When parents work full time, a day care teacher or nanny could ultimately be spending more waking hours with their child than they do. Child care providers are raising the next generation — a job that offers little money and accolades, but a great deal of responsibility.
Three years ago, Chantel Thompson moved to Nashville from upstate New York for the job opportunities the city offered. She says she’s very fortunate to have found a job at a day care that pays a bit more than the average annual child care salary in Tennessee: $20,480.
“The biggest challenge in general would be financial,” says Thompson, who works at McKendree Daycare in downtown Nashville. “It’s expensive to live here. We’re very lucky here in that we get paid more than a lot of the centers around here. When I first was doing interviews — and I have my bachelor’s degree in early childhood — and I sent my résumé in, they’re like, ‘We can only pay you $8.50 an hour.’ ”
Rachel Adkins vets nannies for local families through her business, Nashville Nanny Agency. Adkins was a professional nanny for 10 years, and she coaches families to expect to pay a nanny $15 to $20 per hour. She looks for people who not only have a genuine love for the job, but years of experience and up-to-date training.
“I work hard to get them what they’re worth,” Adkins says. “Most of my nannies have a college degree, a degree in early childhood education. This is their career.”
For child care providers, there isn’t much opportunity for growth. The only way up is to be promoted to an administrative role, which often takes them out of the classroom, where their passion and training lie.
ChildcareTennessee, an initiative of the The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, was formed in 2010 with the goal of helping area child care centers get more kids enrolled. Now, with increasing demand, the organization offers a substitute pool and assistance with the financial back end of the business in an effort to keep centers well-staffed and administrators focused on programming.
“Our main goal is to help the provider side of it, which in turn helps the families,” says Gina Tek, child care programs coordinator for ChildcareTennessee. “We know that being sustainable is very difficult for small business owners, and that’s what providers are.”
On July 30, the number of yearly training hours required by the Department of Human Services for licensed child care centers increased to a minimum of 30 — a jump from the previous requirement of 12 hours per year. Individual centers are responsible for paying for this training.
Candyee Goode, who started her career as a preschool teacher in the ’80s, found herself working 60 to 70 hours per week as an administrator. She doesn’t resent the fact that center requirements have become much more stringent during her career, and she says more training and health and safety regulations are better for the children.
As director of King’s Daughters day school in Madison, Goode fundraised and secured grants to offset the sliding-scale tuition. When she recently transferred to become director of Christ Church Day School in Brentwood, some of the pressure was taken off. The center charges a flat rate, and the church does not charge the school rent. McKendree United Methodist Church charges its day care $8,000 for utilities, less than market value for rent.
Without a break on rent, privately owned child care center must depend solely on tuition dollars.
“Making the money work and being able to pay [teachers] a living wage, and buy all of your supplies and everything, just using tuition dollars — that’s a hard thing to do,” says Goode. “Without charging your parents megabucks, because they’re struggling too, to make ends meet. It’s just a vicious cycle.”
Amy Needham, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt, says it’s important for a child to have a consistent presence in their formative first years. This presence should be someone who gives them attention and responds to them in a positive way.
“One of the reasons attachment — which is basically just the relationship a baby has with their primary caregiver — is so important is that all subsequent relationships have that one as the foundation,” says Needham. “Expectations about what a relationship actually is are shaped and formed by those very early relationships that a child has.”
For children who don’t have a stable home life or don’t get to see their parents much, that person could very well be a teacher at a day care center, or a nanny — jobs that tend to have high burnout and high turnover. The provider is there for the child as well as the parent, soothing their anxieties when it comes to their child’s development, especially when there aren’t family members who can pitch in nearby.
“Many parents depend on the staff at their program to guide them in knowing what to do and all those problems that come up, from biting to thumb-sucking, to every developmental need,” Tek says. “The providers of the care really are the experts and can really be a support.”
