The Edge of North Carolina’s Child Care Cliff

Pathway Preschool Center, on Eastway Drive in Plaza Shamrock, officially opens at 7:30 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m. on weekdays. But 35-year-old teacher Tahera Nolley arrives at 6:30 each morning and stays until 5:30 for families who need to drop off their children early or pick them up late. I ask her if she gets overtime pay, and she just smiles and shrugs. 

It’s a little after 1 p.m., naptime for the toddlers and 3-year-olds in two other rooms down the hall. We’re in the infant room, where naptime is hit or miss. Today, Pathway has nine babies (one is out sick), and all but two patrol the blue rug with Nolley’s fellow teachers Miss Crystal and Miss Zeyah. Seven-month-old Summer reaches for me, so I scoop her up as Nolley shows me around the room with 11-month-old Shai on her hip. Nolley has some spit-up on the shoulder of her black T-shirt. “You just wipe it and keep it moving,” she says. 

Before March 2023, Pathway was open from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., but the center had to cut hours because it was short on teachers. Many are parents themselves and can’t commit to full-time positions, says Program Director Emma Biggs. But demand for the program is high, and Pathway can’t afford to pay overtime to part-time employees.

At the same time, the center has trouble finding full-time teachers. Child care workers in the Charlotte area typically make $13 to $15 an hour and can usually earn more at other jobs, like nannying. That meant a waitlist of 40 kids until the center stopped accepting new families late last year. Four years ago, Pathway enrolled 110 children. As of November, the center had only 64. “I don’t have a shortage of spots. I have three empty classrooms,” Biggs says. “I don’t have enough teachers.”

Child care centers nationwide face similar difficulties, and the COVID era—and, indirectly, government efforts to help such businesses survive it—has led to what experts are calling the “child care cliff.” Centers like Pathway have always struggled to find and retain qualified staff. But COVID threatened to close them for good.

The federal government has kept child care centers afloat for three years through COVID relief funds. But that money is expected to run out by fall, and a bill that would allocate more remains stalled in Congress. Meanwhile, teachers have found higher-paying jobs, the cost of living has risen, and working parents need affordable child care more than ever.

“Right now, we’re trying to get Congress to pass the Child Care Stabilization Act. If it doesn’t pass, we’ll be facing these same cliffs continuously,” Biggs says. “It’ll never be back where it was pre-pandemic. If we don’t get the state to find the money, teachers won’t wait till June to find other work.”

Soon after COVID struck in March 2020, the state government moved to help child care programs. The Department of Health and Human Services provided $80 million in monthly operational grants from April through July 2020 and an additional $35 million in October 2020. “I’ve been in child care for 27 years, and we’ve never seen bonus money like that,” Biggs says. “They were giving us, like, $10,000 to $12,000 per employee. They also issued emergency vouchers to cover child care for essential workers.”

The U.S. government followed with even more relief. In January 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act allocated $39 billion to child care programs nationwide. North Carolina’s share was $805 million, to be paid out by quarter until October 2023. Programs would have to spend the first six rounds of these “stabilization grants” by Sept. 30, 2023, and the last three by Sept. 30, 2024. Congress has not approved any more funding. Before the first deadline, Senate Democrats introduced the Child Care Stabilization Act, which would provide $16 billion in mandatory funding each year for the next five years. But the bill lacks support from Republicans and, as of December, remained in committee.

In North Carolina, even Republican support hasn’t pushed another relief package through. Last year, the legislature’s Early Childhood Caucus proposed a $300 million allotment for child care providers. The proposal didn’t make it into the 2023-24 state budget, which did include $900,000 for a three-county pilot program to assist families who earn too much to qualify for subsidized child care.

“I was disappointed to learn that (the $300 million extension) would not be a part of the budget,” caucus co-chair and N.C. Rep. David Willis, a Republican from Union County, tells me via email in December. “My colleagues and I are continuing to work with our counterparts to make sure they understand the urgency of this issue. I am also working with the Division of Child Development to look at every available option to bridge the gap to the next full budget.” 

Tahera Nolley (above) has four children of her own and typically works 60-hour weeks. “If a teacher is late, I’m in their classroom,” she says. “Almost every day, I have to relieve a teacher so she can go home, so I stay till 5:30.”

The state stabilization grants’ expiration means 1,778 programs in the state will close, and 155,539 children will lose their spots, according to a national report in June from The Century Foundation. At the same time, wages are returning to pre-pandemic levels as the cost of living continues to rise. “They can take that money away, but mortgages are still going up around us,” Nolley says. “Teachers have to maintain their households, too.” 

