Pennsylvania early childhood teachers say child care system is in crisis

Megan Gherrity loves her job as a prekindergarten teacher at a child care center in Harrisburg — so much so that she has taken on multiple jobs to afford working there.

After wrapping up her regular workday educating 4- and 5-year-old children, Gherrity has previously had to head to part-time jobs in order to make ends meet in a field with notoriously low wages and often few or no benefits such as paid time off or health care.

Juggling several jobs at once has been exhausting for Gherrity, who lives in Dauphin with her husband and two young children. Still, she never wanted to leave her career in early childhood education. After being inspired by her third grade teacher to enter teaching, all she has wanted to do is be an educator. 

“I’ve never considered leaving. I’ve worked multiple jobs, and that’s been kind of my thing,” Gherrity said. “I love what I do so much that I couldn’t imagine not doing it. But to then assist in meeting needs, it’s just, OK, what can I work part time? How can I make extra money? What can I do to add to my wages, to bring in more of a livable wage in my family?” 

These days, Gherrity no longer has to juggle several jobs at once because her husband received a promotion, and they can now afford for her to focus on what she’s passionate about: early education.

“I’m fortunate that my husband has moved up in his office, and now that isn’t something that we have to consider, but it definitely was always, OK, how many jobs do I need to work in order to continue to provide our basic needs and what we need in our family? And I know that’s a trend. I know a lot of people won’t leave, but they’ll find, How much can I work? How many jobs can I have? And then that’s just even more burnout, because not only are you pouring in all day, then you’re going to job number two afterwards, and it can be exhausting.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro is now calling for an increase in state funding for early childhood education that advocates, including Gherrity, say will help to raise teachers’ wages and ensure educators won’t have to juggle multiple jobs in order to make ends meet.

The Democratic governor in his 2025-26 budget proposal calls for state lawmakers to allocate $55 million for early childhood education teachers. The details of that funding still have to be determined, and it needs to be approved by state lawmakers as part of the budget process, but the governor said it could include $1,000 in recruitment or retention bonuses for teachers at licensed child care centers that receive funding from a state program for low-income families. 

“Right now, we have 3,000 unfilled jobs in childcare,” Shapiro said in his Feb. 4 budget speech, according to the prepared transcript. “If we filled those jobs, 25,000 more children in Pennsylvania could have access to childcare, and parents could have the peace of mind that their kids are well taken care of so they can go to work.”

Child care advocates, including the Start Strong PA coalition and chambers of commerce throughout Pennsylvania, had pushed for Shapiro to include $284 million for early childhood teacher recruitment and retention but said they’re pleased with his $55 million proposal and hope it will be a first step in boosting funding for educators of young children.

“It is an absolute great step,” said Diane Barber, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association. “We haven’t had a singular investment specifically targeted for child care teachers, ever.”

“We’re talking about a significant investment,” Barber continued. “I mean significant in terms of policy investment, and in recognition that the child care system is in a crisis. And the crisis directly links back to teachers and our ability to employ and retain teachers.”

A history of low wages and thousands of job openings

Low wages and few benefits have long plagued early childhood education in Pennsylvania and nationwide. That’s in large part because there has been little public investment in a female-dominated field that’s frequently mischaracterized as babysitting instead of education, teachers, parents, and other advocates told the Pennsylvania Independent. They added that policymakers can undervalue the field in part because of the dated and often untrue idea that families will have other options for child care if they’re unable to afford or find professional child care, such as a parent being able to stay at home during the day or family members being available to look after children.

As of 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, the average hourly wage for child care workers in Pennsylvania is $15.42, or an average annual wage of $32,070. Meanwhile, the average annual wage for kindergarten teachers in Pennsylvania is $67,790. Parents, teachers, chamber of commerce leaders, and others said there should not be that kind of a wage discrepancy because child care is education and instructors, many of whom have advanced degrees, should be compensated for that work instead of treated as babysitters. 

“I have two kiddos in early childhood education right now, and it has changed their lives,” said Gherrity, whose children, ages 4 and 6, attend the CrossPoint Early Learning Center in Harrisburg. “It’s a quality place where my kids can go to receive an education, to set the foundations for all that they’re going to need to know before they head into the public school system, and to know that while I am working, they are being cared for, and their whole self is being nurtured.”

This history of low wages in early childhood education, together with a pandemic that has pushed thousands of people from their jobs nationwide and closed child care centers across the state and country, has left the commonwealth’s child care field in crisis, Barber said.

Pennsylvania’s child care workforce dropped by 40% between 2019 and 2023, according to the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. Many of the educators who left during the first years of the pandemic took higher-paying jobs and have not returned. There are about 3,000 open child care positions in Pennsylvania, according to a September 2024 survey from Start Strong PA, a group that advocates for affordable child care in Pennsylvania. 

In addition to thousands of job openings and, frequently, long waitlists of parents hoping to get their children into an early education setting, providers are struggling to get job applicants, let alone fill those positions, because of low wages, said Suzanne Brubacher, the executive director of CrossPoint Early Learning Center. 

