EDITORIAL: Net neutrality’s a local issue

Third in a series

By DEBORAH E. LANS

GHENT–Basic economic theory says that as demand for a product or service increases so too does supply. Child care seems to defy the theory.

In Columbia County the demand for child care far exceeds the supply of slots, especially for infants and toddlers. As one administrator put it, “there is an endless infant waitlist.” Yet, the number of programs and slots has been steadily declining.

Child Care Connections in Hudson (CCC) supplies training for and technical assistance to providers, assists parents to locate licensed providers and administers the subsidy program for the county, among other things. Its program director, Suzanne Holdridge, notes that there is very little interest in opening child care programs, 61 of which have closed since 2014.

CCC, in partnership with Columbia-Greene Community College and its Workforce Investment Board, opened a Family Childcare Training Program in 2023 to train and assist individuals to open home-based care programs. The program supplies the trainings required by state regulations, and the board pays the costs not only of materials to run a program but also of the expenses of attaining regulatory approval, so that an individual interested in opening a program can do so at no out-of-pocket cost.

As a measure of the difficulty of finding providers, in the first two cycles of the quarterly program, there were few enrollees and only one went on to open a program, and it closed after three months.

Christopher Nardone of the Workforce Board sees a number of hurdles that the program is working to address: first, prospective providers come to child care out of a love of children and working with them. But child care is also a business, and many lack the skills to run a small business, so the program has added entrepreneurship courses and support to the training of would-be providers. Second, a family child care program cannot be operated in subsidized housing, eliminating many prospective providers. Third, the state’s child care regulations “overwhelm people,” dousing interest.

Pattern for Progress recently issued a deeply-researched report on “Childcare in the Hudson Valley.” As Pattern’s President Adam Bosch noted, virtually every child care provider and administrator Pattern interviewed cited the state’s regulations as a reason why centers close. While everyone involved in the system recognizes the importance of regulations to assure the safe and healthy operation of programs, most also now state that the delicate balance between safety on the one hand and operational efficiency on the other has tipped too far toward regulation. Where, as Mr. Bosch puts it, “operating margins are already as thin as dental floss,” the regulations discourage businesses and individuals from entering, or staying in, the field.

Moreover, as Ms. Holdridge notes, there is scant funding available to help providers defray the costs of regulatory compliance.

What does the state regulate? To start with, there are 34 pages of general regulations that define the types of day care and numbers of children and of what ages that can be served by each of “day care centers,” “group family day care” or “family day care.” The staffing levels and qualifications for each staff function is also specified.

Beyond that, each care setting has its own set of regulations: 58 pages each for group family day care and family day care and 78 pages for a day care center.

Most regulations are sound, covering areas such as programming, including the inappropriateness of leaving children in front of TV screens or strapped to car carriers, and the structural and safety requirements of facilities, staffing levels, staff screening, education and training requirements.

But, overall, the regulations are dense, repetitive and, to an extent, written in an unnecessarily verbose manner. For example, there are detailed, specific and unobjectionable requirements as to the training providers and staff must receive, but these are virtually verbatim repetitive of the separately stated requirements for operating a facility. Could not the training section simply state that all aspects of the requirements must be the subject of training? Likewise, pages are devoted to stating the contents of the application to be a provider, which the application form itself could include.

There are also requirements which, in the current environment of low pay for staff and resulting high turnover, seem impossible to achieve, such as the requirement that centers establish and maintain continuity of care for every child. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics cites child care as having one of the highest turnover rates (nearly 20% per year) of any industry. Realistically, continuity of care cannot be achieved until the underlying causes of turnover are addressed.

There are also regulations that seem to state the obvious. A quarter-page is dedicated to mandating that medications should be given to the right child, in the right dose and the right manner. There is a regulation that defines a “nap.”

There are regulations that require that children of different ages each have a defined area of any playground, so there is no mixing – a safety requirement which some would say defeats the socialization goals of day care or limits the opportunity for younger children to learn from their elders.

The assembled regulations (in all, more than 100 pages for a day care center) intimidate prospective providers. Indeed, according to numerous sources, many businesses—recognizing the substantial benefit that child care for their employees would represent—have considered operating centers, only to be deterred when confronted by the regulations. The same is true for individuals interested in offering smaller group family day care or family day care.

In addition, providers note that the regulations are often administered inflexibly by the state’s Office of Children’s and Family Services. Sarah Cote-Bennett, board chair of the Columbia Children’s Center gave an example. In February the center’s HVAC system failed in certain areas, including a room designated for toddlers (18-36 months of age). Since heat must be supplied at all times, the center had to close the toddler classroom. However, the heating system was operational in a classroom fitted for infants, and that room was temporarily vacant because the teacher was out with the flu. The infant room fully met the requirements for a toddler room but was not officially designated (as is required) as such.

The center called the state’s licensing department and asked to be able to use the infant room for the toddler group for the one or two days until the heating would be restored in the toddler classroom. Permission was denied. The result was that the center had to contact all the toddler parents to pick up their children, causing the parents disruptions in their work and other plans; and the center (already financially strained) had to issue credits to the families affected and to pay the staff of the shuttered toddler room.

The Pattern report similarly spoke about a Dutchess County center that for many years had no citations for its physical layout until a new state inspector was assigned who noted that one of its classrooms was four feet short of requirements. The center was compelled to take down the walls and door of a closet in the room to comply with the technicality.

Finally, with regulation comes paperwork, in ever-increasing amounts. As reported by Pattern, providers worry “that compliance with state regulations often takes the focus away from common sense, the warmth of good care, and the best pedagogical methods for early-childhood education.”

As a result of declining and inadequate capacity, the solutions to the child care crisis adopted by the state government, like subsidies that assist parents to meet the steep costs of care, have largely failed. The Pattern study found that although significant subsidies are available to families to defray child care costs and the eligibility requirements have been relaxed to afford relief at higher income levels, throughout the Hudson Valley only about 50% of the subsidies were used in 2022, and in Columbia County that figure was 33%.

In other words, substantial funding intended to ameliorate the child care crisis was not even being utilized. While there are a number of reasons – an initial lack of marketing and cumbersome application processes, issues which have since been addressed – the more serious barriers are the manner in which subsidies are administered, making them unappealing to providers, and, ultimately, the simple paucity of providers.

Put simply, if there are no openings for child care, then the cost of that care is irrelevant.

Likewise, the state has been offering workforce retention grants where a workforce cannot readily be recruited and is grossly underpaid and under-recognized over the long term. The cart has been put before the horse.

The next article will address the flawed subsidy system and the staffing challenges that confront providers.