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Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
ECGRA, Erie County invest nearly $1 million to address shortage of early childhood educators
The Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority awarded nearly $1 million in grants May 22 to help 59 child care providers recruit and retain qualified educators. ECGRA Executive Director Perry Wood said the grants ― the Early Childhood Educator Retention Awards ― serve to boost a vital sector in Erie County that's long been underfunded and understaffed. 'According to Start Strong PA, there are currently 93 unfilled early childhood educator positions in Erie County. If filled, these roles could serve 744 more children,' Wood said at a check presentation Thursday at St. Martin Early Learning Center. 'That's why these grants are so important. They represent a crucial step forward in supporting the dedicated professionals who care for and educate our young learners.' The $991,785 in grants were funded by a $2.5 million investment of American Rescue Plan funds from Erie County government. ECGRA has also provided a $2.5 million match in gaming revenue for a collective $5 million child care investment. 'An investment in child care is an investment in workforce development ― that is economic development,' said Erie County Executive Brenton Davis. 'Without parents being able to become dual income families, we're unable to lift our community up the economic mobility ladder.' Thursday's investment represents the first phase of a broader, multi-step initiative to strengthen Erie County's early learning infrastructure, according to ECGRA. Kenya Johnson, owner of Learning Ladder Early Child Care, said the grants will have a 'real and meaningful' impact on her center, both in terms of retaining quality teachers and giving them some much-needed recognition. 'For many of them, this extra income will make a difference in their personal lives ― paying bills, putting gas in their car, covering groceries and that all matters,' she said. 'But beyond the money, it's the message that came with it. That message says: We see you, we appreciate you and we want to keep you here doing what you do best.' Asha Graeb, director of the St. Martin Early Learning Center, added that early childhood educators often have limited support and resources despite the crucial role they play in a child's life. 'Our teachers work every day to create safe, nurturing environments where children can build confidence, spark curiosity and learn compassion,' she said. A Child's World Daycare & Learning; $23,683 Annie's Bubble Care; $6,459 Barb's Care A Lot; $19,377 Barbs Family Learning Group Daycare LLC; $6,459 Boro Babies Child Care Center; $9,689 Bright Horizons at Erie; $29,066 Corry Alliance Childcare Learning Center; $8,074 Creative Learning Childcare – iRock; $35,525 Cuddle Time Daycare; $1,077 Dr Gertrude Barber Corry; $12,918 Dr Gertrude Barber Happy Hearts; $46,290 Eagles Nest Group Daycare; $6,459 Early Connections City Center; $16,148 Early Connections Harbor Homes Early Learning Center; $6,459 Early Connections North East; $6,459 Early Connections Union City; $23,683 Early Learning Center; $19,377 Early Learning University; $24,760 Eastside YMCA; $33,372 Elk Valley Elementary YMCA; $9,689 EPS Pennbriar Childcare LLC; $16,417 Erie First Early Education Center; $11,303 Fit Kids; $10,227 Glenwood YMCA; $17,224 Growing and Learning Center; $43,060 Handled with Care; $37,678 I Love It Daycare Learning Center; $15,071 Javonne Beason; $1,077 Jumpstart Early Learning Center LLC; $6,459 KinderCare 1279; $8,612 Learning Ladder; $18,301 Little Explorers Christian Academy; $5,378 Lollipop U Daycare; $8,612 McKean Elementary YMCA; $2,153 Milestones Early Learning Academy; $13,995 Milestones Early Learning Center; $21,530 Miss Julies Childcare; $11,842 Miss Rose's Learning Center; $8,612 Montessori in the Woods; $9,150 My Terra Village; $4,844 New Horizons Early Learning Center; $10,750 Northwestern YMCA; $8,612 Playway Loving Childcare Center LLC; $5,383 Saint Benedict Center; $52,749 Saint Vincent Child Care Center; $34,448 South Hills Child Development Center; $37,139 St. Martin Early Learning Center; $76,432 St. Paul's Child Development Center; $24,760 Summit YMCA; $6,459 Teresa Jordan; $6,000 The International Institute of Erie; $10,765 Tracy Heutsche; $4,844 Twinkle Time Child Care Center; $5,921 Waterford YMCA; $10,765 Wattsburg Elementary YMCA; $9,688 World of Care; $12,918 YMCA Camp Sherwin; $2,153 YMCA of Corry Daycare; $47,366 Young Environment; $20,992 A.J. Rao can be reached at arao@ Follow him on X @ETNRao. This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: 59 Erie County child care providers receive $1 million in grants
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Why I am hopeful for the future of child care in Erie County
