No CTC is dog crap.
Daycare will just spike the cost like they did last year. Our daycare raised the tuition cost 10% the month that the payments started being sent. Impeccable timing if you ask me. Look forward to another solid increase if this bill passes again.
First of all that's an incredibly silly reason not to support that legislation, the amount of children in private childcare in this country is a miniscule percentage. Secondly, I'm the president of a child care center board. I can assure you the price increase you incurred had nothing to do with tax credits that you didn't even get until July, and likely more to do with needing to increase revenues to make up for loss of enrollments and the increased cost of doing business. Outside of insurance, the two biggest expenditures for child care centers are staff salary and food, both of which skyrocketed in 2021.
I may be the only one, but I would be interested in a rough financial breakdown of a garden variety day care center's finances. We're now on kiddo No. 2 going through the system and after an awful experience meant an immediate withdrawal from a center last fall, we took the first infant slot available we could find and it's $1,800 per month. This center has three rooms with infants (6 infants in each room) and those three rooms alone are $30,000+ in revenue each month. Then, there's the other 10-15 rooms on top of that. Obviously, those $$$ aren't going to the horrifically paid teachers...
The expenditures and revenues of child care centers are roughly the same for everyone. Wild variation in pricing is simply due to what the center thinks they can charge based on other centers in the area. Supply and demand is huge in the world of for profit centers, particularly for infants. Those infant rooms do cost more, because of mandates ratios, but those rates you cited are outrageous. Do you live in a Dallas suburb? What sucks the most about centers that charge tuitions like that is that it's rare for that money to filter it's way to the teachers. While the cost of labor is increasing, all of these centers are pulling from the same pool of employees. Because of the educational and training requirements, or lack thereof, of the teachers and the teachers assistants, there's no real need or desire to drive competition between centers for staff. If you're going with some fancy center like Primrose Schools or some local place in a cinder block building with old donated buses, their costs are the same and they likely are employing staff that have worked at another center at some point.
My first career was as an early childhood educator and as already stated I'm currently the board president of a center. All that being said all three of my children are products of home day cares. I know there is a stigma there but it's worth noting, especially in states where home day cares also have to be licensed, that the standards of care are exactly the same in a center than in a house.
We are charged similar for an infant here in johnson county. They say they try to compare cost in the area to set prices. But i don’t have the time to call around and price shop and get my infant a spot, so i just accept it and only bitch on forums.
When we had to pull our kid (because of an investigation into abuse at one of the chain day care centers), so we were desperate and, luckily, immediately found an in-home that could take our kid, but only for two months. So, then the race was on to find an open slot for an infant. I probably called 15-20 places in Overland Park/Olathe/Leawood/Lenexa and found only two available spots that could take our kiddo within the next two months. I didn't have any personal restrictions other than I wanted to avoid a religiously-affiliated day care. The rates were all reasonably close - ranging from $1400-$2000 per month.
Back to the financials, I don't doubt that margins aren't great, but I just don't understand where all the money goes when you're charging close to $2,000 per kid (and, I know it's not going to the teachers). I mean, there has to be a reason why chains are popping up all over the place... Goddard, Primrose, La Petite, etc.
And, if anyone has your kid in a "The Learning Experience" chain anywhere, I'd suggest you find a new place. Lots of shady practices with that chain (and that's not even counting the abuse allegations).