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The North Carolina Task Force on Child Care and Early Education met in Raleigh for the second time on Monday, focusing on the relationship between early care and learning and various aspects of the workforce.
The task force was formed by Gov. Josh Stein in March to “examine opportunities, barriers, and policy solutions to expand the supply of accessible, affordable, and high-quality child care and early education options for working families with young children in North Carolina.”
The task force is co-chaired by Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt, a Democrat, and Sen. Jim Burgin, R-Harnett. Members are advocates, business leaders, child care providers, and government officials, including Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell; Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, D-Wake; Rep. David Willis, R-Union; and Rep. Sarah Crawford, D-Wake.
The meeting was organized around two “deep dives” — child care for the public sector workforce and issues facing the early care and education workforce itself. After presentations included in each deep dive, members of the task force broke into small groups to brainstorm solutions and recommendations to include in their report.
A public-private partnership in Cabarrus County
Theresa Roedersheimer, the executive director of the NC Early Childhood Foundation, moderated a conversation between the Rev. Jackie Whitfield and Rachel Grossman-Zack, director of Lockhart Child Development Center, about a public-private partnership in Cabarrus County to provide early care and learning to the children of county employees.
Whitfield said that about a dozen years ago, county officials were realizing that the lack of child care for infants and toddlers was a barrier to hiring personnel. She described a meeting among representatives from public sectors, nonprofits, and the faith-based community in which they were asked to write their answers to these two questions on sticky notes: What do you have? And what do you need?
“Well, the public sector wrote, we have children, and the church wrote, we have rooms,” Whitfield said.
What resulted was a public-private partnership between First Presbyterian Church and Cabarrus County to create the Lockhart Child Development Center.
Lockhart is a nonprofit and leases the rooms in the church that make up the five-star center. It has 76 slots serving students from the ages of eight weeks through five years. Forty of these slots are reserved for the children of county employees, and the rest are available to other parents in the community, including participants in Tri-Share and parents using subsidies or paying full tuition.
Converting the church’s empty rooms was paid for by private donors and county grants. This included $250,000 from the county to cover start-up costs associated with hiring a director and staff before tuition started rolling in.
Cabarrus County now pays $150 per week for the children of its employees to attend Lockhart. That covers about half the cost of tuition of the youngest students, and more than half for the oldest students.
Though Whitfield is retired, she serves as the liaison between the church and the center, which is not a faith-based program.
“We walk the gospel without preaching it,” Whitfield told the task force.
A benefit for public workers in Blowing Rock
Shane Fox, the town manager of Blowing Rock, introduced the task force to his town’s solution to child care for public sector workers. But first, he shared his personal connection to early care and learning.
“I grew up with a single mother who worked in child care centers, and I grew up attending child care centers,” Fox said. That has given him a special appreciation for the people who do the important work of educating and caring for young children, he added.
Fox said that in 2023, Blowing Rock had about 100 employees and finding early care and learning opportunities in the community was becoming a barrier to hiring and retention.
He pitched the town council on opening a child care center that could be offered as a benefit to town employees by charging them half the local market rate of $800 per month. He pointed out that the town already operated afterschool care and summer camps through its parks and recreation department, so they already knew how to do it.
Fox estimated the cost would be about $100,000 per year, which is about what it would cost to recruit, train, hire, and pay a single police officer. Fox figured that if offering child care as a benefit helped the town retain one or two employees, the cost would be well worth it.
He and his team identified an underutilized building that was bringing in only about $2,000 per year, and that became the new home of Blowing Rock Academy — also known as the Fox Den — which opened in March 2024.
Fox said offering child care as a benefit helped the town recruit a new police chief who is the father of young children, along with two other members of the Blowing Rock Police Department.
The child care benefit is also encouraging town employees to expand their families.
“We have currently two employees that are having second or third children, and they have shared with me privately that one of the reasons is that now they know they have child care,” Fox said.
Fox also pointed out that the educators who teach at the center are town employees too, which makes them eligible for the benefit, so the town has not had any trouble finding qualified applicants to work at the center.
Fox said Duke University is doing a case study on the program that will be available in a few weeks. The task force asked that he share the report with them when it comes out.
Teacher perspectives
The deep dive into issues facing the child care workforce began with a panel of early childhood educators from Wake County.
Erica Palmer Smith, the executive director of NC Child, moderated the panel that included Joy Brewington and Charlecia Williams of Jordan Child and Family Enrichment Center in Raleigh, and Angela Harris and Sharlene Morring of the Child Development Center at First Presbyterian Church of Raleigh.