There is a child care and early childhood education crisis affecting children and families across Erie County. Many leaders and organizations recognize this and have been advocating for a solution. The Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, in partnership with Erie County, is taking tangible steps and providing funding where it's needed most. ECGRA was recently awarded $2.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds by Erie County. These funds are the first steps in fixing Erie's fundamentally damaged child care system. Early Connections (formerly the YWCA) has operated in Erie County for over 130 years, providing outreach and programming to young children and families. At first, the YWCA primarily focused on providing housing, education and employment services for young women living in the Home for Girls. To meet the growing demand for child care, this expanded into opening the Children's Center in downtown Erie. After disaffiliating from the national YWCA and becoming Early Connections, we continued to focus on developing programs to meet the needs of our community. Now, Early Connections provides high-quality early care and education programming at four sites, two in the city of Erie, one in Union City, and one in North East. As an intermediary, Early Connections is dedicated to providing connections and supports for high-schoolers and nontraditional students working in the child care field. This strengthens the pipeline between high schools, employers and higher education institutions to help individuals become credentialed child care workers at little to no cost while improving the quality of child care centers. For a long time, we've grown in this city and championed early childhood education. According to Start Strong PA, as of September 2024, Erie County faces a shortage of 93 staffing positions in early childhood education, with the potential to serve an additional 744 children if the positions were filled. A vast majority of centers reported teacher shortages, including difficulties recruiting new teachers and retaining current staff. The child care staffing shortage is driven by low wages, which fail to meet the cost of living in Erie County. This creates challenges in hiring, retaining staff and expanding programs to serve more children. As a small program, we've certainly encountered these issues firsthand. The first round of ECGRA funding is designed to address this issue directly. All industries are feeling a squeeze when it comes to staffing, but early childhood education faces unique challenges. Unlike retail or food service, we can't operate with fewer staff without compromising the quality of care. Early childhood education requires specific teacher-to-student ratios to ensure each child receives the support they need. Without enough staff, programs are forced to close classrooms that would normally be full of eager, learning children. Addressing staffing from the state level, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed approximately $1,000 bonuses annually to all child care employees in recruitment and retention grants. If passed, this would be an investment of $55 million in the child care workforce. It's not only staffing that's an issue. Once the current empty classrooms are filled and additional children need to be served, capital improvement projects will be another hurdle to manage. A lot of Erie facilities are entirely tapped out on space and affordably acquiring new rooms is difficult or impossible, especially when factoring in the other challenges at play. This is yet another limiter for child care progress that can be addressed by future ECGRA, Erie County or state investment. Nick Scott Jr.: Child care and economic development in Erie - it is time for action More: ECGRA, Erie County invest nearly $1 million to address shortage of early childhood educators The difficulties we face seem insurmountable when we just talk about them, but I think there's hope on the horizon in the form of tangible action. Thank you to ECGRA for investing in solutions that not only support families today but also help elevate the conversation around early childhood education both here in Erie and in Harrisburg. I'm encouraged by statewide advocacy efforts like Pre-K for PA and Start Strong PA, which are working alongside local leaders to make sustained, strategic investment in child care a priority across Pennsylvania. Michelle Harkins is the executive director of Early Connections in Erie. This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Why ECGRA is investing $2.5 million in Erie Co. child care | Opinion
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Child care workers could get a raise under Shapiro plan to address shortage
