Could the Silicon Heartland Boom Compound Central Ohio’s Child Care Problem?

When Ginger Dehus’ phone rings early in the morning, she holds her breath and tries to stay calm.

“Literally, I just hope it isn’t someone calling to tell me they’re quitting,” says Dehus, the owner of Almost Home Daycare in Newark. “If I don’t have staff, I don’t have a day care.”

Three years after COVID-19 devastated staffing at child care centers across the country, workers remain elusive despite a receding pandemic, pay increases and enticements such as more flexible working hours. While staffing has rebounded in many industries, that isn’t the case for what many call the workforce behind the workforce.

Action for Children CEO Eric Karolak has a blunt assessment. “We are in a state of crisis,” says Karolak, whose organization is a resource and referral agency for Central Ohio child care. “The effects of the pandemic are lingering, and the crisis that existed before the pandemic is still with us. The situation is less dire than in 2020 but overall, it’s troubling.”

Karolak says four out of five child care providers can’t fill staffing needs, resulting in empty classrooms and lengthy waitlists for families. That’s just one of the concerning statistics from the agency’s recent Central Ohio Child Care Provider Survey, completed late last year.

Only 64 percent of student slots are filled at centers and at-home providers in the seven counties served by Action for Children (Delaware, Fairfield, Franklin, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union), compared with 62 percent in 2021. If all providers were at full capacity, about 7,500 more children could be served, the survey found.

Dehus, whose center has 80 spots, had a stack of job applications before the pandemic. Now, she’s constantly hunting for staff. A recent online employment ad resulted in a sole unqualified applicant. “I thought the staffing would sort itself out after COVID,” says Dehus, who has operated her center since 2009. But despite boosting hourly pay from a range of $9–$12 to $12–$15 and allowing plenty of job flexibility, Dehus remains in “survival mode.”

She can’t raise wages more because 97 percent of her students are on government-subsidized tuition, whose amount is fixed. “I depend on what the state gives me,” she says. “If McDonald’s, for example, wants to raise pay, it can charge more for its hamburgers and fries. I can’t do that.”

Even child care centers that don’t accept subsidized students can’t keep hiking tuition, Karolak says. Regionally, the average annual cost for infant care is $13,100—similar to a year’s tuition at a state university.

Action for Children’s provider survey found that, already, more than half of all providers had raised tuition since September 2021 and 54 percent expected to raise it again before December. Madison, Pickaway and Union counties had the highest increases—79 percent—by October 2022, while Franklin County had the lowest at 51 percent.

“Not enough staff limits enrollment, which reduces revenue and causes tuition to rise—an unstable reckoning that shortchanges families, employers and communities,” the survey states.

Potential Impact of the Silicon Heartland

The situation is expected to become more troubling in the next few years as tech giant Intel builds two semiconductor factories in Licking County that are projected to employ 3,000 workers. Intel plans to begin manufacturing at the New Albany International Business Park site in 2025 and could add six additional factories after that, the company has said.

The influx of thousands of construction workers followed by a raft of permanent employees means nearby child care needs will explode.

“Clearly, child care already is a problem, and then you add in 3,000 employees to the area, which could potentially mean thousands more children,” Dehus says. “Not only will Intel employees need child care, but all the infrastructure around them—fast-food restaurants, oil-change shops, health care facilities—will require a considerable increased need for child care.”

While much attention has been paid to the housing required for Intel’s future workforce, few have talked about the impending child care needs surrounding what’s been called Ohio’s biggest economic development project ever—let alone tried to put a number on it. The Licking County Chamber of Commerce has no statistics on how many workers are expected to need care services, says Jennifer McDonald, its president and CEO.

Kelly Fuller, vice president of talent and workforce development for the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, says businesses continue to reach out to the chamber regarding their child care struggles. Some larger companies are moving toward offering on-site care or subsidies to help cover the cost, but public-private solutions are needed, she says.

“The problem is not going to go away,” Fuller says. “If I’m a worker and transportation is a problem, I can take a bus for 1½ hours if I need to. I can compromise on that. But I can’t compromise on child care. A main driver for lots of folks leaving their jobs has been to care for their kids or grandkids.”

Karolak says he believes Central Ohio’s economic growth is at risk unless the problems plaguing child care are addressed. “We are so blessed in the Columbus region to have the economic growth that everyone else in the state wants,” he says. “But that means more people coming to our community who will add to our child care demand.”

The number of local care providers has fallen 1.5 percent since the pandemic began, and capacity has fallen by 2.5 percent, Karolak says. Even more concerning: Capacity for low-income children is down 5 percent.

Colin Page McGinnis, CEO of the nonprofit SproutFive child care programs, doesn’t mince words when asked about the landscape. “The economic make-or-break right now is child care,” Page McGinnis says. “Now is the time for us to be a little more bold. Let’s not have the thing that keeps businesses from coming here be child care.”

SproutFive, formerly known as South Side Early Learning, is trying to reimagine child care by setting up locations in local businesses, education facilities, housing complexes and other nonprofit organizations. It operates at four locations, serving 230 students, and plans to open two more sites this summer.

