Maine child care advocates are warning that Gov. Janet Mills proposal to cut stipends for child care workers will have serious consequences for the industry.
The progressive leaning Maine Center for Economic Policy estimates that the $30 million cut proposed by governor Janet Mills will reduce the average earnings for nearly 7,500 child care workers by $4,000 over two years.
Heather Marden, co-executive director of the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children, said that could keep many of those workers from staying in the industry.
"We're talking about wages of adults, but it's really about the children too, because if we don't keep high quality trained professionals in this work, the people who pay the most for that is the children," Marden said.
Marden said with this stipend, child care worker only make $16.40 an hour on average. The cut she said would bring that down to $15.15 an hour.
"This is not a bonus. This really is about the foundational wages of child care educators who many themselves qualify for public benefits and different services," Marden said.
Marden said child care educators are paid in the bottom 3% of all workforce laborers across the country and any cut to their wages will cause people to leave the industry.
Camelia Babson-Haley, executive director of the Youth & Family Outreach child care center in Portland, said this funding is the difference between the center being fully staffed or not.
"The way we operate is our wages are paid by tuition. In order to pay our employees, we will need to raise tuition and pass that on to families," Babson-Haley said.
In a statement a Mills Administration spokesman said that the current budget situation requires that the program be returned to a sustainable level of spending so that it can continue into the future.
