Dani Clark began this year with a newborn daughter and a need to find a day care spot to enable her to return to work.
What she learned left the new Springfield mom stunned.
“Most of the day cares have been pretty good about getting back to me,” she said. “But they all tell me the same thing. They can’t give me a definite answer on their wait list. One told me they don’t expect any availability until April or May – of next year.”
With the closure of two major Springfield child care providers in the past year, things have gone from bad to worse. Children’s House at Central Baptist Church closed in May and Building Blocks shut its doors in December. These closures left parents jostling to find places for their little ones.
“It just makes your heart sink, and your stomach feels sick,” said Emily Lynch, a mom whose 2-year-old son attended Children’s House. “Where am I going to place my baby? I don’t know anywhere else in town.
“I scrambled the second that I heard that Children’s House was closing, I called anywhere and everywhere I could think of. It was really hard because while there are half-day options for preschool, I had to find a full-time, Monday through Friday, 8-to-5 day care. It was horrible.”
Ultimately, she succeeded in finding a place for her son, but other parents weren’t as fortunate. The demand for child care far exceeds the number of positions available.
For Clark, a veterinary technician, this has left her wondering when she can return to work.
“I do have a family friend lined up over the summer that is willing to watch her a few days a week for me,” she said. “When she goes back to work at the preschool that she works at in August for the next school year, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
She is not alone.
Day care directors throughout the area say they are continually rebuffing parents seeking a place for their children – particularly infants.
“I have over 100 infants on my waiting list,” said Kasi Maisenbacher, owner of Kardinal Kids on the west side of Springfield. “I only have four infant slots. It’s because babies are so labor-intensive, and it’s hard to find people who have the qualifications to care for babies.”
Maisenbacher, who opened her center on Feb. 3, said the biggest challenge to operating a day care is not only hiring kind, nurturing individuals but finding staff with those characteristics who also meet all the criteria required by the state.
“Some of the retired teachers that came to me said, ‘You know, I miss the kids.’ I think they would have been fabulous in the classroom, but (I told them), ‘I’m sorry, you were a high school teacher. You don’t have the early childhood credits. I can’t put you in a lead teacher position that you want.’ I had other people come to me with a master’s in social work, but I couldn’t even put them in a position because they didn’t have early childhood (credentials),” she said.
And there is the rub; owners of area day cares interviewed by Illinois Times say the underlying reason for the day care shortage is the inability to attract and retain qualified employees.
Stephanie Neumann, who with her husband owns Capital City Learning Center in Springfield and Kountry Kids Learning Center in New Berlin and Rushville, said while staffing has always been challenging, it became much worse following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We always had a quality staff and a very low turnover. But since 2020, we lost a lot of staff,” Neumann said. “They did not return. They either moved out of state or they decided to be a stay-at-home parent. It’s really been a challenge since then to rebuild.”
While the state offers subsidies to boost the pay of some day care workers, inflation has eroded those gains.
Tracie Sampson is an adjunct early childhood instructor at Lincoln Land Community College and owns New Salem Children’s Center in Petersburg.
“There are not enough teachers who want to do the hard work,” she said. “We’re starting to be able to offer them higher pay. Anyone with a high school diploma could be DCFS teacher-qualified in a matter of months — if they put the hard work in.”
The ongoing day care shortage remains a sore point not just for businesses but for the community, she noted.
“We still have those families that will call and say, ‘I’m going back to work in six or eight weeks. When can I get my child enrolled?’ And I’m like, ‘Next year.’ They might be enrolled by the time they’re 2 or 3,” Sampson said.
LLCC is the primary place in the region where child care workers can receive the necessary training to be credentialed, said Kalith Smith, the college’s dean of social sciences and business.
“Most students are part of the incumbent workforce,” he said. “They’re already working in the field and trying to gain additional knowledge. We’ve been really responsive to what the community needs. All our classes are offered online. The practicum where they come here and work in our child care center is the one piece of it that really has to be face-to-face.”
He added most students in the program are eligible for their tuition to be paid by the state.
But still the day care shortage persists.
Beth Munn, a Springfield woman who adopted two foster children, remains frustrated by the community’s day care situation.
“Foster parents don’t get any notice when there are kids coming our way,” she said. “I’m a single mom. I work full time. And when I got an infant, I didn’t have any day care. You can call every single day care around and everybody will say, ‘No, we’ll put you on our waiting list, but the waiting list is over a year long.’
“There’s just nowhere to go. And honestly, it’s just been by the grace of God that I have gotten day care for my kids both times.”
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