Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.
When Rita Munro settled in Middlebury in 2016 to start a family, friends sent her spreadsheets of contacts for child care facilities across the county and encouraged her to get on waitlists as soon as she became pregnant.
“It takes an incredible amount of executive function,” said Munro, 37, who works as a therapist.
The word-of-mouth culture stemming from competition, particularly for home child care facilities, could be challenging for newcomers, she said, and the Covid-19 pandemic only intensified the situation. Eventually, she managed to find spots that worked for her kids.
In the coming months, Munro’s 2-year-old daughter and newborn twins are planning to attend the newly expanded and renovated Otter Creek Child Center in Middlebury. The organization’s $12 million transformation has been in the works since 2017.
“I think everybody’s excited,” said Linda January, the center’s executive director. “We’re ready to be in the building.”
The expansion will nearly double the program’s capacity, making it one of the largest child care providers in the state. The construction is expected to end by mid-November, January said, and comes during a period of growth for child care in Addison County. Local leaders said increased offerings in the area come none too soon, as a recent influx of public money to child care provides an opportunity for recovery from Covid-era hardship.
The new facility at Otter Creek Child Center is set to include a spacious, multistory addition to the original building, as well as a new expanded parking lot, several playgrounds, an elevator and a full commercial kitchen, January said. Though unfinished, the new rooms were beginning to bear hints of their future purpose on Friday, with cubbies taking shape in some spaces and miniature bathroom amenities in others.
The center plans to add up to 15 new teachers by next fall, in addition to several other operational positions.
“During the pandemic, Addison County lost more child care slots than any county in the state,” said Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison.
A 2022 analysis by the Burlington child care nonprofit Let’s Grow Kids found nearly 70% of infants likely to need care in Addison County did not have access to any regulated child care programs. Fifty-four percent of toddlers were in the same predicament, the report estimated.
Although Otter Creek will experience a huge jump in available slots — from its current daily maximum of 70 across two temporary locations to 139 in the single renovated building on Weybridge Street by next fall — there are currently 250 people on the waitlist, January said.
“It’s a big deal that this is happening,” said Hardy. “I don’t think it’s going to solve the entire problem.”
‘We fixed the business model, to an extent’
The two largest sources of funding for the expansion project were capital and land gifts from Middlebury College, the county’s largest employer and the project’s “biggest partner,” according to January, and congressionally directed spending from the office of former U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Middlebury College’s contributions add up to more than $5 million, and Leahy’s office earmarked more than $3.5 million via Let’s Grow Kids.
The child care center is still actively raising funds, January said, but does not anticipate any substantial, lingering debts. New levels of public support, in combination with her organization’s new structure, have given January confidence in the center’s financial outlook.
According to Aly Richards, CEO of Let’s Grow Kids, the heart of Vermont’s child care problem historically lay not in initial capital for projects but rather in their long-term sustainability.
Act 76, which passed in 2023 via a veto override in the Vermont Legislature, commits $125 million annually to the state’s child care system in part via a .44% payroll tax. Families making up to 575% of the federal poverty level were newly eligible for tuition subsidies that year, and the state began paying out those subsidies at higher weekly rates.
“We fixed the business model, to an extent,” Richards said. “The money goes specifically to parents, who now can … better afford child care, and to early educators, who can have more resources to actually run their program.”
The state has seen 1,700 new child care slots and more than 100 new providers open since the act passed two years ago. Previously, more programs were closing than opening each quarter, and low pay combined with poor benefits made retention and hiring difficult, Richards said.
Under the new funding system and with a larger organizational scale, January said she has been able to increase the center’s salary floor to $20 per hour and add a retirement plan. Staff also now have vision and dental insurance, but health insurance coverage, while “more feasible,” is still a future goal.
January said the majority of the families she serves receive some tuition coverage, which can be equally transformative.
Without the subsidies Munro stands to receive, her cost for child care would exceed her take-home pay each month. While her husband, David, also works as a professor at Middlebury College, Munro may have needed to quit her job without tuition assistance.
“Our taxes are high,” Munro said. “We invest a lot into our school systems, so it makes sense to be investing a lot into early early child care.”
The impact of well-funded child care on the health of the state’s workforce should not be understated, Richards said.
“There’s a massive return on investment for our economy and for businesses,” she said.
Otter Creek Child Center is not the only recent expansion to the Addison County child care landscape. The Red Clover Child Center in Middlebury’s congregational church, The Growing Tree in Addison and other providers have sprung up in the area over the past two years.
Michelle Bishop, who runs The Growing Tree, previously worked for the state’s federally funded Head Start program and observed the intense demand for child care providers through that job. Her program opened last month with a capacity of 20 and is still on a shoestring budget to some extent, she said.
Bishop said it would not have been financially possible to open the center without public assistance from Act 76. Roughly 80% of her attendees receive tuition assistance through the program, which gives the organization some stability.
“It’s not a profitable thing,” she said. “That’s not the point, but it will keep itself alive.”
Hardy said projects like Bishop’s and January’s are a huge step forward for the county, as both a public service and a driver for the local economy. She said Vermont’s new funding provisions make the state a national leader for child care.
“We’re very much on the cutting edge,” Hardy said.
