If Our Kids Are So Valuable, Why Aren’t Their Caregivers?
On paper, at least, April has been a good month for kids.
It’s Child Abuse Prevention Month. The Week of the Young Child concluded Saturday. Reports were issued. Conferences were held. The commitment to “America’s most precious resource” was redoubled.
Not surprisingly, the underpaid, hard-working folks to whom we entrust the health and welfare of our children did not get their own month. Nor did they get their own week.
They got one measly day. And as you might imagine, they had to designate it for themselves.
Thursday, in case you hadn’t noticed (who did?), was Worthy Wage Day.
Simple concept, really.
The people who care for our preschoolers think they should be paid a decent wage. They think that if they have the same education as elementary school teachers, they ought to earn what teachers earn. They think if they work a 40-hour week, they should be able to live on the proceeds.
Sound like a crazy bunch of idealists, don’t they?
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The fat manila envelope was hand-delivered to my office. I opened it with anticipation, because I knew it contained stark proof of the low regard in which we hold the people who care for our kids: Actual pay stubs of actual child-care workers.
The envelope came from the Child Educational Center, a nonprofit child-care center in La Canada that serves JPL and Caltech. For employees, the CEC is one of the better child-care gigs around--offering vacation and sick time--and relatively good pay. The turnover rate-- between 25 % and 30% a year --is considered low. It seems, says center director Elyssa Nelson, that her employees, whose pay ranges from below $6 to $12 an hour, can make better money in entry-level office jobs.
“Even fast-food places can pay more than what most child-care centers can pay,” Nelson says. “Something is really wrong with the system.”
After looking over the pay stubs, I have to agree. Attached to each stub was a statement about the worker’s education and work experience.
Most had bachelor’s degrees. Nearly all had some college credits.
Here are a few examples:
* A full-time, salaried worker with 10 years’ experience in teaching preschoolers and an AA degree, including 27 early childhood education units, grosses $850 for two weeks’ work and brings home (after taxes and a $275 child-care deduction) $440.
* A worker with a high school diploma and four years of day-care experience earns $5.69 an hour and brings home $330 for two 35-hour weeks.
* A worker with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, who has taken some graduate courses, is CPR certified and who describes herself as a “professional sensory-motor integration therapist,” earns a salary of $807 for two 45-hour weeks and brings home $668.
“It makes me feel not very valued,” says Sabra Hammond, a CEC teacher with a decade of experience. “And it makes me feel like the children are not very valued, either. No person can support themselves on these wages. You can’t rent an apartment, own a car and pay car insurance.”
The bottom line for child-care workers, she says, is this: “You are a dependent person if you are a child-care worker. You have to have outside help.”
And these are the highly paid ones.
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The other side of caring for “America’s most precious resource” is, of course, the cost to parents. At the CEC, parents pay as much as $800 a month for full-time infant care. Care for older children is about $450 a month.
Parents who leave their children in either licensed or unlicensed family day-care situations, which are generally the least expensive alternative, pay far less (I know a mother who pays an unlicensed in-home provider $60 a week for a toddler), but the quality of care in those settings is notoriously inconsistent.
High-quality, dependable child care in structured settings such as centers is a luxury available to relatively few.
Why, wonder the child-care professionals, do we not subsidize the important early years the way we do the school years? Why are we not outraged at the turnover rates in child-care centers when all the research so clearly shows the importance of children’s attachment to their caregivers? Why do we wait until children turn 5 before we commit our resources?
“The consistency of care for a young child is everything,” says Em Button Feller, a CEC teacher with nine years of experience. “It makes me angry that children and families are not seen as a priority, especially compared to professional athletes. If people in this field could get hold of the some of the money that professional athletes make, there would be a significant reduction in the number of people who leave this field every year.”
Compare the importance of child-care professionals to professional athletes?
Like I said, crazy bunch of idealists.
Or maybe just plain crazy.
* Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.