The nonprofit also has a child development research lab that studies creative child care solutions as well as one-year, paid fellowships for aspiring teachers. Page McGinnis says the goal is to train 100 teachers a year through the program starting in 2024.

“There was so much conversation about child care during the pandemic, and I thought maybe COVID was the silver lining that would bring some true reform and investment into the field,” Page McGinnis says. “But the conversation has really stopped. The burden has transitioned back to providers, but not to solutions about how we can support the child care sector as a community.”

Page McGinnis worries about the timing of Intel’s entry into Central Ohio. “It takes time to get programs up and running, and families can’t wait four to six months for child care,” he says. “This isn’t a 2025 problem. We need to think about the child care workforce now.”

CHIPS Act’s Child Care Mandate

The U.S. Department of Commerce weighed in on child care needs in the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act. It requires semiconductor manufacturers who receive at least $150 million in federal funding to submit plans detailing how they’ll provide factory and construction workers with affordable, accessible, reliable, high-quality child care.

Intel spokesperson Jen Detwiler of Steiner Public Relations said Intel would not comment about its child care plans beyond its official statement: “We work to create an environment that allows employees to bring their whole selves to work and cultivate a sense of belonging for everyone. Access to affordable and reliable child care is an important part of this goal. We provide best-in-class benefits packages for Intel employees, including child care programs with tuition discounts at local child care centers and emergency backup child care resources.”

Karolak, for one, hopes that Intel’s needs will expand care more broadly. A new Action for Children report, “CHIPS and Child Care in America’s Silicon Heartland,” outlines ways Intel and other businesses can create and implement child care for workers. It suggests CHIPS Act funding recipients adopt a “mixed approach,” including setting up on-site locations, utilizing community-based care, contracting with providers to pay for a certain number of student spots per year, subsidizing workers’ child care expenses and funding “operational sustainability grants” for purposes such as child care startups, staff wages or transportation.

Karolak says Intel is aware of his agency’s report, but he’s not had discussions about how they plan to meet the CHIPS Act requirements. “It’s a remarkable thing the government has done, requiring semiconductor companies to create child care plans if they want federal money,” he says. “It’s the first time since World War II that the government has tied child care to an industry.”

Other efforts are in the works to improve the situation locally. Columbus State Community College is opening an on-campus center this fall that will serve 100 children from infant to pre-kindergarten. The center also will be used to train future child care workers.

A year ago, Franklin County commissioners partnered with Action for Children to create RISE, a program that provides 750 child care tuition scholarships a year to families just above the poverty line. The program, funded with $23 million in federal American Rescue Plan money, also gives thousands of dollars in grants to child care workers for rent and to providers who accept low-income students, improve their state ratings and expand hours.

“This is a strong start in the right direction, but it’s not the end-all-be-all,” says Commissioner Erica C. Crawley. “We are supporting families in the workforce who don’t make enough to pay full price for child care, and it’s been transformational for some families. We’re trying to pull families out of poverty and have more kids in high-quality programs that will help them be kindergarten ready.”

County officials also hope to build a 400-student child care center, largely for county and city employees, that would include drop-in care for parents with court business, Crawley says. It would be constructed Downtown on the site of the old county jail.

Additionally, the county has set aside money to support an early-learning program in Linden as part of its push to provide more affordable housing in the neighborhood.

The dire need for child care workers has even spawned a new Central Ohio business: Tandem. CEO Olivia Weinstock says the company originally helped families find gig workers such as babysitters and pet sitters but decided in September 2022 to exclusively focus on matching child care centers with workers.

Tandem has about 200 credentialed workers who can pick up shifts at local care providers. Centers pay Tandem a fee and can opt to hire workers full time after a three-week tryout, says Weinstock.

However, many—both within and outside the child care industry—agree that the sum of the measures being taken by governments, nonprofits and businesses isn’t nearly enough.

In April, business leaders across Ohio urged the state legislature to reinstate child care assistance they’d cut from Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget proposal. That funding includes: $150 million in American Rescue Plan funds for child care scholarships and increased center capacity; an expansion of publicly funded child care; and $46 million a year to expand preschool to 11,525 children.

“Make no mistake—this is a crisis that is also hamstringing our economy,” the letter to legislators says. “The lack of quality child care for children ages 3 and younger is costing our country $122 billion a year in lost earning, productivity and revenue, and Ohio’s economy loses an estimated $3.9 billion per year due to child care issues.”

Shaun Linton, owner of My Place Child Care & School Age Center in Newark, says the industry has been expected to raise its standards while the number of early education professionals has fallen dramatically because of poverty-level wages. “Until we figure out a basic financial support system for the child care industry, we can’t draw teachers to this field to even open up more spaces for families who are currently in need of care,” says Linton, who has been involved with child care for 22 years.

“I look forward to the day that we are viewed as equals, if not more important [than school-age teachers], as most brain development occurs within the first five years, and early educators have the unique ability to get things on the right track for children who otherwise struggle when reaching kindergarten,” Linton says.

This story is from the Columbus Parent section in the June 2023 issue of Columbus Monthly.