Early childhood educators are bracing for Sept. 30. That’s when the Child Care Stabilization Program — funding allocated as part of the American Rescue Plan Act — will end, leaving hundreds of St. Louis and Metro East facilities in a lurch.
“Without [ARPA funding], there will be even less ability to serve the families than the dire situation that we’re currently in,” Shona Lamond, executive director of Downtown Children’s Center in St. Louis, told St. Louis on the Air.
Leaders of children’s centers that care for and educate children from birth to age 5 have struggled to retain qualified educators, maintain facilities and meet the needs of their students and families for years — since well before the pandemic triggered federal aid. For Aimee Washington-Hart, executive director of Uni-Pres Kindercottage in East St. Louis, the pandemic-era funding was a critical step in tackling long-standing issues in the industry.
“[Now,] we will have to seek out additional funding from other sources, which is a really big challenge,” she said. “The loss of additional dollars supports not just children’s materials and resources. It also affects staffing. That support is going to be a hardship to continue quality care in the Metro East.”
Thousands of families have had to reevaluate their career goals to make sure their children have basic care as well as adequate education. Paula-Breonne Vickers, a mother of two young kids and the director of early childhood power building for WePower, changed her career because of the difficulty in searching for early childhood facilities for her sons. For Vickers, it was more than just finding someone to watch her sons while she worked.
“I experienced postpartum depression. Being a first-time mom, to leave your child somewhere — you have to have this level of trust,” she said. “That trust looks like, ‘OK, well, I feel like my teachers are being taken care of, and because of that, I feel that much more comfortable leaving my children in your hands.’”
Washington-Hart and Lamond agreed that without ARPA funding, they will have to get creative with ways to make up for the financial loss, retain staff and avoid having to cut programs and resources for the families they serve.
“Without that funding, it gets harder to pay the staff wages — and I'm not going to even say really great wages — to pay them kind of minimum wage,” Lamond said. “To remain open and be there for the families long term. That's a conversation that our board and I have frequently as a nonprofit.”
Early childhood education is supported differently in Missouri and Illinois, and the two states have different parameters regarding whether a family is eligible for a state subsidy.
“[In Illinois] we do have a subsidy child care program,” said Washington-Hart. “We also do collaborative services. That helps make it more affordable for families. But again, that's for families that qualify, and that's also contingent on if the program is collaborative.”
Vickers added that the threshold where families can qualify for aid is lower in Missouri than Illinois.
“When we're talking about receiving subsidies, many families in Missouri — especially if you are just barely in middle income or [on] the poverty line — you don't get any assistance,” she said.
For more on what the early childhood education crisis means for the future — and what Aimee Washington-Hart, Paula-Breonne Vickers and Shona Lamond say it will take to get early childhood education the support and funding necessary to keep facilities open — listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcast by clicking the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Ulaa Kuziez is our production intern. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
