Montgomery County commissioners unveil $4 million program to aid child care centers

NORRISTOWN — Montgomery County Commissioners Thursday unveiled a program to provide $4 million to support local child care providers with a cash infusion for an industry in desperate need of assistance.

“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed we had many stress points on our economy. It also emphasized existing inequities in our society,” Commissioners’ Chairwoman Jamila Winder said.

Thus, the Childcare Operation Recovery Program was established by the Montgomery County Recovery Office. Through a combination of COVID-19 relief dollars at the local, county and state levels, implementation for the initiative is expected to take a two-phased approach, officials said.

An initial $3.5 million will be distributed through “operational grants” to licensed child care centers throughout the county. Around 419 facilities are eligible to receive funds.

“Quality and affordable child care is an essential part of our economy,” Winder said. “Working families rely on daycares to look after their children so they can go to work in our communities as educators, healthcare workers, whatever their profession may be.”

The initiative stemmed from a meeting in 2022 in which advocates, elected officials and child care providers convened a roundtable to discuss the state of child care in the county back. The roundtable focused on how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the industry, emphasizing the need for services and struggles facilities face.

“Certainly, I appreciate those that are running child care centers — the challenges,” Winder said. “I know that the child care center my son is at has seen significant turnover. It’s not that people don’t want to be in the profession, but the profession doesn’t (often) provide a livable wage and so they have to go and work at other places.”

Grant amounts for the Childcare Operation Recovery Program vary from $2,500 to $15,000 based on licensed capacity rates, according to the county’s website.

Eligibility criteria include a licensed physical location that’s in an “active” status. Providers operating on or after March 2020 “will receive a reduced amount equal to 75% of the eligible funds for licensed capacity.” Eligibility will not be extended to providers opening on or after May 12, 2023, according to the county’s website.

“We’re working to ensure all child care centers that are eligible can take advantage of this grant,” Winder said.

Further conversations are expected later this summer, Winder said, adding that $500,000 was designated to “support substitute teacher needs” at local provider agencies. However, several child care providers stressed the need for flexibility when it comes to these funds.

“I just wanted to ask the county to consider perhaps more within limits and accountability discretionary use of that funding,” said commenter Kim Follett. “Substitutes, you’ll hear us say we need them very badly, the challenge is finding them. Many of us have spent upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars through substitute agencies and still are not operating at capacity…”

Follett noted money could instead be used for retaining personnel and supplementing funds for insurance coverage as she said that her insurance costs increased by 17 percent in the past year. Fellow commenter ZaKiyah Boone agreed.

“I also just wanted to make the request that providers be allowed to not only use these funds for substitutes, but for wages and compensation in general,” Boone said. “Providers across the industry are seeing an extraordinary high rate of turnover; upwards of 90 days that we have a vacancy to replace a teacher. So we need dollars to be able to recruit teachers, and then once we get them, retain them.”

Follett and Boone offered their services as resources to the county commissioners in hopes of cultivating partnerships that would produce a “strategic initiative to addressing the workforce challenge” and finding talent to close employment gaps.

“I just wanted (to) express our wish as providers to have those funds made available for wages and compensation in any number of ways whether that be recruitment, retention, training and development, but any number of ways in order to continue to provide high quality care across Montgomery County,” Boone said.

“It’s certainly something I’m interested in being at the table to figure out solutions to solve for,” Winder said.