Smart Start Featured Panel, Supporting Early Care and Education Professionals.

“Working in ECE begins a route to poverty for many”
– Dr. Ashley Williams, Center for the Study of the Child Care Employment.

Smart Start conference attendees joined together to explore challenges facing the early childhood workforce, actions being taken by the Smart Start network and other early childhood professionals, and promising solutions in the featured session, Supporting Early Care and Education Professionals.

The panel included Dr. Ashley Williams, senior policy analyst from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE); a local child care owner, Sheha Waters, owner of Little Warriors Child Care; and experts from Smart Start local partnerships. The Smart Start network professionals included Elisha Childers, executive director and Hunter Varipapa, early care and education director, from The Children’s Council of Watauga; and Cindy Tuttle, executive director, and Dianne Durham, Workforce Innovation to Support Early Education (WISEE) coordinator, from Stokes Partnership for Children.

According to CSCEE’s 2020 Early Childhood Workforce Index, in 2019 the median wage for child care workers in North Carolina was $10.62, just a 3% increase since 2017. Low wages and lack of benefits for professionals in early care and education make attracting and retaining the workforce difficult. Panelists discussed the ways the pandemic had exacerbated these challenges. Childers responded to the child care crisis, remarking, “the pool of available teachers is not deep.” Tuttle had a similar experience in Stokes County, describing the scarcity of hiring early childhood educators.

In Wayne County, centers were struggling prior to the pandemic, and the pandemic shone a light on the injustice of treating child care workers as essential workers while refusing to recognize them as professionals. Waters highlighted this struggle for her center, stating “quality child care costs, and we need quality funds to provide that.”

Smart Start local partnerships are working to combat this issue. In Stokes County, the Workforce Innovation to Support Early Education (WISEE) PROGRAM works to increase the number of students interested in pursuing a degree in early childhood education by financial incentives, enhanced educational opportunities, mentoring, and paid work-based learning. In Watauga, The Children’s Council has an Accreditation Program that works with licensed child care centers to provide high-quality training, mentoring, professional development, evaluations, and financial rewards to Watauga County early childhood education programs.

These programs have been successful locally, supporting professionals and encouraging them to stay in the early childhood sector. However, more steps must be taken, especially in regard to having an equitable system. For Dr. Williams, this means “addressing the inequities within the workforce” to create change and by including the voices of educators.

Smart Start is working with partners across the state to continue to keep the needs of the early childhood workforce front and center. The North Carolina Early Education Coalition is leading a Worthy Wages campaign to support child care teachers. Smart Start has also worked with partners to expand Child Care WAGE$, which provides pay supplements to early childhood educators. Additional resources about the early care and education workforce landscape are below: 

Share This:

Trackbacks for this post