Some Look to Military as Model for Care

One political impetus for more government day care assistance comes from recent reports of the U.S. military program’s success. Newspaper editorials in almost every region of the country ask why the civilian world can’t have the same quality child care.

Kathy Popino has been asking for years. Her husband, Warren, was in the Coast Guard when their son, Matthew, was born, and they paid $75 a month--subsidized by the Department of Defense--to a home caregiver trained by the DOD. “She was wonderful. The military inspected all the time,” Popino said.

When Warren left the Coast Guard to become an electrician, they moved to Metuchen, N.J., but couldn’t find licensed care at even twice that price. They opted for an unlicensed home caregiver who cared for Matthew for $80 a month, along with two other children.

But Matthew, then 2, began crying nights, and “his personality did a 180,” Kathy said. Unable to sleep herself or concentrate at work, Kathy moved him to a state-of-the-art KinderCare Learning Center they couldn’t afford. “Visa became our best friend,” she said.

Ultimately they moved him to the YMCA, where they now pay about $800 a month for high-quality, full-time care for Gillian, 1 1/2, and after-school care for Matthew, 8. The program there includes weekly swim lessons, daily sports and homework help in spacious, sun-filled rooms.

In the process, Popino has developed a keen class consciousness. “When summer camp starts, you pay every Monday, and everybody who pays with credit cards walks out to our used cars we owe money on. The people paying by check walk out and get in their new Lexus,” she said.

The Y’s fees are lower than prices at similar for-profit centers, but cost pressures are rising as the labor market tightens. Child care director Rose Cushing said turnover rates are well beyond 30%, even with the agency paying health benefits to its teachers.

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Twenty minutes south on U.S. Route 1, at Pumpkin Patch, where fees, teacher pay and the facilities are more modest, proprietor Michelle Alling has held on to four of her head teachers for five years, mainly because of their loyalty to the children.

On a recent morning, as one teacher baked chocolate-chip cookies with flour-blotched 3- and 4-year-olds, Alling acknowledged that they all desperately needed higher wages.

But “then you have families literally handing you their entire paycheck,” she said, “and where does it come from?”