This is what child care looks like for Donna Denina and her family.
The NewHolly Neighborhood mom takes her 2-year-old daughter to her father-in-law’s house three days a week. Her 5-year-old son just started kindergarten.
Two days a week she works from home. She calls it a privilege other moms don’t have. During that time she’s changing diapers, preparing meals and keeping her toddler occupied in between emails, computer work and conference calls. Rather than the educationally rich experience she’d like for her kids, sometimes she’s popping in a video to keep them occupied.
“It’s more stressful than going to the office,” she said. “I feel like I’m being a bad mom. I can’t do everything at once.”
She and her husband, Ron Antonio, would like something better for their kids. She’d like to stay home but they can’t afford it. They’d like a child-care provider who is well paid and happy with her job, one who could even expose the children to their Filipino heritage. Right now, they’re thankful for what they’ve got.
It’s better than it used to be. When their son was an infant, he was shuttled back and forth in a “crazy schedule” between his grandparents’ homes in Seattle and Snohomish.
What’s perhaps surprising is that Denina and her husband aren’t low income. They’re both educated, working professionals. And they’re far from alone.
King County is one of the most expensive places in the nation for child care. An infant receiving full-time care costs on average $1,445 per month, according to a report released in August by the nonprofit Puget Sound Sage. That’s more expensive than a year at the University of Washington. That’s more expensive than rent for many families.
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Meanwhile, day-care workers and preschool teachers are earning, in some cases, poverty-level wages. Operating a day care is expensive, leaving little money left to pay workers.
City leaders and early childhood education advocates want to find a solution. They just don’t agree on how to fix the problem. This summer the disagreement turned nasty.
The City Council voted to pit its own plan against another early education measure created by two unions. The unions sued and filed an ethics complaint. The city won, and voters can only support one or the other — not both.
The city of Seattle proposes a four-year “demonstration phase” of a universal preschool program for 3- and 4-year-olds. The program is voluntary and tuition would be free for families making up to three times the federal poverty level — for a family of four, that’s $71,550 annually. Other families would pay on a sliding scale. Tuition is estimated to be about $11,000 per child.
The first year, 280 preschoolers would be served. By 2018, the city plans to serve 2,000 kids in 100 classrooms. The city wants to start small to make sure the program works well.
The plan would cost $58 million, paid for with a property-tax levy. The owner of a Seattle home valued at $400,000 would pay about $43 a year. The goal is to eventually expand access to all 3- and 4-year-olds citywide.
Yes for Early Success, a coalition paid for by two unions, is backing another measure on the ballot, Initiative 107, which grew out of the unions’ dissatisfaction with the city’s plan. The unions were concerned that the plan didn’t go far enough to address kids of all ages and issues of pay and professional development, said Heather Weiner, spokeswoman for Yes for Early Success.
The initiative creates a professional development institute that would provide centralized training for Seattle’s child-care teachers, something that’s badly needed, Weiner said. This plan addresses all kinds of care for kids of all ages, including home-based facilities.
A workforce board would oversee the institute and the city would contract with an outside organization to run it. Although any qualified group could handle administrative duties for the center, the unions would most likely fill that role.
The plan would phase in a $15 minimum wage for child-care workers faster than the wage plan already approved by the city. It also establishes a city policy that no family should have to pay more than 10 percent of their income on early education and child care.
Finally, the plan prohibits people who’ve committed a violent felony from working as child-care providers, including those who attempt to do so unlicensed.
The proposal doesn’t include a funding mechanism or firm numbers on the cost. Weiner said it could be done for as little as $3 million annually. Those particulars would be sorted out later.
“We don’t claim to have all the answers,” Weiner said. “We want the city council to take it seriously.”
Denina, the South Seattle mom struggling to juggle care for her two children, doesn’t have the solutions either. She just knows child care is expensive and difficult to find. She’s well aware she’s in a better situation than many other families.
“It’s not just the affordability, but it’s the quality too,” she said. “You are sending your kids to a stranger for the majority of the day. For me, I would feel better knowing the folks responsible for my children are happy at their jobs and well-trained.”
