Courtesy of the Brunswick Child Care Program

Brunswick was forced to temporarily shutter the child care program hosted by its Parks and Recreation Department this month, citing difficulties finding qualified people to take care of the kids.

On Sept. 5, the program notified the state and families that it was temporarily closing after its last employee, a full-time lead teacher, resigned with a one day notice. Since then, the service’s license has been left on an “active-on-hold status” as it rushes to fill desperately needed positions.

“It’s a really a hard thing to kind of navigate,” said Deputy Director Sabrina Best. “…It’s kind of been a pretty rough few months.”

The market for child care workers, which Best described as the “wild wild west,” is growing smaller, she said. On top of this, Best said that few workers are giving child care centers enough time to recover when they quit. She described the situation — both at the day care in in the broader hiring market — as a crisis.

When the day care was temporarily closed, it was serving one classroom of five students, ages 14 to 28 months. Best said that the parents were disappointed but not surprised given the summer’s staffing challenges. In order to reopen, Best said that the day care needs to hire five full-time employees — a director, followed by four lead teachers.

“We were fortunate to have some recent high school graduates and college students help us out over the summer, but knew they would be leaving us in August and tried to be proactive in hiring to fill their hours,” Best said.

The Brunswick program has been searching for new hires since the beginning of 2024. It spent over $700 in advertising on websites like Indeed and Facebook, placed an ad in The Cryer, a monthly paper in the Midcoast, reached out to over 30 Facebook groups and tried several other strategies to get positions filled with little luck.

Wages for child care education positions vary. Job site Indeed.com reports that the average rate is $16.16 per hour for a day care teacher, and the Maine Children Alliance reported that 2023 wages were as low as $14.90 per hour. To stay competitive, the Brunswick program is offering an hourly rate of $22-25 for a director position, and $20-23 for lead teaching positions with health, dental, vision, paid holiday and paid training benefits. Still, positions remained unfilled.

For many, the struggle with keeping a day care open and functioning at full capacity stems back to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While The Times Record could not reach many other day cares in the area — many numbers had been disconnected ù one day care, Bright Beginnings at the Landing, noted that while it was currently doing well in terms of maintaining sufficient staff for its year-round care for 65 students, things were simpler before COVID hit.

“Hiring before the pandemic was definitely much easier,” said owner and director Kelsey Alexander.

She said that her day care is not currently in need for staff (and has not needed to hire in well over a year), but had difficulty finding workers in the past. During the pandemic, she said many workers figured out ways to stay home by finding remote jobs or going on pandemic-era unemployment. Many did not return once COVID restrictions were lifted.

The Brunswick Child Care Program, which was formerly a preschool for about 60 years, closed in 2020 when the Brunswick School Department opened a preschool. It reopened in March 2023 after some encouragement from the state.

“When we went to notify our Child Care Licensing Specialist in 2020 that we would be ending our preschool program, they strongly encouraged us to consider serving early childhood ages due to the growing demand,” Best said.

With this reopening came an increased demand for workers. With the preschool program, Best said that only five part time staff were needed for about 20-25 hours a week from September to June each year. Now, they need five full-time staff, and, ideally, four part time assistant teachers and at four to eight floating staff.

“It was easier to find someone that wanted to work a 4-5 hour shift and only needed to commit to a school year versus full-time and year-round,” Best said. “The pool of candidates grew smaller [post-pandemic] as so many workers became burnt out and expectations on caregivers increased.”

It doesn’t help that the amount of Maine child care centers have increased by 14% in the past 10 years, according to the Maine Children’s Alliance.

Best said that since so many places are hiring, it’s easy for full-time employees to leave quickly, often without giving a two-week notice. Many child care centers also are working to prevent their own closures, Best said, and will often ask prospective employees to start the next day, sometimes without checking references or experience in the industry.

She said this often leaves day cares and families scrambling, sometimes with only a few hours notice. As centers continue to open and long-time staffers retire, a domino effect of sourcing workers from other centers creates hiring gaps and, ultimately, closures.

“The pressure and stress that puts on everyone involved, not knowing if staff is going to show up, is tremendous,” she said.

To learn more about the Brunswick Child Care Program, visit brunswickme.org.

For those interested in viewing open positions in the program, visit brunswickme.gov/Jobs.aspx.