Keeping the Big Picture in MindIt’s hard to hire staff for child care settings, as recent news stories show. Eight in 10 providers say they can’t find enough folks to hire, and half say the shortfall is worse than it was before the pandemic. Many providers had no choice but to cut their hours and serve fewer kids, despite strenuous efforts to get the educators they need. Providers have raised wages as much as their slim margins allow, asked parents for referrals and offered internship credits to college students. “The only thing we haven’t done is put up sandwich boards and stand on the corner with a spinning sign,” said Claire Miller, director of children and youth services for Decatur, Georgia. “But I’m not eliminating that yet.”
The people who typically go to work at child care settings are opting instead to take jobs as bank tellers, administrative assistants and retail clerks. Like 98 percent of occupations, these positions pay more than $12 an hour, the paltry median wage in the child care profession. “We can’t match Walmart offering $15 and up,” said Sky Burdin, director of Jasmin Child Care and Preschool in Fargo, North Dakota. And the low-income families she serves have lost the care they need. “We don’t have our toddler room open right now,” Burdin said. “Even the infant room isn’t currently full because we don’t have enough staff.”
And the days of boosting profits “on the backs of working families is done,” explained Jordyn Rossignol, owner of Miss Jordyn’s Child Development Center in Caribou, Maine. Rossignol has lost 24 staff members since the pandemic started, and nearly all told her they quit because they could make more money elsewhere. Among her former employees, two are working as bank tellers now, and one went to a trucking company. Many became nannies, and her best toddler teacher now works across the street at a paint store.
Personal tales of woe like these are part of a bigger public picture. Even before the pandemic, fewer than five million of the nation’s roughly eight million 3- and 4-year-olds attended preschool, and this longtime crisis in child care has only gotten worse since COVID appeared on the scene. Employment in child care settings has dropped more than 10 percent. As recently as September, over 4.4 million mothers had endured breaks in their access to child care. And there are still 1.5 million American women who have dropped out of the labor force, largely due to child care issues, and been unable to return to work.
It’s clear our child care system isn’t working either, so I can only applaud the Build Back Better Act, now before the U.S. Senate—and pray that it passes into law. The bill would invest $400 billion over the next six years to raise wages for child care workers, provide families with ample subsidies for child care and create a system of universal pre-K. It would make preschool available for six million more children and require at least 40,000 more teachers, a heavy lift given the current lack of child care staff.
“We don’t really have a pipeline of early childhood educators who are sitting idle,” said Chad Aldeman, policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University in DC. “If the federal dollars boost up pre-K enrollment overall, that could produce a hiring crunch,” he warned, “potentially leading to more shortages and a surge of novice and uncertified teachers.”
So, there are steps we should take now to help build the early childhood workforce we’ll need. For example, we should build more apprenticeship programs, like the CDA®, into high schools, and the Council has paved the way by publishing a CDA Handbook for high school administrators and instructors. We also encourage higher ed to guide more college students toward a profession that urgently needs their perspectives and presence. In addition, colleges should take measures to better serve nontraditional students who are looking to enter the early childhood field. Many of these students are working moms or immigrants. So, more colleges should step up to meet their needs by offering flexible class schedules and English as a second language courses.
And everyone who’s concerned about young learners should keep speaking out about the value of well-prepared teachers. “The biggest concern with the success of the Build Back Better Act is going to be tied to whether we can get the right staff to get the right workforce,” said Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association. And providers agree. “I do not just want a warm body in front of a child who needs time and attention,” said Tony D’Agostino, who owns Inspire! Crayon Campus near Rochester, New York.
We must not lower standards to meet the surge of demand the Build Back Better Act would ignite. Credentials like the CDA give our educators the competence and confidence to be ready on day one in the classroom. Good training matters since children who have skilled, qualified teachers are more likely to graduate high school, be employed, and have stable family structures—household conditions that help their children have better lives, too. That’s the big picture we should all keep in mind to get the pre-K workforce prepared for what’s ahead.