This story first appeared in How We Care, a weekly newsletter by Spotlight PA featuring original reporting and perspectives on how we care for one another at all stages of life. Sign up for free here. Thousands of workers who care for children, older adults, and Pennsylvanians with disabilities would receive higher wages under the budget proposed by Gov. Josh Shapiro. The plan seeks to address longstanding recruitment and retention problems in the caregiving industry that affect workers, businesses, and families statewide. Still, it's up to the divided legislature to negotiate the final budget deal ahead of the June 30 deadline, and there's no guarantee the pitch will be in the final product. The proposal, introduced last week in the state Capitol, seeks to allocate $55 million to licensed child care providers and $21 million to direct care workers who deliver support services such as housekeeping and personal care assistance like dressing and eating. The two industries have struggled with retention as workers leave the industry for better wages, departures that can make some caregiving services harder to access for households statewide. 'If we filled those jobs,' Shapiro said of vacancies in the child care workforce, '25,000 more children in Pennsylvania could have access to child care and parents could have the peace of mind that their kids are well taken care of so they can go to work.' The Democrat also pitched universal screening for postpartum depression, a mood disorder that affects an estimated 1 in 8 women who have recently given birth. Caregivers and advocates variously celebrated and questioned the proposed budget, which the Shapiro administration will elaborate on in the coming weeks. Shapiro's budget would shore up child care by providing $55 million in retention and recruitment grants. The governor said this funding would boost annual pay by roughly $1,000 per employee at licensed child care centers that receive funding from a state program for low-income families. For years, early childhood staff and teachers have left classrooms for industries offering higher wages, say advocates of early childhood education. The Start Strong PA coalition lobbied Shapiro to budget $284 million for the child care workforce. Though the proposed $55 million is a fraction of that initial ask, Jen DeBell of the Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children still sees it as a victory. 'Folks are really excited and are applauding the governor for this,' DeBell said of advocates. The proposal recognizes that Pennsylvania's anemic child care industry requires state support, she added. Diane P. Barber, executive director of the Pennsylvania Child Care Association, agrees with DeBell. She told How We Care via email that this is the first time a governor's proposed budget has included funding specifically for early childhood teachers. Members of the business community are celebrating too. 'We are deeply grateful to Governor Shapiro,' Robert S. Carl, the head of the Schuylkill Chamber of Commerce, said in a news release. Carl leads a coalition of Pennsylvania business groups that advocate for increased child care funding. By addressing the workforce shortage, Carl said, high-quality child care centers in Pennsylvania can remain open, which would help employers recruit and retain staff who are parents. When the Shapiro administration releases more details on the proposed budget, DeBell wants to know whether his administration will mandate that the $55 million be used for bonuses, wage increases, or improved benefits. In addition to the child care funding, Shapiro proposed putting $15 million toward the staffing shortage in Pennsylvania's Pre-K Counts program. Many preschool classrooms are within child care centers, so this funding would further bolster the state's early childhood ecosystem. Shapiro also wants to up state support for direct care workers, pitching $21 million to give them a pay bump. These caregivers are paid through the Community HealthChoices waiver, a program that helps older adults and Pennsylvanians with physical disabilities directly hire their caregivers instead of going through an agency. The services these workers provide — which include housekeeping, grooming, dressing, and driving to medical appointments — allow people to live and receive care in their own homes, as opposed to skilled nursing facilities, which are generally more expensive and offer less independence. Some direct care workers are relatives of the people they support, as is the case for Lynn Weidner of Allentown. She told Spotlight PA she's been her partner Brandon Kingsmore's paid caregiver for 12 years. Weidner worked in nursing homes when she and Kingsmore started dating and could probably make a slightly higher hourly rate if she returned to that industry. But Kingsmore had difficulty finding consistent support because Medicaid sets such low wages for direct care workers. After Kingsmore and Weidner got an apartment together, she figured it made more sense to care for him herself instead of going to a job to take care of other people. Weidner said that she earns about $14 an hour and that she and Kingsmore live paycheck to paycheck. Weidner is a member of the union SEIU Healthcare, which said in a news release that Shapiro's budget would bump her pay to at least $15 and create benefits like