With new expenses for pandemic precautions and falling income from mandates for smaller classes, child care providers are facing a crisis that could see nearly half of them close absent state and federal help, child care advocate and providers said Thursday.

In Cleveland, there are 16,000 fewer early childhood education and after-school program slots available, according to PRE4CLE, which works to expand the number of Cleveland children in high quality child care and early learning programs.

“That’s due to a couple of factors. The first one being, as sites reopen, they have a mandate to have smaller class sizes and also a smaller teacher-to-child ratio in order to try to provide some social distancing within these sites. And also … some sites have decided to wait to reopen until they feel more ready and safe,” said Katie Kelly, head of PRE4CLE, in a videoconference on the topic.

Kelly said federal funding the state is using to provide supplemental payments to child care providers amid the crisis is set to end in a few weeks. Ohio faces a wave of closings without replacement funding, she said.

“It is estimated that as many as 45 percent of programs in Ohio could close permanently, which would equal about 100,000 slots or more,” she said, citing a survey by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and analysis of the survey data by the Center for American Progress.

Kelly said she does not support simply lifting the class-size restrictions as a way to get centers more funding, citing reports out of Texas of hundreds of children and staff contracting the virus. 

“We do have some evidence from states like Texas that did not practice social distancing that spread in child care is going to be a significant factor,” she said.

Two providers joined Kelly on the web conference, discussing the challenges they faced in remaining open, finding staff and navigating the state’s mandates for operation in the pandemic.

Jacklyn Chisholm, president and CEO of the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, said her program has spent about $10,000 to $15,000 so far on personal protective equipment (PPE) and faced major challenges in even finding adequate equipment and cleaning supplies. “Amazon is my best friend now,” she said.

Michelle Curry, executive director of Merrick House, said it costs about $2,500 per month for deep cleaning and sanitization of the building at her program.

Noting the challenges Chisholm mentioned in sourcing materials, Kelly said the plight of child care providers has not been enough of a focus for the state in comparison to schools and health care facilities, saying their needs should also be more of a priority when it comes to testing for the virus.

Despite the additional challenges, Kelly said she does not support any relaxation of Ohio’s quality requirements for child care providers. Publicly funded providers face a deadline this year to be rated in the Step Up to Quality system, and by 2025 must be rated high quality, which equates to at least three out of five stars in the rating system.

The training puts a focus on professional expertise in areas like child development, social-emotional development and trauma-informed care, which Kelly said will be even more critical as children have undergone the stresses of the pandemic and the attendant problems of poverty, hunger and abuse.

“This is the time, we think, to double down on those goals, not move backward in any way,” she said.

At the same time, the state needs to address the fact that even before the pandemic the sector offered fairly low wages to professionals with bachelor’s level education, Kelly said.

Chisholm said she’s had staff leave her programs to join a school system for as little as a dollar more per hour. “Because we’re now requiring more credentials, we’re competing with school systems … we’re cannibalizing each other, which is unfortunate,” she said.

Curry said her program has called applicants for positions to schedule interviews, only to hear they applied simply to maintain their unemployment compensation eligibility. She said the additional pandemic unemployment benefits are making people not want to return to work.

“We’ve got families that need our services, but we can’t assist them because we can’t hire the staff to be able … to provide that service,” she said.

PRE4CLE has condensed its recommendations for short- and long-term ways to address the pandemic and ongoing concerns in the child care sector into a plan titled “Build Back Better.” It is available at www.hannah.com>Important Documents & Notices>Library.