Here's yet another state program funneling money into teaching providers how to become better providers. None of these students are college educated from the beginning. Is it true that college educated women don't seek jobs working with very young children? Is it a matter of income? What's the education status in Europe? What are the requirements for working with very young children? It would be interesting to compare.

Sunday, January 22, 2006
Program aims to improve child care
By BETTY ADAMS, Blethen Maine News Service

By any measure, child care is big business.

A calculation by the state shows Maine parents whose children are in day care earn more than $850 million a year. In Kennebec, Sagadahoc and Franklin counties, those people spend an average of more than $100 per week for day care. That's the equivalent of two semesters of tuition at the University of Maine.

Because of the high stakes in high-quality day care, the state has made big investments in improving the child-care picture, putting money and resources into training and education for those who run day-care facilities.

"One of my beliefs is that child care should be seen as part of the infrastructure of any area," said Martha Naber, education program coordinator at Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield. "It has been likened to roads, bridges and sewers."

Naber says good child care is a benefit to the consumer.

"Without good child care people feel confident with, they can't work well. People are absent from work related to child-care issues."

Naber says highly trained child-care providers gain greater professionalism, learn new ideas, engage children in new activities and improve the environment.

That's where the state program Roads to Quality comes in. If providers have completed 180 hours of training in the program, they qualify for up to nine college credits in the early-education degree program at Maine's community colleges.

"We have had 65 students graduate in the last four years with an associate's degree in early childhood education," Naber said. "Some are right out of high school, some are nontraditional students, people who worked at Hathaway, and people from other industries, SCI and Dexter. They are wonderful students, highly motivated."

Naber says students get scholarship money from various sources, including the Finance Authority of Maine and a Department of Labor apprenticeship program.

Roads to Quality typically pays providers $300 per course, which covers tuition, fees and some books, Naber says.

Karen Corson, who runs Wee Care 2, a home-based day care center in Athens, completed the Roads to Quality program. After the educational portion, an observer visited Corson's home, checked daily lesson plans, read surveys by parents and rated the program.

But Corson is concerned about raising the bar too high on training for day-care providers, saying there is a limit to how much parents can pay. A proposed state program that would rate Maine day-care programs "would make providers' prices go up," Corson said. "And this area (Somerset and Kennebec) cannot stand for the prices to go up, in my opinion."

Another help in improving the skills of child-care providers came in 2003, with a $100,000 Early Learning Opportunity Grant for Kennebec and Somerset counties.

The state also funnels $640,000 in federal money every year into education, accreditation support and career development through the Roads to Quality program, according to Carolyn Drugge, state child-care administrator. An additional $2 million annually supports resource development centers that identify and respond to child-care needs in the state.