Ambor Graves said she felt lucky to find affordable pre-K at a northeast side church near her. But when the pre-K center closed before her youngest was able to attend, she made finding high-quality care her priority.
Then she was hit with the cost.
“The pricing was ridiculous,” said Graves, a single mom who lives in the Devington neighborhood. “There’s so many child care centers that are charging people $300 to $400 a week.”
State funding for public education begins with kindergarten, and kids in Indiana aren’t required to attend school until they’re 7 years old, leaving parents like Graves on their own to find child care.
That’s all despite research that shows kids who attend pre-K are more likely to be successful in elementary school and more likely to graduate high school and attend college. Students who attend pre-K also perform better on math and reading tests, studies have found — something officials have been pushing to improve after years of declining scores.
For some, the cost of pre-K can be nearly the same as the earnings from a part-time job. The expense has led some parents — especially in two-parent households — to leave the workforce.
That, and other child care related barriers, are costing the state more than $1 billion each year in missed tax revenues, a recent study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Early Learning Indiana found.
A new idea for helping parents access affordable programs emerged this winter at the Indiana Statehouse. Rep. Blake Johnson, D-Indianapolis, carried House Bill 1622, which would have allowed local governments to ask voters whether they would support a tax increase to support funding universal pre-K in their county.
Johnson, a young parent with his own toddler at home, says he’s familiar with the challenges in finding reliable care.
“The amount of turmoil and stress for us to find a place for my son was astounding,” Johnson said. “If that’s me, with all the resources I have at my disposal, what does that mean for a family that’s just trying to make it?”
Universal pre-K — meaning free pre-K for all, regardless of income — has been debated at the Statehouse for years. States like Florida, Oklahoma and Vermont have universal pre-K policies, and neighboring Michigan is scaling up a new program.
But universal pre-K at a state level is expensive and the timing for sweeping changes couldn’t be worse in Indiana. Gov. Mike Braun and other state leaders have recently proposed cuts to some state-funded programs in hopes of lowering property taxes.
Johnson says his bill offers an alternative: Let communities decide if they are willing to pay more in taxes to support pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds.
The legislation, however, failed this year. Rep. Bob Behning, chair of the House Education Committee, decided against giving the bill a hearing. The Indianapolis Republican told Mirror Indy he couldn’t square it with the feedback he’d heard from property owners seeking lower taxes.
But he said he’s open to hearing more about the idea in the future. And Johnson said he plans to keep bringing the legislation until it’s successful.
‘Can we afford it? Can we pay for it?’
In Indiana, the average price of child care for just one kid is $8,590 a year. That price usually increases at centers that are considered higher quality or that offer specialized services.
Marion County has among the highest cost-to-income ratios in the state, according to Early Learning Indiana data. That means the average parent here spends a greater portion of the money they make on child care than parents do in Evansville, Fort Wayne or West Lafayette.
Some families can find help financing care through state voucher programs, such as the Child Care Development Fund and On My Way Pre-K. But both programs are designed to help low-income families and set earning limits at 150% of the federal poverty level. That means, for example, adults in a family of four would need to make at or under $48,225 a year to apply.
The programs have become so popular, officials announced a waitlist for each last year. Special priority is being given to the children of child care workers and those making 100% or below the federal poverty level.
“There’s a lot of demand for it,” said Sam Snideman, who’s a member of the state’s Early Learning Advisory Committee. “That just goes to show how interested families are in those resources.”
Quality a concern in Marion County
Unlike much of Indiana, however, the problem in Marion County isn’t necessarily a lack of available seats. It’s about quality.
Early Learning Indiana’s research shows child care programs in Marion County have the capacity to serve more than 98% of children needing care. However, only about 36% of those programs provide high-quality care as measured by Indiana’s Paths to QUALITY program.
The statewide rating system evaluates child care and pre-K centers based on their curriculum, accreditation and ability to meet health and safety standards. Top rated centers can participate in the highly sought after state voucher programs.
But access to high-quality care comes easier to some families than others, said Josh Riddick, a faith leader with the Black Church Coalition who’s been advocating for changes to the state’s current approach to child care.
“The geography that you’re in can shape the availability of what’s there,” Riddick said.
While some families may easily have access to multiple high-quality centers in their neighborhoods, Riddick said others may live far away from those options or be priced out of the centers that are near them, especially when voucher programs are at their capacity.
“In my community, with the folks I’m connected with,” Riddick said, “there’s an open tension of: ‘We want our kid to be socialized. We want our kid to have an opportunity to be around other children. Can we afford it? Can we pay for it?’”
Investment needed for pre-K push
Under Johnson’s proposal, voters could decide whether universal pre-K is worth it to them.
County leaders could decide an amount up to 10 cents of each $100 in assessed value and put to voters whether they’d support the tax increase in their community.
“Let’s at least give the counties the ability to make the call themselves,” Johnson said. “If the answer is yes, they should be completely empowered to do that.”
Money collected by the county could be used to scale up the local child care infrastructure.
Examples include funding physical projects to create more space for classes, training to help existing providers improve their quality of care and salary increases for workers in an industry that often lags in pay.
A youth organization such as an early learning committee or local United Way affiliate would oversee the effort and work with a range of child care providers — including schools, churches, homes and other private centers — to expand free pre-K to all families.
Supporters of the legislation acknowledge that the money raised through a tax referendum may not be enough to cover all the expenses needed to scale up to universal pre-K — even if just in one county.
Such an effort would require significant financial investment — perhaps with the help of philanthropic partnerships. However, once universal pre-K is established, the tax increase would support its sustainability.
Snideman, who is also vice president of governmental relations with United Way of Central Indiana, said he supports the legislation. Snideman said improving child care workers’ wages is key to addressing Indiana’s early childhood needs. (The average hourly wage for a child care worker in Indiana is $14 an hour.)
“We have like a 40% turnover rate among child care workers,” Snideman said. “When you look at the average wage of a lead teacher in a pre-K facility and compare it to the average wage of a kindergarten teacher, you see that lead teachers make about half of what kindergarten teachers make.”
‘Swinging for the fences’
When Graves — the single mom living on the city’s northeast side — saw what it would cost to send her daughter to a high-quality pre-K center, she decided to keep her home.
The pandemic had just begun, and her daughter was able to absorb some of the lessons her son was learning from his kindergarten class’s virtual meetings.
Both of her kids now attend a Lawrence Township elementary school and are excelling in their classes. But Graves — now settled into her role as a social worker — said she often encounters families who are struggling to find care for their own children.
It’s one of the reasons she’s become more active with the Black Church Coalition’s #ALLIN4INDIANA campaign, which is advocating for greater access to pre-K.
“It takes a village to raise a child,” Graves said. “I had a village to help me raise my children, but I know that not all parents have that. The state in general needs to find a better solution for there to be success for the children who are going to be our future.”
Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.
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