Child-Care Crunch : Protest: Rally in Westwood will be part of nationwide effort to call attention to low wages paid to those who supervise youngsters.

When she was a college student in the late 1970s, Carol McGlaze of Santa Monica taught at a Brentwood child-care center but eventually quit because the pay was so low.

Two years ago, when she began looking for day care for her son, McGlaze felt relieved that she left the field when she did.

“(The pay was) only $8 per hour for a teaching job,” McGlaze said. “I thought, ‘My God, people pay more to have their garbage picked up than they pay for the care and education of their children.’ ”

McGlaze is among a group of parents and day-care teachers planning to demonstrate at 4:30 p.m. today at the Federal Building in Westwood. Their protest is part of a nationwide “Worthy Wage Day” campaign being organized by child advocacy groups to draw attention to the low wages paid to child-care workers.

Since 1991, a coalition of 300 child-care and advocacy groups including the Children’s Defense Fund, the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children and the National Head Start Assn. has been demanding higher wages and health benefits for all child-care employees.

The groups have not specified how money should be raised to meet those goals, but they oppose increases in child-care fees, arguing that family child-care budgets are already stretched thin. They hope greater public awareness of the plight of child-care workers will prompt politicians to study such alternatives as a broad-based tax to raise money for child-care workers.

“Most people think that anyone can watch a little kid,” said Gay McDonald, the head of child-care services at UCLA. To attract and retain skilled teachers, day-care centers must be able to offer their teachers more money, said McDonald, who is also director of the local chapter of the Southern California Assn. for the Education of Young Children, a child advocacy group composed of day-care center teachers and directors.

Day-care teachers who have a bachelor of arts degree or at least 12 units of early childhood education usually earn $8 to $9 an hour. For many, that isn’t enough to live on.

Alice Porter, a day-care teacher at the Assistance League School, a Santa Monica preschool run by the United Way, earns $8.50 per hour, and takes home about $1,060 a month. “I starve on the wages,” said Porter, who says car insurance payments and rent for her Santa Monica apartment consume practically her entire paycheck.

Like many in her field, she took a second job--in her case as a waitress. She recently lost that job, though, when the restaurant went out of business.

Because of low wages and a dearth of benefits, 27% of day-care teachers in Los Angeles County leave the profession each year, according to a 1991 study by the Southern California Assn. for the Education of Young Children.

Kay Chatowski, director of Mt. Olive preschool in Santa Monica, says it is difficult to pay teachers more because child-care fees already appear high to many parents.

Chatowski’s center typically has 90 children under care. An additional 60 children come to day care part-time. Her staff consists of 24 teachers who work from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. or later.

With her monthly overhead of $39,000, Chatowski has to pay for supplies, morning and afternoon snacks for the children, the salaries of 24 teachers, rent for the center, which is adjacent to the Mt. Olive Lutheran Church, and insurance.

Although a full medical plan was out of reach, she said, Mt. Olive is able to pay up to $500 annually for each employee’s medical costs. Parents’ fees are $120 per week for a full day and $80 per week for half a day.

Over the years, Chatowski has seen the demand for quality child care soar. But if wages remain low, she said, the supply of qualified teachers will be scarce.

“If those college students in child development courses can’t find a job that pays enough money, they leave the field,” Chatowski said. Ultimately, she said, many schools may resort to hiring less qualified teachers.

Some Westside preschools, such as the Learning Center in Santa Monica, are part of a national chain and thus have the resources to offer benefits packages. The Learning Center provides teachers with medical and dental coverage, two weeks paid vacation, 50% reimbursement for job-related study, a retirement plan, and disability insurance. But in the child-care business, such compensation is unusual.

The Learning Center and Cornerstone Childcare, which opened last year in Santa Monica, are operated by Bright Horizons, a Cambridge, Mass., corporation that runs about 70 day-care centers nationwide.

Child-care fees at the Learning Center range from $90 per week for children ages 2 to 5, to $170 for infants. At Cornerstone, parents pay $185 a week for infant care, and $135 for toddlers and preschoolers.

Still, Learning Center Director Karen Brown said she agonizes over the fact that she can only pay her teaching assistant and teachers from $6.50 to $10 per hour.

“The most frustrating part is to see these talented teachers who love what they do leaving for no other reason than they can’t afford to continue teaching,” she said.

The State Department of Education has funded a study to determine whether the state can offer health benefits to child-care workers, but childrens advocates say such a program would be hard to sell politically unless public awareness of the child-care problem is improved. Meanwhile, many preschools are holding fund-raisers and seeking sponsorships from major corporations to help pay their bills.

That means that at least in the short term, times will continue to be tough for child-care workers.

McGlaze enrolled her son, now 2, in the Learning Center. A few months ago she left her bookkeeping job on a work-related injury, and her husband, a salesman for a clothing company, was recently laid off. She is considering a return to the day-care field because the Learning Center has offered her a discount on her fees if she works there.

“I’m doing some serious soul-searching to see if I could give up a little, monetarily for my son,” said McGlaze, who would be earning less than half the $16 an hour she made as a bookkeeper.

Keeping her child in a good day-care center, she said, may be worth the sacrifice. “Parents need to have a place to leave their children, where they can go to work and not question the care, the love, the nurturing, and all those things that kids need,” she said. “Without that, we aren’t going to be able to raise decent adults.”