Georgia child care workers join national calls for more funding

About 30 childcare workers gathered near the state Capitol on Monday to demand more state funding. The rally was part of the National Day Without Childcare, a day where providers close day cares early or shut doors entirely to draw attention to systemic issues.

Child care providers are working with the nonprofit Childcare Changemakers to demand higher wages, affordable care for families, and more government funding on all levels. The average wage for a child care worker in 2023 is $13.35 an hour according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile a living wage in Georgia is around $23.29, according to calculations by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Candace Nicholas works at a day care in Atlanta. She said low wages don’t reflect how much workers offer the children.

“We make sure that they're fed, they're changed, they're taught,” she said. “Then when we go home, we don't have enough to take care of our own. We don't have enough to take care of ourselves and that's unfair.”

Nicholas said the biggest misconception is that early childhood educators at day cares are like babysitters.

“Around nine months they came in; nine months later, when I play the ABC song, they're running to the ABCs,” she said. “They're pointing at what letters. They know what sounds animals make like. We are teaching these children day by day before they can even put down their bottle to pick up a cup to drink it.”

The 2021 America Rescue Plan offered significant funding for child care, but the funds will expire this year if Congress doesn’t vote to extend it.

Pamela Robinson is a family child care provider in Smyrna. She has been running a day care from her house for 17 years. Robinson said the lack of funding for family child care also affects parents.

“I have a couple of single parents and their children go to my day care, and sometimes they can't afford to pay even a little small amount that I offered them to pay,” she said. “They can't even pay it. I think that it should be a lot more funding in the pot for everybody: all providers and all family child care providers.”

A report from the Century Foundation found that Georgia could lose over 900 child care programs if state or federal funding is not changed.