Stacey Hellman taped large pieces of paper to her downtown Erie office walls soon after she became CEO of Early Connections in September.
Each sheet represented one of the nonprofit organization’s four child care facilities: City Center, Harbor Homes, Union City and North East. Hellman listed all of a facility’s open teaching positions on them.
“We had so many open positions that each one had its own sheet,” Hellman said. “The average pay for our teachers at the time was around $15 an hour. … If you go to Target or Walgreen’s, you earn $18 to $20 an hour. I understand why people would go there to support their families as opposed to coming here.”
Child care centers across Pennsylvania are struggling to recruit teachers because of low reimbursements from the state. As a result, many of them have had to close classrooms, limit enrollment and create waiting lists.
The downsizing has created a ripple effect in the economy as parents, unable to place their children in day care, stay at home instead of going to work.
“We could place 22,000 more Pennsylvania kids in day care if these programs were fully staffed,” said Kimberly Early, senior director for public policy and advocacy for the Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children.
Child care centers like Early Connections have difficulty simply raising teaching wages because they receive funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services through Child Care Works.
The funding enables these centers to offer families a sliding-scale tuition based on income.
“Each family has a copay, which ranges from $5 a week to as high as $100 a week,” Hellman said. “If a family didn’t qualify for any subsidies, they would pay $256 a week for an infant at Early Connections and a little less for an older child.”
Child care advocacy organizations like PennAEYC and Start Strong PA have lobbied state legislators and Gov. Josh Shapiro to increase funding to the state’s Child Care Staff Recruitment and Retention Program.
They have seen some results. Shapiro’s proposed 2026-27 budget would add $10 million to the program, increasing its funding to $35 million.
The funding would boost annual bonuses for teachers at Child Care Works centers from a minimum of $450 to $630.
Child care teacher wants career-supporting wages
Jennifer Renner, who cares for infants at Early Connections’ City Center facility, said that she appreciates the bonuses.
“When I started in child care three years ago, I was earning $3 to $4 less an hour than I do now and we get bonuses,” said Renner, 38. “This is a place where I want to retire. We help create kind humans in a caring and safe environment.”
Renner started at Early Connections in May after working at a different Erie child care center. She is one of many hires Hellman has made despite the funding limitations.
Hellman freed up money for wages by “being creative” in finding ways to cut expenses.
“It’s things like shopping around for trash removal to find the lowest rate and looking hard at office supplies,” Hellman said. “You have to look at every aspect to find ways to save money and use it for teacher wages.”
It has worked. Instead of four large sheets of paper on Hellman’s walls, all of the Early Connections current job openings fit on a single whiteboard with plenty of spare room.
But enrollment remains limited at the Early Connection facilities because some classrooms only have one teacher, and the state imposes student-to-teacher ratios based on the children’s age.
“We’re moving in the right direction but we can’t increase enrollment yet,” Hellman said.
The goal: Wages similar to what public school teachers earn
Advocacy groups are calling on the state to increase funding and raise the limit on subsidies to 400% of federal poverty guidelines, or about $126,000 for a family of four, Early said.
It would enable facilities to pay their teachers closer to the wages that public school teachers earn.
“A kindergarten teacher in Pennsylvania earns an average of about $68,000 a year, while child care teachers earns $29,000 and a pre-K teacher about $36,000,” Early said. “That is a huge gap.”