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Vice President of People and Culture
Janie Payne is the Vice President of People and Culture for the Council for Professional Recognition. Janie is responsible for envisioning, developing, and executing initiatives that strategically manage talent and culture to align people strategies with the overarching business vision of the Council. Janie is responsible for driving organizational excellence through strategic talent practices, orchestrating workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management as well as a myriad of other Human Resources Programs. She is accountable for driving effectiveness by shaping organizational structure for optimal efficiency. Janie oversees strategies that foster a healthy culture to include embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of the organization.
In Janie’s prior role, she was the Vice President of Administration at Equal Justice Works, where she was responsible for leading human resources, financial operations, facilities management, and information technology. She was also accountable for developing and implementing Equal Justice Works Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy focused on attracting diverse, mission-oriented talent and creating an inclusive and equitable workplace environment. With more than fifteen years of private, federal, and not-for-profit experience, Janie is known for her intuitive skill in administration management, human resources management, designing and leading complex system change, diversity and inclusion, and social justice reform efforts.
Before joining Equal Justice Works, Janie was the Vice President of Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer for Global Communities, where she was responsible for the design, implementation, and management of integrated HR and diversity strategies. Her work impacted employees in over twenty-two countries. She was responsible for the effective management of different cultural, legal, regulatory, and economic systems for both domestic and international employees. Prior to Global Communities, Janie enjoyed a ten-year career with the federal government. As a member of the Senior Executive Service, she held key strategic human resources positions with multiple cabinet-level agencies and served as an advisor and senior coach to leaders across the federal sector. In these roles, she received recognition from management, industry publications, peers, and staff for driving the creation and execution of programs that created an engaged and productive workforce.
Janie began her career with Verizon Communications (formerly Bell Atlantic), where she held numerous roles of increasing responsibility, where she directed a diversity program that resulted in significant improvement in diversity profile measures. Janie was also a faculty member for the company’s Black Managers Workshop, a training program designed to provide managers of color with the skills needed to overcome barriers to their success that were encountered because of race. She initiated a company-wide effort to establish team-based systems and structures to impact corporate bottom line results which was recognized by the Department of Labor. Janie was one of the first African American women to be featured on the cover of Human Resources Executive magazine.
Janie received her M.A. in Organization Development from American University. She holds numerous professional development certificates in Human Capital Management and Change Management, including a Diversity and Inclusion in Human Resources certificate from Cornell University. She completed the year-long Maryland Equity and Inclusion Leadership Program sponsored by The Schaefer Center for Public Policy and The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. She is a trained mediator and Certified Professional Coach. She is a graduate of Leadership America, former board chair of the NTL Institute and currently co-steward of the organization’s social justice community of practice, and a member of The Society for Human Resource Management. Additionally, Janie is the Board Chairperson for the Special Education Citizens Advisory Council for Prince Georges County where she is active in developing partnerships that facilitate discussion between parents, families, educators, community leaders, and the PG County school administration to enhance services for students with disabilities which is her passion. She and her husband Randolph reside in Fort Washington Maryland.
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Andrew Davis serves as Chief Operating Officer at the Council. In this role, Andrew oversees the Programs Division, which includes the following operational functions: credentialing, growth and business development, marketing and communications, public policy and advocacy, research, innovation, and customer relations.
Andrew has over 20 years of experience in the early care and education field. Most recently, Andrew served as Senior Vice President of Partnership and Engagement with Acelero Learning and Shine Early Learning, where he led the expansion of state and community-based partnerships to produce more equitable systems of service delivery, improved programmatic quality, and greater outcomes for communities, children and families. Prior to that, he served as Director of Early Learning at Follett School Solutions.
Andrew earned his MBA from the University of Baltimore and Towson University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland – University College.
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Jan Bigelow serves as Chief Financial Officer at the Council and has been with the organization since February of 2022.
Jan has more than 30 years in accounting and finance experience, including public accounting, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. She has held management-level positions with BDO Seidman, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Communities In Schools, B’nai B’rith Youth Organization and American Humane. Since 2003, Jan has worked exclusively in the non-profit sector where she has been a passionate advocate in improving business operations in order to further the mission of her employers.
Jan holds a CPA from the State of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lycoming College. She resides in Alexandria VA with her husband and dog.
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