Shock Treatment Employed to Teach Value of Day Care : Education: Worthy Wage Day is organized to dramatize the plight of child-care profes- sionals, who quit to seek better-paying jobs.

Georgia Fallas was about to drop off her son at preschool Wednesday morning when she glimpsed the sign posted outside: “School closed.”

Quickly, before she could calculate the domino effect of such an event, she read the small print: “Just kidding. But if we were, who would take care of your child?”

As in other local day care centers Wednesday, teachers at the Assistance League of Newport Mesa were dramatizing the crucial service provided by preschool teachers--and the low pay they receive. It worked.

“I was truly horrified they’re not making a better salary,” Fallas said. “These are professional educators.”

Elsewhere Wednesday, teachers and child-care providers were:

* Giving parents beefed-up “bills,” reflecting what it would cost if workers received what they consider a fair wage.

* Displaying signs reading: “Some people pay more to have their house cleaned than to have their child cared for.”

* Lobbying legislators in Sacramento.

At the Assistance League, teachers wore black armbands.

The effort presaged today’s national Worthy Wage Day, a grass-roots campaign coordinated by the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children and the Oakland-based Child Care Employee Project. The actions were part of the start of a five-year campaign aimed at keeping child-care workers from quitting for better-paying jobs and improving the quality of care, spokesmen for the effort said.

Some county day-care directors said they had not been informed about the campaign, and participation was spotty. But most sentiment for the movement was strong and supportive.

“It really is needed,” said Karen Mestemacher, director of Mesa Verde Preschool in Costa Mesa.

Supporters acknowledged that day-care bills are already squeezing the budgets of low- and middle-income parents, who spend close to a quarter of their income on day care.

Rather than sticking parents with the responsibility, they advocate subsidies from government and business--entities that “benefit and depend on child care,” said Marcy Whitebrook, executive director of the Child Care Employee Project, a nonprofit resource and advocacy organization.

“Right now, providers are carrying the burden of subsidy on their backs through low wages,” she said.

Supporters of Worthy Wage Day said the climate appears to be warming for child-care solutions, because “quality child care” is now often touted as a way to help women stay in the work force, get off welfare and prepare children for kindergarten.

Money has been forthcoming from both the federal and state governments for child care, “but the need is greater, and the problem is bigger than the amount of money put toward it,” Whitebrook said. “We’re talking about changing values and valuing the work of taking care of kids.”

Despite political rhetoric championing “quality child care,” advocates say little has been done to improve one sure predictor of quality child care: better pay.

According to a national survey of child-care settings by Mathematica Policy Research, based in Princeton, N.J., the typical preschool teacher (excluding aides and assistants) is 36, works 30 hours a week and earns $11,500 a year. Nearly half have completed four years of college, 13% have a two-year degree and 93% have had some specialized training in early education and child development.

A 1989 child-care study by the Child Care Employee Project found that U.S. child-care workers earn an average $5.35 an hour. In Orange County, pay for preschool teachers averages $5.50 to $7.50 an hour, according to the state Employment Development Department.

The Child Care Employee Project found that teachers in child-care centers earned annual wages that are less than half those of comparably educated women in other professions--and less than a third of those of comparably educated men. California law requires accredited preschool teachers to have 24 units of early childhood education, 16 units toward a bachelor’s degree and two years of experience.

Most child care businesses are run on a shoestring because they are labor intensive, Whitebrook said. “One of the ways people cut costs is to take care of more children. That cuts into quality,” she said. “Two arms can’t hold seven babies.”

The teachers’ main message to parents, employers and legislators Wednesday was that better pay is firmly linked with higher-quality care.

In the past, child-care workers have protested mostly by quitting.

According to the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children, 40% of child-care staffers and 60% of in-home providers leave the field yearly for better-paying jobs. According association officials, high turnover affects the ingredient most important for quality: the relationship between children and adults who care for them.

Santa Ana Heights resident Becky Goldberg, 33, said she “loves children to pieces” and earned an early childhood education certificate from Orange Coast College to become a preschool teacher. But at the center where she worked, she took home just $469 every two weeks, not enough for her and her husband, a computer network salesman, to save to buy a home. Last June, she quit to be a waitress. On an average day, she takes home $60 a day in tips alone.

Goldberg said she would return to teaching “in a minute” if she could earn enough money. “It’s so sad. . . . Somewhere our priorities are a bit mixed up,” she said.

Linda Sabic, 36, earns $11 an hour as a child development specialist at UC Irvine’s Early Childhood Education Center.

As a single parent, Sabic said, she cannot get by on her $440 a week. “I’m going to have to have two jobs if I’m going to survive,” she said. She met recently with a career counselor to explore her options.

Barbara Willer, public affairs director for the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children, said: “It’s gotten to a situation where it’s imperative someone who works in a (childhood education) program have a second income.”

Linda Wilson, administrator of the Young Adventurers, a school-age program in Seal Beach that cares for 244 children, Wednesday displayed a “full-cost invoice” showing that if teachers made at least $9 an hour--considered a national fair wage by the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children, though low by Orange County standards--parents at her center would have to pay $35 to $45 a week more.

Jackie Guidry, a widow with two boys in Wilson’s program, said she was surprised to learn how little day-care workers earn.

“I think that’s atrocious,” she said. “I really feel they should be compensated for what they do. It’s a hard task.”

Even though she now pays $400 a month for after-school care, she said: “I would be willing to pay a little more, just to know my child was safe.”

Georgia Fallas, a nurse with the Orange County Health Care Agency, said she would also be willing to pay a little more than the $320 she pays now, though she wondered whether her mechanic husband, Thomas, would agree.

Both mothers said they have had poor-quality day care and agreed that good quality is worth it.

Linda Spielberger, assistant director at the Assistance League, said she watched a steady stream of shocked looks on parents’ faces as they saw the phony closed sign.

“One said: ‘Oh my God, my heart stopped!’ Then she read the small print and said, ‘Phew!’ ” she said.

“They didn’t think it was fair,” she said. “They don’t know what to do without us. They wanted to know what to do, who to write to.”

Some child-care professionals said some of their colleagues were hesitant to participate in Wednesday’s actions because they fear alienating parents who depend upon them.

Wilson said some teachers have been reluctant to complain, or even to move on to better-paying jobs, in deference to societal expectations that they should care for children because they love them, and avoid conflict.

Rita Jamieson, director of the Assistance League, said she tried to organize a one-day strike in the county several years ago but could not get her colleagues to agree.

“We are such care-givers, such enablers,” she said. “We think the show won’t go on without us. (We say:) ‘We’d better come in so they have someplace to go.’ I agree. But sometimes you have to take a stand.

“If policemen and firemen can do it, why can’t teachers of early childhood?”

Day-Care Workers and Wages

A random comparison of hourly wages in 1991 in the Southland for entry-level jobs requiring some experience shows that child-care workers rank somewhere between maids and janitors. The minimum wage: $4.25 Bill collector: $9.88 Gardener: $8.42 Stock clerk: $7.11 Janitor: $6.61 Child-care worker: $6.56 Maid: $5.57 Education Comparison

A 1989 study by child-care advocates shows that nationally, preschool teachers earned annual wages that are less than half of those of comparably educated women in other professions--and less than a third of those of comparably educated men. High school diploma or less Preschool teachers: $8,120 Women: $15,806 Men: $24,097 Some college Preschool teachers: $9,293 Women: $19,369 Men: $29,251 College graduate or more Preschool teachers: $11,603 Women: $26,066 Men: $42,422 Source: State Employment Development Department, Oakland-based Child Care Employee Project