New preschool opening highlights child care shortage in Sarasota-Manatee

Amid a local and national crisis in child care, a bit of good news recently greeted families in eastern Sarasota and Manatee counties.

Baby Fox Academy, a lauded Sarasota preschool, opened a second center – this one in Lakewood Ranch.

And different from its Sarasota site – which is not open to children younger than 2 – this new location’s 91 slots will include spaces for infants and toddlers, an age group for whom a shortage of care is particularly tight.

The expansion comes as preschool centers around the region have closed or combined classrooms due to a shortage of teachers – a crisis worsened during the pandemic and now exacerbated by soaring housing costs that are pricing them out of the industry and the area. The shortage in child care, in turn, wreaks havoc in local communities and the economy – forcing parents to miss work or endure treacherous commutes to centers with openings.

“I really wanted to be available for families who need to get back to work and are struggling,” said Laurie McCracken, owner and executive director of Baby Fox Academy, an independent, family-run business.

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Officially open to the kids the last week of June, the center is already at 50% capacity.

For parents in the area, the news was almost too good to be true.

'What just happened?'

Irma Scherer and her husband were spending more than $3,000 a month to have their 3-year-old son in a center 20 minutes away in Sarasota and their baby daughter with a nanny. The goal was to place their 8-month-old daughter into a child care center as she approached her first birthday, which would save money. But they couldn’t find anything open.

“There is absolutely no place available for the young babies under 1,” Scherer said. “They just don’t have placements. They just don’t have teachers. They are all full.”

As soon as a friend told Scherer about Baby Fox, she jumped on the lead – touring the site, falling in love with McCracken and the school, its sense of safety and quality care. She enrolled her their son and held her breath, waiting to hear word about their daughter.

Not only would the family save hundreds of dollars a month having both kids in the same school, the drive is only nine minutes from their home. Most importantly, Scherer felt a great comfort when her son – who clung to her the first week at his last center – took to the school immediately, bolting into his classroom to sit down, waving to her: “’Bye, Mom!”

“Oh, my God,” Scherer said she thought to herself. “What just happened?”

The day that McCracken told Scherer that she just hired another teacher, opening up a classroom for infants and toddlers, and that she could enroll her baby daughter, too, Scherer started to cry.

“I literally hugged her,” Scherer said.

A broken model

While a godsend for local parents, the way McCracken’s expansion came about highlights what experts note as underlying problems in the national model for early childhood learning and care.

Instead of McCracken being able to tap into a broad-based infrastructure of governmental, business and private support for preschools and early learning centers, much of it came down to luck, she said.

Luck and local help – including a small grant through the Early Learning Coalition of Sarasota County and a major assist from friends, teachers and parents who joined McCracken and her husband in a massive rehab of the 5,200-square-foot space, all done in seven weeks, she said.

The luck part came in that her new landlord gave her a great deal to take over the lease of the site, which had been vacated by a closed preschool. What’s more, the site already had specific types of plumbing in place that would allow for cleaning and diaper-changing stations – expensive equipment required of centers before they can accept infants and toddlers.

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These kinds of brick-and-mortar costs – along with regulated staff-child ratios, especially high for infants – contribute to daunting expenses carried by even the best prepared center owners like McCracken, with three decades of experience as an educator who pays her teachers more than most.

Still, even she can’t afford to offer them health insurance in an industry with barriers to affordable group insurance. (Her own family is covered through her husband’s job as a commercial airline pilot.)

“The lack of grants and small business loans is a huge obstacle and lack of affordable health care is another huge obstacle,” she said of the challenges hindering center owners from expanding or paying their staffs more.

“We don’t have deep pockets,” she said of her family business.

Failing system

Numerous reports have shown that the current predominant national business model for early child care – with its low wages for workers, high prices for families and heavy overhead for centers – fails everyone involved: owners, teachers, parents and children. And this is despite copious research demonstrating the critical role of a child’s first five years in cognitive and emotional development.

While federal block grants can help subsidize some child care for low-income families, the program recently only had enough funding for 11 % of qualifying children, according to a report in Time.

The magazine also cited numerous polls that demonstrate broad popular support among voters across party lines for greater access to affordable child care and preschool as well as the use of taxpayer money to help fund it.

Local foundations are also seeking a major overhaul of the early child care and learning model.

In the spring the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation announced the launching of an Early Learning Initiative in partnership with the Early Learning Coalition of Sarasota County – highlighting Baby Fox as the type of quality early learning and leadership they hope to help foster throughout the region.

The initiative, developed out of research commissioned by Barancik along with United Way Suncoast and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, will focus on leadership development for centers; recruitment and retention of teachers; behavioral health support in the classrooms; and public policy.

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In one month alone this spring, $475,000 had been distributed in teacher bonuses in the area.

McCracken said the bonuses helped one of her teachers put new tires on her car and another catch up with a phone bill. McCracken poured her share into her centers.

Already she has been approached about opening up a third site – this one in the fast-growing and underserved region of North Port and Venice.

While interested, she has a lot on her plate at the moment, McCracken said laughing.

“I’m like, ‘Can I please finish this center first?’”

This story comes from a partnership between the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. Saundra Amrhein covers the Season of Sharing campaign, along with issues surrounding housing, utilities, child care and transportation in the area. She can be reached at samrhein@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Baby Fox Academy opens in Lakewood Ranch amid child care shortage