Hampton gets update on daycare center
The importance of available and affordable early child care was front and center last Wednesday at a pair of community meetings put on in Hampton by the organization First Five Nebraska.
Mike Feeken of St. Paul was the presenter for the 7 a.m. and noontime programs attended by around 50 community members in total. Serving as strategic partner advisor for First Five, Feeken explained that First Five is the parent organization of Communities for Kids, the group that has been working with Hampton on the development of a community daycare facility for the past several months.
Opening and closing his presentation with the statement, “Everyone depends on someone who depends on child care,” Feeken said he thinks of child care as an economic development issue for a community.
“With your interactions throughout the day, you think about when you purchase something, when you get a medical service or dental service or going grocery shopping, getting fuel, at some point you are relying on someone who has depended on child care,” he said. “If that child care is not accessible, not dependable, not affordable, what does that mean for you yourself?”
Citing a 2019-20 study conducted by the UNL Bureau of Business Research, Feeken reported that the lack of options for stable and reliable child care costs Hamilton County working parents and employers nearly $3.7 million annually, resulting in a loss of more than $240,000 in taxable sales. He listed the breakdown of those costs in relation to working parents as $228,671 in absenteeism, $808,407 in turnover/job loss, $182,329 in workers having to remain at part-time status, $799,071 in reducing hours to part time and $235,605 in employees foregoing a promotion. He said the lack of affordable child care nationally costs $122 billion in lost revenues annually, and he said that number has doubled since 2019, no doubt fueled by the fallout from the COVID pandemic.
Feeken said child care is considered affordable if it accounts for only 7 percent of family income. He said in order to achieve that in Nebraska a family would have to have an income of $178,000 a year.
“Right now in Nebraska we’re sitting at 13 percent,” he said. “So right now our Nebraska families are paying an unaffordable amount for child care.”
He went on to illustrate that daycare providers generally base their decisions about what to charge for their service based on what parents can afford to pay instead of starting with the cost of materials, fixed expenses, overhead and wages the way most businesses do when setting their prices. He said this results in daycare workers being paid on average about half of what workers in other industries are paid. He said the cost of insurance for daycare providers has skyrocketed in recent years as well, adding to the problem.
Feeken said when the lack of quality early childhood education is projected out into the future the losses begin to snowball. Noting that 90 percent of a child’s brain development takes place before the age of 5 -- including the all-important “executive function” which impacts interpersonal skills -- when quality childcare is lacking, the nation’s future workforce is endangered as well.
Citing a survey conducted recently in Hampton, Feeken said in responding to a question about the priority of early childhood development on the community of Hampton, 4.58 out of five respondents said it was a high priority. The survey also showed that 91 percent of 108 people surveyed said there were not enough early child care options in Hampton at the present time.
“I’m gonna say something that’s a little controversial,” Feeken said. “But from my experience I’m gonna tell you that the easiest part of a project like this is the capital campaign. The harder part is keeping it sustainable, and so we are gonna have to take a look at how we can keep the project sustainable.”
He went on to say that the “iron triangle” for sustaining an early childhood program consists of full enrollment (“every day, every classroom”), tuition collection (“full amount and on time”) and finding revenue that covers the costs.
“What we really want and the reason why I come out to these things is because we need more advocates,” Feeken concluded. “We need more people talking about the importance of early childhood education, not only from the brain science child development side but also from how it effects workforce, how it effects community growth.”
“Senators don’t want to hear from First Five Nebraska,” he said. “They get tired of hearing from us. They want to hear from their constituents. And what we hear is, ‘If it’s such an important topic, why aren’t our businesses talking about it.’”
Feeken reported that the 2023 legislature passed a non-refundable child care tax credit that is available starting with the 2024 tax year. According to the State Department of Revenue, the credit applies to contributions up to $100,000 “for the establishment or operation of an eligible program, for the establishment of a grant or loan program for parents requiring financial assistance for an eligible program, to an early childhood collaborative or another intermediary to provide training, technical assistance, or mentorship to child care providers,” as well as other such contributions.