By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff
At the end of the Tuesday Assembly meeting, parent Lauren Wild gave members information about the current state of local child care services, and asked the Assembly to consider putting a line item in the budget to address the problem.
“The child care crisis is ever present for hundreds of families in Sitka every day,” she told the Assembly. “Any way you look at it, something needs to be done at a local level ... I think Sitka needs to invest in our youngest people, and have a line item in the budget that includes child care.”
Wild is a member of the ad hoc Early Childhood Coalition whose meetings are open to the public, 10 to 10:30 a.m. Tuesdays. Zoom sign-up is available at sagelk@sitkaschools.org.
Wild gave the clerk a fact sheet to be distributed to Assembly members about child care in Sitka, including the number of facilities, the number of children they can accommodate, and challenges that keep child care centers from operating at full capacity.
Only one licensed facility in town accepts infants (0 to 18 months), and it has a capacity of eight. Two facilities accept toddlers (18 months to 3 years), and the total capacity for infants and toddlers is 15. Based on the estimated 120 infants and 120 toddlers in Sitka, licensed facilities are available for only 7 percent of the infants and 12 percent of the toddlers.
“This to me is just not enough and extends to not being able to raise a family here anymore, people leaving and kind of that downward spiral of losing education funding, and opportunities. And our jobs and economy suffer,” she said.
Wild’s fact sheet also shows monthly costs, hours of operation of the centers, a list of providers, and population estimates for the child care age groups. Links to the child care centers are provided.
The back page of the fact sheet lists barriers to finding child care, such as the lack of employees, lack of benefits at some facilities, and the low number of facilities.
The solutions given include looking at models in other communities, boosting child care pay, and recognizing early childhood education as a career pathway by offering child care certification programs to high school students.
“The crux of the problem is that our child care facilities can’t operate at capacity because by definition early childhood education is not a profitable business model, so child care centers can’t pay employees a competitive wage with benefits,” Wild said Wednesday.
“Beyond building incentives for early childhood education as a career path there needs to be investment in this sector to support the workforce,” Wild said. “The reason we’re in this situation is no one thinks it’s their responsibility to provide services for people ages 0 to 5. The government doesn’t provide services for people 0 to 5 the way they do for people 5 and older in the form of the public school system.”
Wild is part of Child Care Now, a working group of the Early Childhood Coalition which has been meeting for two years following the school district’s “community conversations” related to early childhood and family needs. Before the COVID pandemic, the coalition had identified affordable and available child care as a key need, said Kari Sagel, who is part of the Early Childhood Coalition.
Grady Love, 1, is entertained by audience members at Tuesday night’s Assembly meeting while his mom, Lauren Wild, testifies about the child care shortage in Sitka under persons to be heard. (Sentinel Photo)
“At that time the topic was care for infants and care during nontraditional times: summer times and weekend times - those were also critical needs,” she said. “Since then we’ve fallen, and we have fewer spots for children, and we hadn’t addressed infant and nontraditional needs.”
The Health Summit last year chose “create a stellar childcare system in Sitka” as a goal last year, a project the Early Childcare Coalition has been working on.
Sagel called the childcare shortage in Sitka a crisis.
“This is just anecdotal, but I was just at a meeting yesterday where an agency said they offered somebody a job, the person wanted the job but expressly said they couldn’t take it because they didn’t have childcare,” Sagel said. “Multiply that by every agency every business in town, every school in town. We do have a crisis and it’s not just a crisis of families not having childcare, it’s a crisis of how do we maintain the economy, how we maintain businesses, how do we maintain services when people aren’t free to work.”
Sagel said the coalition has a number of knowledgeable representatives who work in the field of childcare, who are “seeking capacity for addressing this issue.”
“That’s where we need large employers and municipalities, the state and federal government to step in,” Sagel said. “It’s not just Childcare Now or the Early Childhood Coalition. The city of Sitka has to come together, that’s the city, the coalition, the tribe and families - we have to come together to solve the problem.”
Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz said the shortage of childcare appears to be a statewide and nationwide issue.
“Places are looking at how to deal with it,” he said. “Right now we have more need than service providers. It’s a conversation about, how do we get the required level of service back into town.”
As to whether it’s a matter for the city or Assembly, he said it should be more community-based.
“That’s a conversation for the residents to have not just the Assembly,” Eisenbeisz said. “It’s a larger discussion than just seven members.”
Wild said those interested in early child care issues or who have questions about her fact sheet can contact her directly at lauren.a.wild@gmail.com.
She also pointed to threadalaska.org as a source about child care, including funding assistance, training for providers, certification, and licensing for those thinking about starting their own facility. The site also lists resources for current child care employers and facilities.
