Child enrichment and afterschool programs across the country are working to increase pay and flexibility in the face of serious staffing shortages. Some are using federal funds for childcare to shore up their programs.
Holly Perry, senior director for Talent Acquisition at Think Together, a large California-based afterschool provider, said her organization increased wages across the board after doing a competitive pay analysis looking at other industries.
Program leaders, for example, had been earning $16 per hour, and that was bumped up to a minimum of $20 per hour.
“It can be higher in certain areas, depending on the market,” said Perry. “It was a pretty substantial increase.”
Perry said Think Together has also relaxed some of its qualification requirements. In the past, hiring managers required applicants to have a bachelor’s degree for many roles, but now they take field experience into account, although they are still focused on hiring people who are interested in pursuing careers in education.
“We’ve really reevaluated that, because not everyone gets the opportunity to obviously go and graduate from college at the same pace,” she said. “So they’ll come on with us in a different role, gain experience, we’ll help with professional development and then move them into a role that they might be really excited about.”
Maria Baltazar is a mother of an 8-year-old and 11-year-old who take part in a Think Together program at their school, said she thinks higher pay would help retain employees, adding that staffing shortages impact the children.
”When we have a staff shortage, and our staff is pulled out to other sites, this affects our children,” she said.
In Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Human Services recently launched a $1,000 retention bonus program to attract and retain childcare workers including out-of-school time providers, who are eligible for the money as long as they work for a state-licensed program.
More than 13,000 child care workers have signed up for the incentive, with funding coming from the American Rescue Plan funds, said Brittany Lee, director of child care services for the department.
The funding came from American Rescue Plan funds, and federal officials wanted state officials to utilize the money to really support and stabilize the child care industry, Lee said.
“One of those spaces, of course, would be workforce: How can we incentivize the workforce? How could we strengthen the workforce for child care, and of course, utilizing the funds that we had, we thought, ‘What’s better than getting money directly to the personnel and the staff that are actually working with the children every day?’”
Lee said the staffing shortage has gotten better, but hiring is still a struggle and many positions remain open.
”Parents need to go to work, which means they need someone to watch their kids, and in order for us to watch the kids, we need everybody to come into work,” she said.
These providers are competing with many other industries, including fast food and jobs that allow remote work, said Rob Knaussman, children’s services assistant manager at the Johnson County Park & Recreation District in Shawnee Mission and Olathe, Kansas. The district offers early childhood preschool opportunities as well indoor and outdoor summer camps for children.
“The college fairs, job boards, websites … that we use as tools of recruitment have every type of business you can imagine that we are competing with,” he said.
The county has raised starting pay for their part-time childcare and out-of-school time workers, but they are still struggling, he said.
“We do believe this helped us with retention, but have not seen a noticeable increase in new applicants,” he said.
In New Hampshire, many programs have long waitlists due to inadequate staffing and some have even had to close their doors, said Benjimen Weidman, network lead for the New Hampshire Afterschool Network.
He said many programs employ college students working toward their education degrees, but some have started hiring high schoolers as well. But he said the problem appears to be getting worse due to low pay in the field and delays in onboarding caused by background checks, which cause some applicants to accept other work.
“Turnover is high,” Weidman said.
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Kristi Eaton is an Oklahoma-based freelance reporter, writer and communicator. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Associated Press and The Washington Post.
