This story by Sarah Earle was published by the Valley News on Jan. 22.
[O]n occasion, Val Raney, director and owner of 4 Corners Childrenโs Center in Hartland, gets a call from someone asking to put a yet-to-be-conceived child on the centerโs waiting list.
That might sound like a radical idea until you consider that her waiting list is 24 babies long, illustrating the challenges Vermont families continue to face in meeting their child care needs.
Thereโs no quick fix to problems like these, but a little bit of help is on the way. In the new semester, which begins today, Community College of Vermont is offering a new accelerated online child care certificate. Divided into intensive, seven-week blocks, the program can be completed in four semesters and will equip child care workers with credentials that are increasingly in demand in Vermont.
โOne thing weโve been actively doing is reaching out to the state to see where the gaps in education are and trying to fill those gaps,โ said Jennifer Alberico, lead coordinator of academic services online for the college. โOne place where they have a huge gap is child care.โ
That gap is no secret to anyone with a stake in the field. A report released in November by members of the state Legislatureโs Joint Fiscal Office finds that the number of child care slots in regulated centers has decreased by 7 percent in the past three years. In Windsor and Orange counties, 11 center-based programs and 48 registered home-based providers have closed during that period.
Another report, released last week by Building Bright Futures, an advocacy and advisory group based in Williston, finds that while the quality of child care providers statewide has increased in recent years, the quantity has decreased. The report states that recruiting and retaining qualified staff are among the biggest challenges facing providers.
Raney, who has been running 4 Corners for almost 20 years and serves as president of the Vermont Child Care Industry and Career Council, said she knows several providers who want to expand to meet the demand for quality child care but canโt find the staff to do so. She recently attended a job fair for child care workers to which only five people showed up.
โItโs gotten really challenging,โ she said.
Along with attracting potential workers to the field, CCVโs new program is designed to help current child care workers meet changing state requirements. In 2016, the state updated its child care regulations to include, among other things, higher qualifications for staff.
โThat has put on a little bit of pressure, and rightfully so. We want educated people … being involved in the oversight of our children,โ Alberico said.
The accelerated child care certificate program โ CCVโs first full program to be offered in the seven-week block format โ is designed to meet the needs of people already working in the field. โWeโre really thinking about the busy working person who has little time to go to campus and take on a big course load,โ Alberico said. โA lot of times theyโre working parents, and theyโre already booked up.โ
In addition to seven three-credit courses, the program includes a seven-week practicum to be completed in the field. Students already working in regulated centers can waive the field experience and take an elective instead. Tuition is $268 per course credit, which works out to $5,628 for the entire course.
Almost 2,500 students took one or more of the collegeโs 278 online courses last fall. The courses that were available in the seven-week format were especially popular among early childhood education students, Alberico found through data analysis.
Along with helping child care workers obtain necessary qualifications, the program can help them net a larger paycheck in a field thatโs notorious for low pay: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly pay for child care workers in the United States was $11.42 in 2017.
Credentials correlate with pay scales on Vermontโs Early Childhood Career Ladder, which divides early childhood professional development into six levels. A childcare worker who completes the CCVโs childcare certificate, along with working for one year in the field, will achieve a level 3a. The Vermont Northern Lights Career Development Center, which works closely with the Early Childhood Education program at the CCV and is funded by a state grant, suggests a pay rate of $14.10 per hour for a level 3a worker on its career ladder sample salary scale. The accelerated certificate also dovetails with the associate and bachelor degrees in the CCVโs Early Childhood Education program.
CCV is one of several organizations and initiatives seeking to address the shortage of quality child care providers in the state. Raney also recruits staff through the Vermont Child Care Apprenticeship Program, a collaborative project between the Vermont Department of Labor and the Vermont Child Care Industry and Careers Council. Sponsored by a regulated provider, a participant in the program is matched with qualified mentors to complete 4,000 hours of on-the-job training in addition to taking six or seven college courses. Scholarships are available for the coursework.
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