos. “They don’t see it as a financially-viable way to make a living,” said Koos of the next generation. Even for those providers able to stay open, finding quality employees has been a significant struggle. Ramona Johnson, director of Rainbow Fleet’s Early Education Center in Oklahoma City, says this has been her top challenge since the center opened in October 2020. Upon opening, the center already had a large enrollment and Johnson was able to hire quality teachers to get the program running. But as the need continues to grow to serve more children, Johnson worries about sustainability. “We want to find those perfect providers to come take care of our kids,” said Johnson. “It’s a struggle, and you get to the point
and the pandemic exacerbated them,” said Paula Koos, executive director of Oklahoma Childcare Resources and Referral Association. “We’ve been losing childcare homes for six to eight years and they are not being replaced because other people don’t see the childcare business as [a way to] make a living.” According to Oklahoma Department of Human Services, more than 115,000 Oklahoma children are in childcare every month. The same childcare facility directors and employees who stayed open to essential workers at the height of the pandemic, operating often at 20 to 30 percent of their income with the same pre-pandemic costs, are now fighting to make ends meet long- term, all amidst a general lack of respect for the industry. “People in the childcare industry truly go into it because they love children,” said Koos. “What’s really sad is that they need to [also] be a business person to be able to end every month in the black, and that takes the joy out of it for so many people.” The Problems Reduced enrollment and workforce At various points during the pandemic, many parents who were able to work from home or who didn’t work outside the home opted not to send their children to childcare. “In many cases, enrollment fell by 50 percent,” said Koos. “You have the ongoing expenses of a business — the rent doesn’t change, utilities don’t change, insurance doesn’t change, but you have 50 percent fewer children and that makes it more difficult to make ends meet.”
At the height of the pandemic in 2020 when many families were sheltering together at home, working parents across the metro discovered with renewed understanding just how much they rely on childcare. As schools were closed and childcare centers were primarily serving essential workers, working parents tried to simultaneously (and sometimes impossibly) work from home and care for their children. Employers and employees alike realized the critical role childcare plays in the community. “The pandemic proved the childcare industry is vital to the economic success of Oklahoma,” said Brittany Lee, director of childcare services for Oklahoma Human Services. “Our goal is to provide licensed, affordable, high-quality childcare, offering a variety of options.” Lee reports childcare centers that were operating at 20 or 30 percent capacity during the height of the pandemic have begun to rebound, with many reaching pre-pandemic levels of 70 to 80 percent capacity. But like many industries negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the childcare industry is still in a tailspin, and experts predict those effects will last long beyond the pandemic itself. The biggest challenges are all cyclical in nature, each compounding the others: a shortage of workers, loss of income for childcare providers due to loss of enrollment and a lack of childcare options for parents. “What happened in the pandemic was disastrous but it was just a culmination; the issues existed way before the pandemic
40 METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / MAR-APR 2022
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