Partners with Montgomery County Community Fund
As part of the $25 million grant Wabash received from the Lilly Endowment, a local early childhood learning center will be constructed. The early childhood development center will help families with finding childcare in Crawfordsville and the wider Montgomery County area.
The five-year grant is aimed at strengthening and expanding the bond between Wabash and the Crawfordsville community by using the college’s existing and future resources to make meaningful changes that will benefit both the students of Wabash and Crawfordsville residents. One such change is the early childhood development center scheduled to open in 2025, that will provide childcare for over 100 children up to the age of five.
Stable and accessible childcare is critical to economic maximization. A 2018 study by Indiana University’s Public Policy Institute indicated that Indiana loses out on over $1 billion due to “inadequate” childcare.
The study goes on to say that inadequate child care acutely affects rural areas like Montgomery County. The Montgomery County Community Fund, the organization Wabash is partnering with to establish the new center, concurs with the study’s findings and estimates on their website that, “The lack of access to child care costs Montgomery County businesses $7.9 million annually.”
“Our county is known as a ‘childcare desert,’ meaning there are twice as many children as licensed child care spots,” said MCCF Early Learning Director Lisa Walter. “Our recent data shows that there are currently 1,623 children in need of care; however, there are only about 750 seats available.”
Of the 750 seats available, only 16% were deemed “high-quality” by Brighter Futures Indiana, a research arm of Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration.
While childcare options are simply too scarce, undersupply is far from being the only fold to the problem. The cost of childcare, when families can find it, is exorbitant and often puts families in between a rock and hard place when making important personal finance decisions.
“Our state-wide child care cost averages close to $9,000 per year, which is nearly equal to a year of in-state college tuition,” Walter said. “When our families cannot access quality childcare, they are faced with the dilemma of either moving out of our community [or] leaving the workforce, and some are left with the risk of leaving their child with an unlicensed/unregulated childcare provider.”
Cassie Hagan, director of professional development at Wabash and a board member of New Beginnings Child Care in Crawfordsville, offered her perspective on the issues working families with young children face when looking for childcare.
“Seats for infants to two years remain the most underserved demographic of kids in our community, which means families with new babies trying to return to work are in the most challenging situations,” Hagan said. “It can take months to get off a waitlist, which also means families often feel they don’t have choices in selecting child care that’s right for their families — if they are on a timeline to return to work, they often need to take the first seat that opens up.”
These sorts of lose-lose economic decisions that families are dealing with then have negative impacts on businesses further downstream. It is therefore in local businesses’ best interests to help mitigate the problem of childcare, and according to Hagan, they are starting to do just that.
“I think the most significant victory is that local businesses have signed on to support the project,” Hagan said. “Childcare is absolutely an economic development matter, and our community isn’t going to make strides toward supporting the growth of our businesses without their support.”
The economic benefits of the childhood development center will undoubtedly be impactful (not sure about this clause) but even more impactful will be the personal impact for children and their families. According to Walter, children experience up to 85% of brain development in their first five years of life. That development is crucial to setting children up to live healthy and full lives, making positive impacts on the world. That is the most important goal of the new center.
“Our young children deserve to have the best start possible,” Walter said, “and providing a high-quality early childhood education is critical in the success and future of our community.”