If you’re hoping to enroll your infant or toddler at Community Family Development in downtown Poughkeepsie, you should know there might be a waitlist. That’s according to CEO Jaime Hyla, who has led the early childhood center on Mill Street since 2017. Community Family Development is the largest nonprofit childcare center in Dutchess County, with up to 104 students ranging from six weeks to 12 years old. Still, Hyla says the average wait time is three to four months.
“In a couple of age groups we have some availability, but for our nursery program, we’re really quite packed, which is always a great thing," says Hyla.
While demand is high, that’s largely because the childcare industry overall is in a tough spot. A new report by the nonprofit Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress finds the number of licensed childcare providers in the Hudson Valley has dropped roughly 27 percent since 2007, making them harder to find and more expensive for families. Pattern estimates the average annual cost of center-based childcare for one kid in the Hudson Valley has spiked to anywhere between $12,000-$15,000. Add in another kid, and the cost of childcare can outpace even the cost of housing, prompting some parents (most of them women) to leave the workforce in order to watch their children.
Pattern CEO Adam Bosch worries the issue will spill over into other problems across the region, including a worker shortage.
"We gotta do something, or this thing’s gonna continue to shrink, and probably shrink pretty fast," he adds.
To understand why childcare is struggling, Bosch says you have to look at a number of factors that have essentially hollowed out the traditional childcare business model. Most obviously: the Hudson Valley has fewer kids now than it did in 2007, due to declining birth rates and outmigration. But the report also points to an unintended consequence of New York’s universal pre-K (UPK) program. Bosch says childcare centers typically make twice the revenue from watching 4-year-olds than they do from toddlers and babies, because state regulations require more staff on hand for infants. Ever since New York started expanding UPK in 2014, however, more and more of those 4-year-olds have shifted into free, publicly-funded UPK programs.
“This is not a knock on UPK, UPK is vital," Bosch explains. "But, the way it has wounded the business model of the childcare centers means that we’ve essentially traded universal education for the 4-year-olds for some proportion of ones, twos, and 3-year-olds having nowhere to go."
Hyla says Community Family Development wants to expand and take in more babies, but New York’s staffing and space requirements for infants make that a costly endeavor. Which leads to the next factor Pattern says is stressing out providers: stringent state regulations, which apply to everything from staffing ratios to door size. While Bosch and Hyla agree regulations are crucial for ensuring quality care, they can also be burdensome and unevenly enforced.
"The regulations can in some ways be interpretable," says Hyla. "And you have some folks who look at what it says and there’s no potential gray area with it, and there are some that allow space for the gray."
The report comes after federal American Rescue Plan Act funds meant to stabilize the childcare industry expired in September. Lawmakers like New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand have expressed concern that the end of the funding will force many providers to either close up shop or jack up prices. Meantime, childcare workers aren’t benefiting from the higher prices: Bosch says they make some of the lowest wages among service workers, averaging $16.92 an hour.
Last year, the New York state budget set aside more than $7 billion to expand childcare over the next four years. As part of that, Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced $100 million in state grants to build new childcare centers, expand existing ones, and encourage businesses to develop their own childcare programs for employees.
But Bosch says that won’t fix the broken business model. The Pattern report recommends New York at least consider a plan to more heavily (if not fully) subsidize childcare, similar to the Quebec model in Canada.
"We know the state has a lot of budget pressure right now…But you also gotta understand the cost of not doing it," Bosch notes. "Are we going to continue to see fewer people participating in the labor market? Are we going to see people leave the region? It’s a tough decision, but it’s something that deserves a dispassionate, objective, honest look."
Republican State Senator Rob Rolison, who sits on the Children and Families Committee, says an overhaul of that cost and size would take years to negotiate. That said, he says there have been talks this budget season about how to potentially loosen some daycare regulations, the same way the state temporarily waived some restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The state needs to do more to support the system in general and the people working in it," says Rolison. "And maybe that is payroll tax credits, maybe there’s ways to make the childcare business more affordable and less financially draining — because a lot of these folks are not making a whole lot of money for an extremely critical service."
In the meantime, Hyla has her own vision for the future. For the past several years, Community Family Development has teamed up with local partners to operate as a one-stop shop for parents, connecting them with food programs and social workers as needed. Right now, she says they’re actually seeing a rare spike in 4-year-old enrollments, despite UPK, and she imagines it’s at least partially because families are meeting all of their needs in one place.
"A daycare is an extension of home, and it takes a village to raise a child," says Hyla. "We’re part of a village for a family."
Meantime, Pattern says New York’s Child Care Assistance Program has gone underutilized, with many families unaware that they qualify for financial assistance. You can check your eligibility and apply here.
