Before and after school

Having recently observed a memorable wedding anniversary I started reflecting how marriage and families had changed over time.

When we got married in the mid-60s the average age of a man getting married was 23-24, while the woman was 20-21. Today, the average age of first marriages is 27-28 for women and 30-31 for men. One quarter of adults 25-50 never marry.

Back in 1965, the average married women gave birth to 2.9 to 3.2 children. Today’s married woman will give birth to 1.6 to 1.8 children. And in 1965, only one in three married women worked outside the home. Today, only one in four marriages have one parent staying home. Childcare costs are often the highest cost for young families.

According to the North Carolina Early Education Coalition, childcare costs $9,255 annually for an infant and $7,592 for a four-year old. These costs are especially hard on single-parent households.

North Carolina has a Child Care Subsidy program for low-income parents but sadly, it is pitifully small. Due to the lack of funding, only 22 percent of those who qualify for this assistance actually receive it. 95 of our 100 counties serve fewer than one-third of the children who would qualify; 76 counties serve 25 percent or fewer and 15 counties serve less than 15 percent. And we haven’t even touched on the shortage of acceptable childcare facilities.

Who can blame young people for waiting or even postponing having children?

North Carolina has a childcare crisis. With fewer young people having children we will face a potentially large future labor shortage. Ohio recently estimated their state economy loses $5.48 billion per year in revenues because insufficient childcare coverage keeps parents out of the labor force.

Clearly this childcare crisis should be a major focus when our legislature convenes in early January. Other states understand the problem and are offering innovative programs to help struggling young parents. Missouri is a good example.

Missouri employers sign up to offer childcare benefits to workers, with the costs split among the state, parents and employers, who claim a tax break.

This program makes a lot of sense. Employers win because they attract and retain good workers. Parents win because their childcare costs are reduced. And the state wins because they help encourage profitable businesses and a healthy workforce able to pay taxes.

Other states are seeing the value of helping parents with childcare. Some are offering vouchers to families to pay for childcare costs. Others are encouraging new childcare operators cost-sharing programs, or giving grants to build new or expand existing facilities.

While researching this piece I talked with the head of one of North Carolina’s best charter schools about his ideas. I was blown away when he acknowledged that infant to 5-year-old childcare is important but posed a question that stopped me in my tracks: What happens to children after school dismisses?

Thousands of North Carolina schoolchildren get on a bus and go to a home where parents may or may not be there. Most working parents can’t just knock off at 4 pm and go home to care for a child, so large numbers are left alone at home. They can’t get help with homework and sometimes get into trouble. Surveys by North Carolina’s Afterschool Alliance discovered only 12 percent of children are enrolled in an afterschool program.

 About 80 percent of the parents surveyed wanted their children to go to such a program but there are few available and those that are available are expensive. Many want their schools to have afterschool programs, but schools have a hard time finding qualified people willing to do it. Teachers are exhausted and don’t want to extend their already long days. Pay for these “part-time” jobs is generally low, there are transportation issues and additional insurance issues to be dealt with. Finally, as my educator friend pointed out, school systems and educators get graded on test scores their students achieve…no benefit is ascribed to providing excellent before or after school childcare.

In urban areas, like Wake County, organizations like the YMCA and Boys and Girls Clubs offer good before and after school programs, with moderate charges to parents ranging from $150 to $400 per month. Unfortunately, there are not enough of these programs. In rural areas, they don’t exist on any appropriate scale.

If you want good advice about how to improve education for our children, we should spend time talking to those in the field. Too frequently we get bogged down in debates that don’t really matter to education outcomes. It would pay us to talk less and listen more to people working closest to the children.

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965.  Contact him at tomcamp@ncspin.com