Every morning, Mary Solheim looks forward to seeing the children at Playschool Child Care in Maplewood, where she works as the director. But in recent years, the joy of the work has been tempered by worry about what will happen if too many of her staff are out.
State-mandated staffing ratios, which limit the number of children each staffer can care for, are serious business, Solheim said. It's rare, but occasionally she has to close classrooms, and families have to make other child-care arrangements for a day. But for any child care in the state, being out-of-ratio — because not enough staffers show up for work, or because there aren't enough people to fill jobs in the first place — means risking license violations. Too many violations, and a child care could be forced to close.
"It's always a 'what-if' game," Solheim said. "That makes it very difficult."
Child-care providers and advocates in the field see staffing ratios as a protection for safe and high-quality early-childhood education. Still, when providers are caught between a staff shortage and families' need for care, hard choices must be made.
If a staffer is out, sometimes ratios can be maintained by shuffling students between classrooms. Solheim and other child-care directors find themselves in a classroom more often than they'd like, working 10 or 12 hours with children before returning to administrative work. On occasion, centers have to send children home.
Mother of three Ishia Lee of North St. Paul said having reliable care lets her keep her job at a call center. It's hard to find care anywhere, she said, and particularly tough to find someone who can work with her son's special needs.
Finding a good fit at Playschool has made a huge difference for her family, Lee said.
"They were willing to go the extra mile," she said.