Louisiana’s child care providers are struggling to stay open | Education

Rochelle Wilcox has long touted the importance of early childhood education.

A nearly 30-year veteran in the industry, Wilcox opened her first day care inside her house in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward in 2004. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, her husband used his retirement savings to finance a new center, which the couple opened in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood a year later under the name Wilcox Academy.

Since then, Wilcox has managed to open two more day care centers in the area for children as young as 2 months and after-school care to kids up to 10 years. The expansion is a rare feat in Louisiana, which has seen the number of child care options for local communities dwindle in recent years.

The majority of the state’s child care centers face a financial crisis, with nearly 8 in 10 providers saying in a recent survey that they are unsure if they can keep their doors open for the next six months, according to a recent report by the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children. Most pointed to a rapid rise in insurance and supply costs as the reason why.

Wilcox says her own premiums have more than tripled in just a few years, forcing her to reduce the maximum pay she offers her most experienced staff.

“Centers are closing,” said Wilcox, who co-founded For Providers By Providers, which supports and advocates for early education providers. “Parents are not getting what they need and our children are not entering school prepared.”

To ease the burden on providers, Wilcox argues, Louisiana must direct more state funding to early childhood education. That would help providers hire more workers, raise salaries and expand the number of children they can serve, she said.

The Times-Picayune and The Advocate recently spoke with Wilcox about why affordable early child care is vital for families and how to better support providers. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Why is early education so important for young children? 

Early care and education is about social emotional learning and skills. You’re giving them the tools, the language they need to manage their feelings. You’re reacting to what they need socially, as well as academically.

It’s important that when kids get to K-12 (schools), they’re good citizens. They understand boundaries. They can talk and tell somebody when they’re frustrated. They can be advocates for themselves instead of using their hands because they don’t have the words to articulate how they’re feeling.

Providers can also let parents know if their children aren’t meeting their milestones. We can catch it early, and early intervention is key. The earlier we get them that intervention, the less likely they are to need it when they get to K-12. Sometimes a kid is behind but it isn’t caught until they’re in kindergarten, and at that point, the intervention they need can take longer.

What are the biggest challenges you’re currently facing as an early education provider?

(Our centers) used to pay $16-$25 an hour, but we had to lower that to $16-$23 an hour because we just can’t afford it, mostly because our insurance has tripled. Across our three early learning centers, our general liability insurance alone went from about $6,700 a year to $21,000. It’s unmanageable.

In New Orleans, we’re blessed because there are several public funding sources, including a millage tax (passed in 2022) that generates about $21 million annually for early childhood education. We’re also part of the Early Head Start program (federally funded early education for children under 3 from low-income families), and we take private pay, so I’m able to make it work by using all of that funding to subsidize the things we need inside of our centers.

Other parishes don’t have that kind of funding. There are some that literally just survive on private pay and Child Care Assistance (a state program that helps low-income parents pay for child care).

How are early education providers being impacted by rising costs?

What we’re seeing is that providers are not paying themselves. They’re paying their staff, then they’re trying to pay all of their bills. If there’s anything left, then they’ll take maybe an owner’s draw or a small stipend for themselves.

I say all the time, “What business do you go into that you are expected to still live in poverty?”

Most of our providers across the state are living in poverty because they see the need in the community and want to help. They know this is about brain development. They know this is something that’s going to get our economy working, yet nobody respects that.

Why is state funding for early education so crucial? 

There are centers that are struggling because they can’t charge families what they need to because families can’t afford it.

The true cost of care for an infant is about $20,000 a year. Sometimes it’s even more than what it would cost for a semester in college. But on average, we can’t charge that. We might charge $12,000 a year or $10,000 or $8,000, but you can’t run an early learning center off those margins.

Child care, in some instances, can be over 50% of a parent’s salary. It’s one of the highest expenses for a family. And so, without financial help, parents have to decide: Do I stay home and educate my little person, or do I go back to work and see half my salary taken by child care?

What can be done to ease the burden on child care centers?

We need money. I would love to see us funded the way K-12 is funded. I would love to see early care and education treated like a right at birth. If you want, if you need, you should be able to send your little person to your neighborhood early learning center.

It takes a lot of work to do what early learning teachers do, and yet Louisiana is paying our early child care teachers an average of $9.77.

At Wilcox, we start our teachers at $16 and go up to $23 an hour. We offer benefits. We want them to have a 401k. That’s what should be happening in centers around the state, but they can’t do that because of the lack of funding.

There are about 5,000 children on the wait list for Child Care Assistance in Louisiana. The fact is, we get roughly $78 million in state child care dollars when we need about $100 million. That still won’t cover everybody, but it will cover more families — families that can get back to work.