ORLANDO, Fla. — The lights of the Aunt Dolores Child Care Center shone brightly through the windows as dark clouds gathered overhead. Colorful, child-like murals on the building’s walls contrasted with the threatening weather of an approaching summer storm.
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Inside, Chad Chernet looked around the lobby of his preschool – and spoke of a different storm that he said was already crashing down on the Sunshine State.
Preschools, he said, were going belly up after years of struggling with nonexistent profit margins. It’s a trend that has been dubbed the “child care cliff.”
“We have some preschools who have already closed their doors,” Chernet said. “I don’t believe it’s reached the level to garner the attention of our officials, but I believe in the next six months, you’re going to see a large, a higher majority of schools start to close down.”
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Chernet’s concerns weren’t just anecdotal. A June 2023 study by The Century Foundation estimated that 2,196 Florida daycares and preschools would close down beginning later that year, affecting 212,721 children.
The wave is happening because for years now, child care programs have been subsidized by the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan, which provided funding for preschools to tackle long-delayed maintenance projects and raise salaries of staff above the minimum wage.
That funding dried up last year.
The economics of a daycare and a preschool are unique in that the center cannot increase their profits in the same way other industries can. If a business like an airline doesn’t want to raise its prices, its leaders can find a way to increase capacity, such as by adding more seats.
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Preschools don’t have that ability due to mandatory ratios, which require one teacher for every six children in the facility’s care.
At the same time, families struggling with inflation often cannot afford higher prices, which already run $1,200 to $1,500 per month.
Chernet said it was hampering the state’s economy by keeping some otherwise able adults out of the workforce.
“If you make $30,000 or $40,000 a year, and you’re paying $15,000, $16,000 roughly for childcare costs, you’re not going to go to work,” he said.
The struggle for centers to remain afloat couldn’t come at a worse time as many families are struggling to pay their bills and need whatever income they can get. Much of Florida is already considered a child care desert, where there aren’t enough options and wait lists stretch a year and a half or longer.
Chernet, who was interviewed in the days after the Biden-Trump debate, expressed frustration that childcare wasn’t a bigger political topic and neither candidate offered a substantiative answer to the only question posed.
He said Florida — or preferably, the federal government — should begin to underwrite some of the costs of preschools, or even move for a universal preschool system.
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The idea isn’t terribly far-fetched. Studies have estimated that Florida would earn eight or nine times its investment in such a program by 2050 due to economic benefits that include fewer prisoners, higher wages and more people in the workforce.
“They subsidize oil, they subsidize the energy sector, the automobile sector, the pharmaceutical sector,” Chernet listed. “Why is it that the wealthiest country in the world cannot subsidize early childhood education?”
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