paid time off. Weider hopes the wage boost, if approved, draws more people to the home care workforce. Then Kingsmore, who has cerebral palsy, could hire additional support to back up Weidner. Weidner initially worked for an agency when she became Kingsmore's caregiver. She told How We Care that she made less money then but figured that if she had an emergency and couldn't be there for Kingsmore, then he would be covered by another agency staffer. But when Weidner needed surgery and requested someone to fill in, the agency told her they couldn't provide it. Shortly after, Weidner quit and Kingsmore switched to the direct care model so that she could remain his paid caregiver. Kingsmore is one of 148,000 Pennsylvanians who receive this Medicaid-funded in-home support, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. Weidner thinks the state should encourage more people to directly employ their caregivers instead of going through a third party. That way more money ends up in the pockets of workers. There isn't evidence that caregivers employed by agencies make less money, said Mia Haney, CEO of the Pennsylvania Homecare Association, which represents home health, home care, and hospice providers. Haney said Shapiro's budget should support agency workers as well as those directly employed by the people who receive services. When home health agencies are underfunded, Haney argued, the people who rely on these services have fewer options. Shapiro's proposed budget would target some 8,500 direct care workers, but Haney pointed out that's just a fraction of this workforce, and that agency workers deliver the exact same support services. 'How could we say that direct care workers are more deserving than another? How can we say that the work you perform with this customer is more important than the work you perform with this one?' Haney said. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that as of May 2023, there were 213,000 home health and personal care aides in Pennsylvania. This number includes people who work in hospitals and nursing facilities, in addition to those who provide direct support to people living at home. Weidner agreed that everyone in her line of work deserves higher pay and better benefits. Both also argued that expanding Pennsylvania's home care workforce would lessen the amount of people in nursing homes. Shapiro did not attach a dollar amount to his call for Pennsylvania to offer universal postpartum depression screenings. The mood disorder can leave parents anxious and sad, affecting their ability to care for themselves and their children. To address this, Shapiro wants to train clinicians how to quickly identify the disorder and create a 'resource hub' where families can go to find more information. 'Let's take an issue that lurks in the shadows and put it right in the middle of the conversation,' Shapiro said during his address. Maternal health advocates have called for universal screenings for a long time, said Rosemarie Halt, a policy consultant for the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Children First. Most of these screenings happen at doctors' appointments that are typically scheduled about a month or two after someone gives birth. But Halt would like to see screenings continue during the half-dozen pediatric visits that are recommended throughout an infant's first year. 'Babies don't go to the doctor by themselves. And you know, often what's happening with mom is affecting baby,' said Halt. Identifying postpartum depression is just one part of addressing the issue, some advocates noted. Actually finding care is like the Wild West, said Sara Jann Heinze, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Philadelphia-based Maternity Care Coalition. 'There's a lack of providers in rural parts of Pennsylvania. And in urban parts, there's providers, but they're all full up,' she said of the disparate availability of mental health care. Well-meaning initiatives can be redundant, warned Sarah Horvath, Pennsylvania legislative chair for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In an emailed statement, Horvath told Spotlight PA that best practices already recommend postpartum depression screenings at various appointments following a birth. Meanwhile, receiving the care is a matter of supply, she said, noting the shortage of practitioners who can treat postpartum depression and the often six-week wait to see them. If Shapiro wants to better support the mental health of pregnant and postpartum patients, Horvath argued, he should advocate for more funding for programs that connect OB-GYNs to perinatal psychiatrists. Heinze contended that universal paid leave would also help families seeking mental health care. She cited a plan by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to reintroduce a bill that would provide financial support to workers who take time off for several reasons, including the birth of a child. If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
