EXCERPT: “Dawn Uribe, owner of Mis Amigos Spanish Immersion Preschool in Hopkins, has had to make some hard choices amid an ongoing worker shortage in the child care industry. ‘I want our teachers to have a workable, livable wage, and I’m trying to make it so that our teachers can get paid like elementary school teachers,’ she said. ‘That means that we have to charge our parents a lot of money, and that prices some of our families out.’ Uribe’s story is not unique. Across the state and the nation, child care providers are doing what they can to boost worker pay without financially burdening families. Child care organizations are also testing out a few other ways to attract new workers and keep existing staff. Like several other sectors, the child care industry shed tens of thousands of jobs during the early days of Covid-19. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were just over a million people working in child care services nationally at the start of March 2020. That number sunk to about 680,000 by April of the same year.” FULL STORY: https://fluence-media.co/3TZFiQo
