Maine Senate President Mattie Daughtry is on a state wide tour to learn more about the challenges facing Maine's beleaguered child care system.
During her initial stops, she's heard calls to expand free school meals to all Pre-K students, to increase child care workers' access to healthcare benefits, and to create more opportunities for students entering the field to work and study at the same time. Daughtry visited Kids Kove Childcare & Learning Center in Sanford recently.
As busses arrive from local elementary schools, a new batch of kids flood the Kids Kove playground. Today happens to be picture day...but by mid afternoon...10 hours after they left home, some kids' outfits are looking a bit worse for wear.
"What did you get all over your shirt? Was this before or after pictures?" Katie Manende Hall said.
"It was marker," April Hall said.
"I know, but was the marker before or after pictures?" Manende Hall said.
"It was after pictures," Hall said.
"Oh good," Manende Hall said.
Katie Manende Hall said her daughter April and son Ryan have been at Kids Kove for more than six years: first in full time day care and now in the before and after school program. Manende Hall said its been a positive force in their lives.
"They are getting so much more out of being in a daycare environment than they would. My kids would have been if they stayed home with me, just like the friendships they've made, the things they've learned, the pace at which they've learned that are there is very impressive," Manende Hall said.
But like many child care programs in Maine, Kids Kove comes at a significant cost for parents, ranging from $300 to $330 a week depending on age. And that cost can be a major obstacle for working Mainers, including Daughtry herself.
"I'll be blunt like I really wanted kids, and I don't know if I can afford to have kids, and I know my story is not alone," Daughtry said.
According to the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a progressive advocacy group, an estimated 18,000 people in the state are currently out of the labor force due to a lack of child care. And many of those who are paying for care are struggling to make ends meet.
"We just kind of feel like middle class is deteriorating, like with it, with the amount of money that my husband and I bring in, we should be living very comfortably, and the reality is we're not," said Meagan Downs, Kids Kove parent.
Meagan Downs has a daughter at Kids Kove and said fees went up by $75 a week in July for the first time since the pandemic. But she said that cost will somehow have to absorbed by the already strained family budget.
"I could not imagine pulling my child from the people that have helped me raise her and the people that love her like it was just it was a matter of us like we need to figure it out," Downs said.
But "figuring it out" has been difficult. The day care lost 15 families after the fee hike this summer. Downs has applied for a grant through the state's Child Care Affordability Program but has been on the waitlist since it ran out of funding. She's banking on a federal subsidy that's expected to come in when her husband is deployed with the National Guard for the next year.
"You feel for the people in your community, and they are already strained on the rising cost of everything else in life, and the last thing I wanted to do was add to that burden. But at the end of the day, I don't think I could continue to keep my doors open if I didn't raise the rates, staff would eventually have to leave," said Jennifer Michaud, Kids Kove Owner.
Michaud said she had to increase prices this summer in order to keep her staff. But even with the extra income she cannot afford to offer them healthcare benefits, summers off, or match competing salary offers from public schools. Instead, she tries to build flexibility into her workers' schedules, offer more paid time off and free child care for their own kids. But often, that still isn't enough to retain long term employees.
"Be honest, if you don't see yourself here in two years, but I can get you for a solid two years. Let's do it. Let's make them the best two years that we can. And then the and then you'll if you choose to go into a public school. I lose most of my employees to a public school," said Michaud.
The state has tried to help by offering wage supplements to early childhood educators since 2021. Daughtry's bill to continue those supplements this past session won bipartisan support and passed unanimously in both chambers. The funding will expire in 2027.
"If we want to not be known as the oldest state in the nation and instead be the best place to be a kid, we got to work on things like this. It's the best investment. It's not partisan, and we need to be doing better, and we can do better," said Daughtry.
Daughtry hopes the tour, which ends October 16, will inform child care legislation she intends to bring to committee during the session that starts in January.
