By Ben Fox
When we think about economic development, topics like job creation, low-income housing, and infrastructure improvement take center stage. Early Childcare is often overlooked, despite touching on all these categories.
Wings Early Childhood Center provides the only licensed Infant and Toddler Care Center in Pagosa Springs. Wings provides 33 daily slots across the ages 6 weeks to 3 years old and serves 45 families (due to staggered schedules) with these unique Infant and Toddler programs.
Without Wings, at least one parent of most of these children would have to remain home caring for their infant or toddler. 45 parents might leave the workforce, adding 20% more open jobs to Pagosa’s existing workforce shortage.
These same caregivers, assuming they are out of the workforce until their child is old enough to enter other preschools, are set to lose an average of $500,000 of lifetime earnings due to directly lost wages, missed compounding raises, and lost promotion opportunities.
Making housing affordable
Housing affordability is a major talking point in our community. Unfortunately, building housing is an expensive and slow solution. A single apartment in a subsidized housing complex will cost $200,000 or more to build, plus monthly rent subsidies and maintenance.
How does childcare help with this? One of the most straightforward ways to make housing more affordable is to increase employment opportunities and increase income for both caregivers.
The median per capita income in Archuleta County is about $45,000/year. With an average rent of $2,200/month ($26,400/yr), it’s simple to see why both parents need to work to get by. And when both parents work full-time, most of these families no longer need or qualify for low-income housing at all.
Wings is already here, providing 10 hours of care daily, for up to 77 total children across our Infant, Toddler, and Preschool programs. While their children are safely cared for, Wings parents work hard to provide for their families and overcome the high cost of living in our community.
Wings keeps the cost of attendance as low as possible. We offer a sliding scale of tuition, based on a family’s income and household size to help families who earn too much for federally subsidized childcare but couldn’t justify full tuition. 80% of our families pay less than $5/hour for care.
Tuition income only covers about 40% of the operating costs of the infant and toddler programs. This is despite Wings owning their building outright, using solar to keep electricity bills low, and operating with a single salaried administrator.
In addition to the Infant and Toddler programs, Wings operates a 44-student nature-based preschool. Due to larger classrooms and other funding sources, a preschool can operate at a slight profit, somewhat offsetting the costs of the younger children. This is also why the other preschools in town don’t offer infant and toddler care.
We work hard to research and write for grants. This summer, we are kicking off major fundraising events, including our Grand Gala. We are disciplined in turning off the lights, water, and minimizing material waste. Our volunteer Board of Directors provides financial management and school maintenance at no cost to the school.
So what causes the gap?
Wings doesn’t cut corners on staffing and quality – our lead Toddler teacher boasts over 15 years of direct childcare experience. Our Infant Program employs a full-time Licensed Practical Nurse. We operate far below licensed staff/child ratios – with our infant room often having 3 caregivers for just 8 babies. We recently completed our annual licensing inspection without a single violation! In February, we implemented a NAEYC-aligned curriculum for the entire school, alongside comprehensive developmental assessment tools.
We provide breakfasts, lunches, and afternoon snacks made from scratch in our own commercial kitchen. Our cook bakes fresh muffins for breakfast, serves favorites like pesto pasta with roasted cauliflower or chicken fajitas for lunch, and never serves canned or jarred fruit! For our full-time students, we serve half of the meals they will eat in a week and we feel obligated to do that with healthy options.
Wings serves about 90% of all the children in Archuleta County receiving CCCAP funding (federal childcare funding) and this reimbursement rate is far below the cost of care. The political back and forth briefly disrupted this funding entirely in January and has created doubts about if it will persist. Despite the challenge, we believe that all children, regardless of family income, deserve the best possible start to their lives.
So what’s the big number?
You must be wondering, what is the cost of all of this?
Wings, a 501c3 Charitable Organization, has an annual deficit of about $200,000 — close to the cost of building a single subsidized housing unit, or paving ¼ mile of road. We rely on increasingly competitive and underfunded grants and private donations to cover this gap.
We don’t have the established donor base and multi-million-dollar endowment of other preschool programs (who don’t take on the cost of infants and toddlers) and some of Pagosa’s other more well-established non-profit organizations.
And so, we are close to draining the remainder of our cash reserves.
How can you help?
Wings is a 501c3 Charitable Organization. You can learn about our school, our upcoming fundraising event, or access our donation platform through www.wingsearlychildhood.org . If you can’t help financially, instead reach out to your County Commissioners. Advocate for consideration of Early Childcare, especially costly and underserved Infant and Toddlers, as a fundamental part of our community’s infrastructure planning and investment.
Ben Fox is Executive Director, Wings Early Childhood Center