Point Reyes Light - November 16, 2000

Teacher shortage hobbles Papermill Creek Children’s Corner

By Stephen Barrett

Short of teachers and unable to offer competitive salaries to new staff, Papermill Creek Children’s Corner, the Point Reyes Station non-profit childcare center, is struggling to fulfill its mission to provide affordable daycare to West Marin families.

With only three teachers on staff, the children’s center has had to limit its toddler program for children under three years old to just four hours on Thursdays – down from four days a week. Its preschool and afterschool programs have only one teacher each, with no available substitutes if they get sick or can’t otherwise come to work.

State law requires a professional teacher for every 13 children present at a daycare center and does not allow children to be left in a classroom supervised solely by aides or parent volunteers.

Because it is a parent cooperative, Papermill Creek Chilren’s Corner has enough grownups available to maintain its ratio of five children per adult, said program director Bobbi Loeb. However, the shortage of qualified teachers has limited the activities they can provide the children and has nearly eliminated the services it can provide for parents with two-year-old toddlers.

Flexibility limited

"We’re running an exciting program," Loeb said, "but we’re limited in our flexibility because all the children need to remain together... We can offer a quality program, it’s just that we don’t have the same creativity that we used to."

Although the center has been advertising the last six months for a new teacher for its toddlers program, directors are finding that a starting wage of $10.50 per hour plus benefits isn’t drawing any local residents, and is not competitive compared to similar jobs outside West Marin. (The offer was raised to $12.50 per hour this week).

Starting instructors at the College of Marin’s daycare centers in Kentfield and Indian Valley receive about $15 an hour plus benefits, a higher wage than is earned by program director and pre-school teacher Loeb, a founding parent of the 27-year-old Children’s Corner, which is located at Sixth and B streets.

Executive director Joel Gilbert said Papermill Creek Children’s Corner receives about 40 percent of its budget through fundraising and grants. The rest comes from tuition, which is set on a sliding scale to accommodate families of every income level and is one of the center’s bedrock features.

Vicious cycle

But Papermill Creek Children’s Corner is in a dilemma, Gilbert said. It cannot offer better salaries without raising more money, cannot increase tuition fees without possibly losing some enrollment, cannot increase enrollment without hiring more teachers and aides, and cannot attract new staff without offering better salaries.

"I think as an organization, it’s time Papermill Creek grew up financially. We have to pay people to come here and stay here. It needs to be a primary focus," Gilbert said last week during the non-profit’s board of directors’ monthly meeting.

Loeb told directors she is exhausted from working over 40 hours a week, but still believes Papermill Creek Children’s Corner is an important community asset and worthy of their efforts to keep it vital. "I think we’re running a quality program, but we are under stress," she told The Light. "We could run an even better program if we had more staff with enough credentials."

Cost of living

Directors and staff concede that Papermill Creek Children’s Corner has always suffered from high staff turnover because it cannot offer salaries commensurate with the work. The problem has been exacerbated in recent years by Marin’s skyrocketing cost of living and plummeting unemployment rate.

Ironically, these same economic pressures are forcing more households to depend on double incomes, which means that young families have a greater need for childcare than ever before.

Former pre-school teacher Laura Scott, who left Papermill Creek in August to return to school, said the daycare center cannot offer the living wage that teachers deserve.

She said the non-profit’s troubles are somewhat a reflection of a society that does not put sufficient resources into early child education, noting that state and federal legislators should help finance universal preschool.

But she said Papermill Creek Children’s Corner is also suffering from its own inertia and needs to restore its connection to the local community in order to survive.

Needs new philosophy

"It needs new energy," she said. "It needs to be reborn with a philosophy that people can really get behind."

Those sentiments were similarly expressed last week by several directors, who offered to contact parents and former members of Papermill Creek Children’s Corner to discern the needs of the community and how the daycare center might better meet them.

Parent Kathryn de Laszlo of Point Reyes Station attended the board meeting to offer fundraising assistance and any other support necessary to get the toddler program running full-time again. She said the toddler program for two year olds helped create a community of local families.

"I was a parent when my older daughter went there, and felt very good about the twos program and the social diversity that happens over there," she said.

New realities

Board president John Lopez said Papermill Creek Children’s Corner is still coping with last year’s departure of longtime executive director Wendy Friefeld, and the leadership and experience she brought to the organization.

However, the directors and staff agreed it is inevitable for Papermill Creek Children’s Corner to experience growing pains as its personnel changes. Executive director Gilbert said this is an important time to set the childcare center on a stable foundation that takes into account the changes occurring in West Marin.

He said the new reality is that Papermill Creek Children’s Corner can no longer lean on the dedication of its employees to see it through rough times. "Love is not enough anymore," he said.

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