Adirondack communities take on childcare issues

State funds aim to help stabilize provider numbers

By Sara Foss

The Adirondack childcare shortage is the reflection of a nationwide problem, and there has been an infusion of state and federal funding for the industry as it emerges from the pandemic. 

In 2021, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services awarded $900 million in Child Care Stabilization grants to 15,000 providers; a second round of childcare stabilization funding, about $208 million, went to 12,578 providers in 2022. Payments were sizable. During the first round of funding, centers received $50,000 to $100,000 depending on their license capacity. Another state program, intended to help with retention, provided $2,000 to $3,000 bonuses for childcare employees. 

If not for the Child Care Stabilization grants, “more programs would have closed,” said Jamie Basiliere, executive director of the Child Care Coordinating Council of the North Country. “Do we need to do more? We do. We need to fundamentally change how we finance childcare because parents can’t afford the whole bill.” The industry needs ongoing support from the public or private sector to lift it out of crisis, she said. 

Some counties have launched pipeline projects aimed at recruiting family daycare providers by assisting them with start-up costs and helping them navigate the licensing process. In Franklin County, five new providers opened during the project’s first year; each provider received about $2,000 in aid. 

The Adirondack Foundation established the Adirondack Birth to Three Alliance in 2014 with a vision of fulfilling every child’s promise to thrive. Among other things, the organization coordinates a coalition, called Stand Up For Child Care, focused on building a strategy for addressing the region’s childcare challenges. 

One initiative spearheaded by the group is the Northeastern Shared Services Alliance, which kicks off this year. One of the alliance’s goals, according to the alliance director Kate Ryan, is to help providers increase and maximize their enrollment.

“More and more of our local communities are acknowledging the need for childcare and asking, ‘What can we do?’” Ryan said. “We’re starting to find some local, regional ways that we’re tackling these problems as we wait for big state and federal funding and policy changes to happen.” 

Adirondack bright spots

New York also invested $70 million in grants for new childcare programs in places deemed childcare deserts. The Clubhouse in Willsboro received $398,000 from this pool. 

One example of an unusual public-private partnership is the new childcare center planned for Chestertown in Warren County. It will occupy two rooms in the Chester Municipal Center and be operated by Small Tails Daycare in Warrensburg. 

“We have five on our wait-list and we haven’t even advertised that we’re open,” said Michael Dittmer, executive director of Small Tails. 

In Ticonderoga, an effort to open a childcare center got underway when five of then-interim school superintendent Cynthia Ford-Johnston’s teachers told her they could not find daycare. 

“They said, ‘One or two of us are going to have to resign so that we can take care of each other’s kids,’” Johnston-Ford said. “We found some people to take care of their kids, but I knew that problem wasn’t going to go away.” She contacted Donna Wotton, executive director of the Ti-Alliance, an economic development non-profit focused on revitalizing Ticonderoga and other nearby communities. 

Wotton believed she could raise money for a childcare center, and a community survey revealed a significant need—42% of respondents said somebody in their household was unable to work due to the paucity of childcare. 

Still, finding a suitable location proved difficult. A potential site at a local school fell apart because retrofitting it to comply with state regulations drove the estimated cost to $1 million. Then St. Mary’s School in Ticonderoga announced that it was closing at the end of the 2022-2023 school year. The building needed $200,000 of work to accommodate a childcare center. Late last year, Wotton began interviewing childcare operators to run a daycare there, with the goal of opening this spring with 50 children. 

Wotton also hopes to raise $1 million for an endowment that will cover the difference between what a childcare operator typically pays and a livable wage. The hope is that better wages and benefits will reduce the staff volatility that can threaten viability. 

“We can’t afford that turnover because we don’t have that big a labor pool,” Wotton said. “We have to make this rewarding and desirable for the people that are going to work there.”  “If it is a quality program, more families will move here,” Ford-Johnston said. “There’s a lot of revitalization going on in town. This is just a piece of it. If we could get this in place, it would make the whole town more inviting to everybody.”