“The reason that it’s so hard to get teachers, so hard to get anyone to come back, is because the wages are terrible,” Brubacher said. “They’ve always been terrible. And really, when COVID hit, for a hot minute we had everyone’s attention because they couldn’t live without us. We were the workforce behind the workforce.”

“So, for a hot minute, we thought that somebody was going to right the ship,” she continued. “Finally, someone was noticing how valuable and professional we really are. That did not happen. After COVID, we kind of fell by the wayside, and we went back to being glorified babysitters, and just nobody really thought that much money should be invested in this side of child care — of education, I should say.”

Now that is changing with Shapiro’s proposal, Brubacher said.

“He said, finally, this is a professional situation. This is a profession, and we need to pay them as professionals,” Brubacher said. 

Low wages for teachers and high costs for parents

While child care providers want to pay their teachers more, it’s not as simple as raising tuition rates in order to do so, Barber said. 

Child care costs are already stretching parents’ pockets, and Pennsylvania parents are struggling to pay for their children to receive an education in the years before kindergarten. Many parents simply can’t pay any more — which means, if providers’ operating costs rise enough, centers may be forced to close because they simply can’t generate the revenue they need, Barber said.

The Center for American Progress reported that in 2023, the most recent year for which there is data available, the average annual child care tuition for an infant in center-based care in Pennsylvania was $14,483. For a 4-year-old, that dipped to $12,097. The average household income in Pennsylvania was $43,104 in July 2024, according to U.S. Census data.

Despite the high costs for parents, the tuition they’re paying isn’t covering higher wages for educators, Barber said. She explained that, typically, 60% to 70% of child care program budgets goes to staff salaries. The rest goes to costs that have risen in recent years, such as food. Additionally, child care operators are regulated, which means they are limited in the number of children they can have in a classroom. Those regulations are a good thing, Barber said, but it means child care centers cannot increase the number of children in order to make more money. 

“It’s not like widgets, where we’re just going to send more cans through the processor, right?” Barber said. “It doesn’t work that way.”

While public K-12 schools are able to address these financial issues with federal, state and local funding, early childhood education does not receive anywhere close to the same kind of government support. If it did, advocates say, early childhood education could be free for students to attend, as public K-12 education is, and teachers could have higher wages.

In Pennsylvania, there are federal dollars that go to the Head Start program, which provides education for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds from low-income families. At the state level, the state-funded Pre-K Counts program provides education to 3- and 4-year-olds from those families.

Last year, in the 2024-25 budget, Shapiro expanded the Child and Dependent Care Enhancement Tax Credit and created the Employer Child Care Contribution Tax Credit to help businesses contribute to employees’ child care costs.

The tax credits, Head Start, and Pre-K Counts, while helpful, don’t address many of the issues that exist in child care, such as low wages and widespread job vacancies, advocates said.

If state lawmakers approve, or increase, the governor’s request for $55 million, that public funding would provide needed financial relief for child care centers and teachers, and could help providers fill many of the open positions, Brubacher said. She added that it would also help to reduce the number of families on waitlists for child care slots. 

Plus, Brubacher said, the money could also be used to not only hire new people but ensure that those already on staff remain instead of going to look for better paying jobs.

“You can give raises for people who have degrees in education, which is my staff,” she said. “Every person on my staff has some sort of education beyond high school. Most have a bachelor’s degree, and a couple have master’s degrees, and none of them make more than $19 or $20 an hour.”

Brubacher said she hopes the funding proposed by Shapiro will not be a one-time allocation and instead will be repeated, or increased, in the years to come: “We’re seeing it as something that is going to continue as an investment, and hopefully, as time goes on, be expanded upon and realize that it’s a continuous funding stream that’s necessary to meet the needs of the educators so that they’ll stay in this profession and continue to provide what it is that these children need, which isn’t just a place to be cared for; it’s also some very, very valuable things in the early part of their life that affects the rest of their education and other parts of their life, almost every part of their life.”

‘Workforce behind the workforce’: Business leaders back Shapiro’s plan

Robert Carl, the president and CEO of the Schuylkill Chamber of Commerce; Samantha Chivinski, the executive vice president of the chamber; and other Schuylkill chamber members have for two years been advocating for state funding for early childhood education. 

Their efforts came amid what they describe as a child care crisis in the commonwealth, including in the state’s rural communities: Since 2019, about 20% of the child care providers in rural Schuylkill County have closed. Teachers are not financially able to remain in jobs for which they are passionate, and workforce development leaders struggle to bring new business to Pennsylvania because of a lack of child care, Carl and Chivinski said.

“We understand if there’s two barriers  [to] … workforce development and the growth of the economy in Pennsylvania, it’s probably child care No. 1 and housing No. 2,” Carl said.”Those are the two key issues.”

Chamber leaders across the state have echoed this call for state funding for early childhood education and urged Shapiro and state lawmakers in a 2024 letter to boost funding.

As did others interviewed for this story, Carl said he had advocated for the $284 million for early childhood education but is happy with the $55 million proposed by the governor.

“It’s just a blessing that the cause is being heard,” Carl said. “The governor hears it, and he is articulating it. So I think the first step in any journey is understanding the mission, and clearly the governor understands the mission. And we have great gratitude for that.”