All of the panelists have worked in child care for more than two decades.
Palmer Smith asked the panelists about any obstacles that get in the way of their ability to thrive in the profession, or ways leaders can ensure that more teachers like them stay in the field.
“I was a single parent raising two young boys in this field, and quite frankly, an obstacle for me was the financial aspect, making a livable wage,” Williams said.
“I feel like one of the obstacles that a lot of teachers face is the pay,” Morring agreed. “I’m fortunate to work for First Presbyterian, which is a nonprofit organization that is able to pour into the teachers, as far as not only their pay, but benefits and things that matter to a person like me who has a family.”
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Sen. Chaudhuri asked the panelists, “If you could wave a magic wand for this task force to do a couple of things you need to make things easier in your profession, or for the kids, what would it be?”
Williams was the first to respond.
“If I could wave a magic wand, I would wave the wand of equity. Inclusion. Diversity. Because it is so necessary. We are not in this work to cater to a specific class or specific type. We are in this work for children, children of every background, every socioeconomic status. And the magic wand would allow all children to have access to early education and early care.”
Morring agreed and added that she wished the early care and learning system could function more like the K-12 system, where education is acknowledged as a public good, and teachers are respected as professionals.
Brewington wished for less competition among corporate child care companies and child care chains.
Harris — who earlier had received appreciation from task force members when she shared that she’s only taken a handful of days off over her decades of caring for and educating infants, and even when she’s out of the classroom, she checks in on the babies through her center’s app — agreed with her co-panelists’ magic wand wishes.
Apprenticeships, training, and retention
The last part of the day focused on efforts to build the pipeline of educators entering the early care and learning field, and to keep them in the field once they’re there.
Morgan Ford of the North Carolina Business Committee for Education presented the task force with information about an apprenticeship initiative that grew from the pandemic called Building Bright Futures.
Her presentation was followed by a panel moderated by Michael Leighs of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services that included Allison Keisler and Kimberly Mallady of the N.C. Division of Child Development and Early Education, Kristi Snuggs of Early Years, and Valerie Wallace of the Partnership for Children of Wayne County talking about the Preschool Development Grant, TEACH scholarships, the Child Care WAGE$ program, and child care academies.
Here’s a summary of each program:
- Building Bright Futures – Early childhood education apprenticeship pilot that ran from Jan. 1, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2025, primarily with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, but also from the Preschool Development Grant. The program offered technical assistance, resources, and financial support to almost 500 students at 190 organizations in 66 counties over two years, alongside opportunities for paid, work-based learning experiences, professional development, and mentorship.
- Child Care Academies – An effort by local Smart Starts and community colleges to recruit and quickly train people outside of early childhood education to get them into the field. The Wayne County effort targets military spouses for this free two- or three-week crash course introducing them to the basics of early childhood education. It includes free background checks, CPR and first-aid training, as well as other professional development. More than half of participants have gone on to work in child care or continue their education in the field. House Bill 389 would promote the expansion of child care academies to 12 counties.
- Child Care WAGE$ – Education-based salary supplements to early childhood teachers, directors, and family child care providers in the 67 participating counties. Supplements are paid based on the teachers’ level of education and how long they remain with the same child care program. It’s designed to reward teachers for their educational attainment and provide more stable relationships between educators and students.
- Preschool Development Grant – A discretionary grant that is federally funded through the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services. It focuses on building, expanding, and enhancing the early childhood education systems. North Carolina previously received planning grants that helped do a needs assessment and strategic plan. The state was recently awarded a $27 million renewal grant to implement the plan over three years.
- TEACH Scholarships – Born out of a workforce study conducted in 1998 that found that low rates of compensation and educational attainment, along with high rates of turnover, were major issues for the early childhood workforce. These scholarships are designed to address all three issues and now have more than three decades of evidence to back up their effectiveness.
The task force asked Ford to get them a proposal for what it would cost the state to continue Building Bright Futures now that federal funding for the two-year pilot has expired. Task force members also expressed interest in what it would take to expand WAGE$ statewide.
The next meeting will be June 2, at which time members will form working groups focused on compensation and support for the child care workforce, child care for the public sector workforce, and child care finance and funding.
The task force is set to release an interim report by the end of June. Future meetings are planned for Aug. 4, Oct. 6, and Dec. 1.
