One way to appreciate teachers: These schools provide their day care

NAMPA, Idaho — When Christina Zimmerman returned to teaching last year after maternity leave, she was struggling with postpartum depression that she said could have led to her being fired from her job.

But childcare at her school made all the difference, knowing her daughter was just a few classrooms away.

“I can be a mother and a teacher in the same breath,” said Zimmerman, who teaches fourth grade at Endeavor Elementary in Nampa, Idaho. “I have dreamed of teaching since second grade. Honestly, this is all I wanted to do, but I also want to be there for my child.”

In states like Idaho and Texas, where funding for early childhood education is limited, some schools are leading initiatives to provide quality, affordable child care. It is not only a tool for teacher retention, but also a way to ensure young people are prepared when they enter kindergarten.

Some districts are transforming donated spaces — a former recycling center or home — into day care facilities for staff and, in some cases, for area first responders. Others are integrating child care on their campuses.

The schools hope that parenting teachers will not have to choose between career and motherhood as the education workforce remains predominantly female.

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This series on how the child care crisis is impacting working parents – with an emphasis on solutions – is produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms including The Hechinger Report, AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor , The Dallas Morning News, Idaho Education News, The Post & Courier and The Seattle Times.

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Data shows that women are more likely than men to give up their careers to care for children. Moreover, teacher salaries are not keeping up with inflation, according to the National Education Association, even as child care costs have become unsustainable.

Retiring early can be an attractive option for teachers with young children, adding to the challenges schools already face with teacher retention.

“If we want to support our community, … we need the very best teachers in the classroom,” said Tabitha Branum, superintendent of Richardson schools, north of Dallas. Her district has two daycares, with the goal of opening more.

“This is one of the strategies we have to attract and retain the very best of the best,” Branum said.

In 2022, district leaders across the country reported an increase in staff vacancies; most drivers – 63% – cited the pandemic as the cause. Last school year, nearly 1 in 4 teachers said they were likely to leave their jobs because of stress, disillusionment, low salaries and high workloads, a RAND survey found.

School-sponsored child care can ease that stress.

The devastating feeling of having to deliver her three-month-old daughter Gracee to a caregiver every day still haunts Heather Yarbrough, even fourteen years later.

She cried every day for weeks, but didn’t have the option to quit her job as an elementary reading specialist in Nampa.

Yarbrough and her husband, both educators, needed two incomes to make ends meet. Over time, she realized that having a career was healthy for her and her family.

That gave her a eureka moment: “Why do we have to choose? There has to be a better way, she said.

She was now the director of Endeavor and ran a daycare center on campus. The program is funded through a combination of grants and parental contributions and is now in its fourth year. It has become a recruitment and retention tool for the district, which does not pay teachers as much as neighboring districts.

About ten of the school’s thirty teachers use childcare.

Childcare for school staff has benefits for students, says Van-Kim Lin, an early childhood development researcher at the nonprofit Child Trends.

The children can build stronger relationships with teachers, counselors or other staff members because turnover is minimized and the children are on campus at a younger age.

“This is a great strategy that can support children, families and, on the other hand, districts and their staff,” she said.

As Molly Hillier, an instructional coach at Endeavor and mother of a child in daycare, put it, “It benefits the students because when you have happier teachers, … they can pour that into the kids.”

The school’s teaching staff is predominantly young and female, and it had become routine for teachers to leave the workforce to care for their children or to move on to less stressful or higher-paying jobs. In Nampa, teachers earn about $44,000 and top out at about $69,000, compared to a range of about $47,000 to $86,000 in the nearby Boise School District.

But now, “Nampa School District can offer me something right now that no one else can,” Zimmerman said. “That time with my child is priceless; it is worth its weight in gold.”

When Texas school counselor Kelly Mountjoy decided she wanted to start a family, she wondered if she could handle working and being a mother.

Three children later, she and her husband considered expanding their family with one more. However, the costs would add up: She was already paying more than $1,200 a month to send one of her children to daycare. So they hesitated.

“It’s just so impossible to afford child care with so many kids,” said Mountjoy, who works at Parkhill Junior High in Richardson.

But now the district is offering teachers subsidized child care for just $350 a month. That made all the difference for Mountjoy, who was able to save about $1,700 a month between her two youngest children.

“We could have another child like we wanted,” Mountjoy said. “We could afford it.”

School officials in Texas, frustrated by the Legislature’s failed attempts to fund teacher raises, have recently begun developing strategies to recruit and retain teachers. Large districts with larger budgets offered higher wages, while others experimented with four-day school weeks or other perks to make the job more enjoyable.

“We may not be able to pay every teacher what we should be able to,” said Branum, Richardson’s superintendent. “But what if we could create a compensation package that would take some of the stress off them?”

Richardson has a starting salary of $60,000 – above the state average of about $53,300 – but also finds himself in the highly competitive market in the Dallas area. So now RISD offers employees an acute care health clinic with a $10 co-pay, no insurance required, and free consultations – plus child care assistance.

The district operates two children’s education academies, Little Eagles and Little Mustangs, which serve more than 120 children from age 6 weeks through age 3, when they qualify for the district’s pre-K program.

With more than 134 children on the district’s waiting list at the end of April, Branum said they are considering at least one more center that could open next year.

Mountjoy said the perk gives her peace of mind knowing her children are receiving high-quality attention.

“I know my children are very well taken care of,” Mountjoy said. “They know the children individually and know their strengths and where they struggle.” ___

Randy Schrader of Idaho Education News contributed.

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