CORDOVA — When Melissa Johnson flips through her binder, she’s reminded of around 80 families anxiously awaiting day care services. Some of the children on the waitlist are under a year old. Others are not born.
Johnson, the director of Critchlow Adkins Children’s Centers’ Cordova site, calls it a “heart-wrenching situation.”
Critchlow Adkins is a nonprofit that provides preschool and before- and after-school care across five sites in Talbot County. Over 100 children are on the waitlist for Critchlow’s child care services in Cordova.
“And I really feel so bad because I want to help them, but I just cannot,” Johnson said. “There’s a staff-child ratio.”
Relief for some families on waitlists in Cordova is expected by next year.
Renovation plans for Chapel District Elementary School will allow Critchlow Adkins to build a new preschool room for 3-year-olds, two additional classrooms, an office and a teacher workspace.
Notably, Executive Director Christy Morrell said they will double the amount of before- and after-school children they can serve from 30 to 60. Currently, that program, which includes students in kindergarten through fifth grade, operates in the school cafeteria.
“When school’s in session, we share the cafeteria,” Johnson said. “And there have been a lot of times that we have been displaced. We have to relocate because of an activity or something that goes on in the cafeteria.”
Dividers in the cafeteria split the different ages. While staff and children have made the most out of the space, Johnson said, it has limited the number of activities and stimulated learning.
The dedicated classrooms will create a better learning environment for the children, Morrell said, one that is more akin to the Easton Elementary site that already has two full classrooms. Johnson and Morrell said it’s important for children in before- and after-school care to have a consistent space they go to each day that creates a familiar environment.
While the state is taking on efforts to provide accessible child care to families, facilities across Talbot County are limited in spacing and staffing. Many are forced to turn parents and guardians in need away or add them to extensive waitlists.
Barbra Diaz, the director of the Talbot County Center for Children and Families, said the county’s Early Head Start program has a waitlist. The federally funded program serves children under 3 and focuses on serving those below the federal poverty line.
Diaz has administered the program since January, and the number one hurdle has been staffing, she said. Currently, the program is only taking in 20 of a possible 40 kids due to state-mandated staff-child ratios.
In Easton, The Lab Child Care Center provides care for over 100 children between its Cynwood Drive and Creamery Lane locations. Owner John Givens, who also runs The Lab Martial Arts and Fitness Center, said there’s a rolling waitlist for children under two.
Givens said The Lab faces the challenge of adjusting to rising costs required to provide child care and a new state scholarship program that hasn’t yet worked out all its kinks. As a for-profit business, he said he has to balance doing as much as possible for families in need while also keeping the business afloat.
“It’s kind of a double-edged sword,” Givens said. “From an owner/operator perspective, infants and toddlers in general are the most labor-intensive, they’re the most expensive to care for.”
“All parents who have kids who don’t have a support network need day care,” Givens continued. “And I think the day care game in Talbot County is stretched very thin.”
CORDOVA EXPANSIONThe expansion of the Cordova facility, doubling capacity from 30 to 60 will help that situation, said Christy Morrell, the executive director.
For parents and guardians, Morrell says having a dependable place to drop off their children provides peace of mind.
“They’re better employees, they’re more consistent employees,” Morrell said of parents who have a reliable day care service.
Despite challenges in available space, Critchlow’s Cordova site has remained at the peak of the state’s quality rating system for child care and early education programs, Maryland EXCELS. It’s accredited and has a Level 5 rating, the highest rank. Those efforts, though, have taken years of dedication and funding.
Critchlow’s upcoming Cordova expansion totals around $1.82 million, not including an outdoor playground and indoor furniture. Critchlow is working to fundraise that mark, helped in part by a $300,000 boost from the Talbot County Council in American Rescue Plan funding.
Just last week, funding for child care was stressed at the state level when Gov. Wes Moore and the Maryland Board of Public Works approved $148.3 million in state budget cuts. The cuts are intended to make way for Medicaid and child care efforts by the state.
However, Morrell is concerned that those cuts may actually hurt funding for child care in Maryland’s rural counties. She pointed to a 25% reduction in funding for the Rural Maryland Council, which is run under the Department of Agriculture.
The grantmaking cut for the council reduces what was $9 million to $6.75 million available. Morrell had hoped to receive a council grant to contribute to expansion costs.
STATE PROGRAMThe state cuts are, in part, meant to increase the state’s ability to accommodate a rising number of families in the Maryland State Department of Education’s Child Care Scholarship Program. According to the Department of Education, about 42,000 children are enrolled. Eligible families receive aid in the form of vouchers that go to licensed providers, such as The Lab.
The program is meant to help families afford high-quality child care programs, which falls in line with the state’s Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a state education initiative.
Givens calls it a “fantastic program in theory,” one that allows parents with children to maintain jobs. However, he believes its issue “is in the implementation.”
He says the program’s shortcomings cause late payments, and sometimes his business is providing six to eight weeks of service without payment.
“It’s a scary world when you have back pay that’s months or years old that you’re trying to track down and chase down to get,” Givens said. “As an owner/operator, that is a scary thing.”
In a statement to The Star Democrat, the state Department of Education said the program “exhibits no systemic issues concerning timely payment processing for providers.” The department pointed to its advanced payment practice that ensures timely payments, a practice mandated at the federal level.
If scholarship enrollments include additional children after advanced payment is calculated, accurate payments to providers are delayed. The state said it is in the process of reducing that delay period.
“MSDE recognizes the need to reduce the True-Up reconciliation period from 90 days to 30 days for providers receiving payments from the Child Care Scholarship program,” a portion of the statement read. “This reduced turnaround time requires technological changes in backend systems, and MSDE is currently working on those changes.”
While Givens said The Lab has always accommodated its families and children, he said the state’s scholarship program is putting day care providers in a middle position.
And in some cases, that may end up yielding a dilemma: provide a much-needed service to a family or ensure one’s business remains profitable. It’s a problem he said reigns true at a national level.
Givens said child care should be considered a “critical part of infrastructure,” such as roads.
“We have to support it that way,” Givens said. “We have to figure out a way that all kids who should have care, can have care.”
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