Even affluent ZIP codes feel the strain. Myers Park Presbyterian Church’s Weekday School is one of many child care centers that used their grant to increase teacher pay. But when I spoke with Shannon Leary, assistant director for the Weekday School’s birth through pre-K program, in October, the school had recently turned over nearly a third of its staff. (Leary began in a new position at Pritchard Child Development Center in November.)

“Our pay is fairly competitive for this field, but it’s still not enough,” Leary says. “These are women with families of their own, some single mothers. How can you live on $16 or $18 an hour? Nobody that works here lives here. Everyone drives 40 or more minutes to get to work because they can’t make what they make here in their own communities.” 

Tuition for infants and toddlers in the Weekday School’s full-day program is $1,368 per month; for early preschool through pre-K, it’s $1,234. The average cost of child care in Mecklenburg County is $315 a week, or $16,373 a year, according to Child Care Resources Inc., a Charlotte-based advocacy organization.

If the cost of child care is so high, why are day care workers’ wages so low? No one I spoke with could give a clear answer.

“If you’re a licensed and star-rated center, you have to have certain materials and change out furniture and equipment a lot because they have to be new,” Leary says. “We provide two snacks a day and organic milk, so the food cost just for snacks is astronomical.”

Pathway provides breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Tuition for kids 3 and up is $1,020 per month; for infants and toddlers, it’s $1,180. The staff regularly replaces items like crib mattresses, books, and art supplies, and each teacher in the infant room goes through about 30 pairs of latex gloves per day. After operational costs, that leaves only enough to pay workers between $13 and $15 an hour, which puts them below the state poverty line. 

Zeyah Davis supervises playtime with the infants.

Biggs has been at Pathway for 13 years, and she’s worked in child care for 27. Her 18-month-old grandson is enrolled here. So is Nolley’s 3-year-old daughter, Carnation. Nolley’s older children, now 12, 13, and 15, attended Pathway as well. 

They’re short-staffed today, so they’ll need another teacher to drive one of the vans this afternoon. They leave around 2 p.m. to collect older kids from school and bring them back to Pathway, where they play in the after-school room or gymnasium. “That’s pretty typical, to have to shuffle most days,” Nolley says. Some afternoons, she’s with the toddlers; on others, she monitors homework in the after-school room. “You must have to remember fourth grade arithmetic pretty quick,” I say. “Yeah,” she says with a smile. “I’m actually taking math right now myself because I’m still in school. So I’ve been doing pretty good.”

Nolley is getting her associate’s degree in early childhood education from Central Piedmont Community College. She goes to class on Monday nights and Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and she takes an online class during her lunch break on Wednesdays. I ask if she’ll get a promotion or pay raise after she completes the two-year program in December. “Let’s just say hopefully, yeah,” she says. 

If Pathway closes, Nolley would be out of a job and child care. She supplements her income with a 360 Photo Booth that she and her sister rent out for parties, but that would hardly be enough to get by. Other Pathway teachers are Instacart drivers on weekends, and one cuts hair as a side hustle. Not one has a financial safety net. “I’m 50 years old,” Biggs says, “and I don’t have a retirement fund.”

When we speak in November, Biggs expects to raise tuition in the first three months of 2024. Since the start of COVID, she estimates 30 families have had to withdraw from Pathway, some as recently as a few weeks ago. It’s the start of cold and flu season, and nearly every nose in the infant room is crusty. “You must have an immune system of steel,” I say to Nolley as she hands me a tissue to wipe Summer’s nose. “When you first start in child care, it’s the worst,” she says. “It’s just back and forth, back and forth—”

She pauses mid-sentence to grab her phone. Beside me, 11-month-old Max is standing up all by himself, poised to take his first steps. “I want to catch it so (his parents) don’t miss this,” she whispers. Miss Crystal and Miss Zeyah stop what they’re doing to beam at this little boy they’ve cared for since he was 12 weeks old.

Max will graduate to the toddler room after the holidays. Nolley taps her phone to show me pictures of the newborn girl who will take his place. “Look at this cutie pie!” she says. I agree, she is adorable. Soon, she’ll be in the hands of teachers who change diapers, kiss boo-boos, and help with multiplication tables while they fill an essential role in the workforce, often at the expense of their own families. “No one says, ‘I want to be a child care worker and make big bucks and retire,’” Biggs says. It’s never been a high-paying field. But once the money runs out, circumstances may force child care workers out of the field entirely. 

TAYLOR BOWLER is the lifestyle editor.