I-TEAM: Families, child-care providers hang from a financial cliff

WAYNESBORO, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Hundreds of local families lost financial help with child care over the last two months. Across the state, it adds up to thousands.

This comes after pandemic money to daycares stopped and deductibles in Georgia’s child-care subsidy program went into effect.

State officials can’t say the child-care deductible is the reason why so many families have recently lost their child-care subsidy.

However, the I-TEAM uncovered lost funding is the reason many daycare owners gave when closing their doors over when funding stopped – weakening the already crumbling foundation of our local workforce.

Waynesboro is officially the bird dog capital of the world.

Unofficially, it’s the child capital of the river region

Kids make up nearly a third of the town’s population.

Nearly half live in poverty. That’s one and half times the rate in Augusta-Richmond County and twice the rate in Georgia.

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Shatoria Ratkins is part owner of A Child’s World Daycare & Academy.

“We have free play. We do snacks,” Ratkins said.

“If they’re here late enough, we also do dinner.”

That’s a long day.

“That’s a very long day,” Ratkins said.

“Parents are having to work two jobs, or their main job is asking for 12 hours.”

A 9-to-5 job is a luxury in Waynesboro. More than half of the families work in industries that require shift work.

A licensed, quality-rated daycare with a late after-school program is the foundation of the town’s workforce.

“I want to say like now the house is on fire, right? Because you have a lot of different things going on,” Ratkins said.

A worker at Chick-fil-A earns more an hour on average than a worker at a daycare in Augusta.

Turnover in child care was a problem prior to the pandemic, but the mixture of COVID and kids was like putting lighter fluid on the already burning industry.

“There’s a lot of people who are struggling, a lot of people who are struggling and they just can’t keep up,” Ratkins said.

Georgia’s child-care stabilization program helped keep the fire at bay through the past three years, but funding stopped in September.

“The money kind of came in and like held them over. and now it’s kind of like back to where they were or something even worse,” Ratkins said.

We discovered more than 100 daycares closed or changed ownership this year in Georgia, half of them in just the past two months.

Among the reasons the I-TEAM discovered: “loss of funding,” “difficulty recruiting and/or retaining staff,” “operating costs too high.”

“So they’re like, they’re closing their doors, they’re downsizing and depending on where you located, if you downsize a classroom enough, it becomes like it’s not even worth it to stay open,” Ratkins said.

Davis Lil Angels, less than a mile from A Child’s World in Waynesboro, closed its doors a week after funding stopped.

Meanwhile, centers that are open have a waiting list as they adjust to a sudden surge in enrollment.

“We’re over into the spring of next year,” Ratkins said.

Ratkins’ friends who are also in the business have a similar waitlist, she said.

Long waitlists are only half the battle for low-income working parents.

“So for the pandemic, for three years, parents who were receiving CAPS paid nothing. The state covered it all. And then as of Oct. 1st, that stopped. And so parents are now responsible for the family fee,” Ratkins said.

More than half of the kids enrolled at Ratkins’ daycare and after-school program are on child-care subsidies.

“We’ve had parents who’ve had to, like, enroll their kids because they’re like, ‘I just can’t do it, you know,’ because they receive raises on their jobs, but they’re not, they’re in the same place they were before the pandemic,” Ratkins said.

Forty percent fewer families are receiving subsidies to help with child care in Augusta compared to this time last year.

“Things are either going slipping on one hand or they’re going to just they’re going to take their kids out because they just can’t afford it and they’re going to leave their kids with grandma or a cousin or like i said, our older sibling is going to have to now provide that care,” Ratkins said.

Or the parent leaves the workforce.

State officials told the I-TEAM they are unable to associate the reason for not participating with the reintroduction of the deductible or family fee that went into effect for service weeks beginning on or after Oct. 2, 2023.

“I think a lot of people top down, like i say, didn’t realize how foundational our industry is,” Ratkins said. “So it was already shaky. It was already kind of burning.”

Now it’s a five-alarm fire.

Congress and state leaders in Georgia are scrambling to respond.

Sen. Raphael Warnock is among some in Congress pushing to extend funds to daycares. Some are also wanting to create a program where Head Start teachers can work while earning their associate degree.

Meanwhile on the state level, some representatives are looking for ways to get companies to provide child care to their workforce.

Another I-TEAM investigation

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