ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 6, 1997 TAG: 9702060006
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
Honeytree Early Learning Centers wanted to start giving its lead teachers higher pay bonuses this year as recognition for outstanding job performance.
It would be nothing exorbitant - $300-400 per deserving teacher every six months, at most.
But the Roanoke Valley chain of five child care centers couldn't offer more in bonuses without increasing its fees. And Honeytree didn't want to do that, to saddle parents with another increase when it had just raised fees in November.
So two weeks ago, Honeytree launched a candy bar sale to raise $25,000 for the bonus program. Parents and their children were asked to do the selling.
Misty Gregg and her husband, whose two children are enrolled at Honeytree, quickly sold 72 bars at their workplaces.
"It gives parents a way to help out without a tuition increase," Misty Gregg said. "It's a way for us to show our appreciation for the teachers."
But an idea that seemed innocent enough to Gregg and to Honeytree staff rankled some parents. They thought it inappropriate for Honeytree to ask families to sell candy for the bonus program.
One parent said she would have been more willing to make a flat-out donation for teacher bonuses, had Honeytree asked. Essentially, a for-profit child care center was asking the public to fund bonuses for its teachers, she said.
"We want our child to have good day care," said the parent, who asked not to be named. "And it's not that I think the teachers aren't deserving, because they are. But I don't feel selling candy bars is the correct thing to do."
Patsy Castellano, Honeytree's personnel director, said the center was merely looking for a way to reward - and retain - good teachers.
"We wanted to pay our teachers more but didn't feel we could raise tuition any more than it was," Castellano said. "We'll do what it takes to keep teachers happy. We don't want turnover. We want consistency."
Ann Francis, director of Resource and Referral at Virginia Tech, said she was puzzled by the idea of a for-profit child care center selling candy to raise money for teacher bonuses. Resource and Referral provides family support services in the New River area.
"If you're a for-profit center, you'd better be clear why you need to raise money with a candy sale and why teacher salaries are not coming out of your regular budget," she said. "I'm not saying I object. But I think centers need to take a good look at their budgets. Their priorities should be well-paid, well-educated staff."
But Francis recognized the dilemma of a child care center not wanting to increase fees, but wanting to improve teachers' pay.
Francis described teachers' salaries in the child care profession as abominable.
Nationally, most child care centers pay their teachers half of what public school teachers earn, said Gwen Morgan, a lecturer at Wheelock College in Boston. The college conducted a study of salaries in the child care profession and their relationship to quality of care.
"The problem is there doesn't seem to be a good way to improve the salary picture," Morgan said. "Centers are constrained by how many staff they can have, by the number of children they can have and by how much parents can afford to pay.
"The loser in that little three-way game is the staff. We can't make care so unaffordable that people won't come. And we don't want to make [care] so bad that it does harm."
The average salary of Honeytree's lead teachers - those with two-or four-year college degrees or certification as a child development associate - is $13,000-$14,000, said Kathy McLeod, who owns and operates the Honeytree chain.
McLeod said teachers should be earning $18,000-$25,000. But to pay those salaries would mean a huge increase in fees, she said.
Honeytree's fees - $130.50 a week for infants, $125.50 for toddlers, $95.50 for 2-year-olds, $85.50 for preschoolers and $47.50 for after-schoolers - already are higher than many child care centers in the Roanoke Valley, McLeod said. The center has had to increase fees nearly every year for the past decade to keep salaries up and continue to provide benefits for staff.
Honeytree offers vacation and sick leave to its teaching staff. It pays 50 percent of an employee health insurance plan. It has a 401(k) plan. It has an in-house self-study program for assistant teachers.
In a profession with a high turnover rate, "we're doing everything we can to get people to stay," McLeod said.
Research has shown a correlation between quality of care and pay. The better the pay, the better the level of staff a center can attract, the more likely the center is to retain good staff, Ann Francis said.
"The problem is if you have well-educated staff and you pay minimum wage, they're not going to stay," she said. "And high turnover interrupts the continuum of care. The revolving door of teachers is really bad for children."
Children feel abandoned when staff leave, Gwen Morgan said. And turnover is closely related to salaries, which account for 50 percent to 75 percent of child care centers' budgets, she added.
Honeytree had been using half of the fees it charged for activities classes such as dance and cheerleading for teacher bonuses, McLeod said. But it wasn't enough, she said.
Hence, the sale of 600 boxes of candy bars. (Each box contains 48, $1 bars. The candy sale ends Feb.14.)
The child who sells the most boxes will receive a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh bear and a $100 gift certificate. Some families took multiple boxes. A group of school-age children from the Honeytree center off U.S. 460, with parents' permission, spent an hour one afternoon selling the candy at a nearby Kroger. They sold 31/2 boxes.
"We were trying to find something quick and easy," McLeod said. "All the public schools do it. We don't see ourselves any different. The funds go directly to Honeytree."
Sandy Freeman, executive director of Country Bear Day School in Roanoke County, said fund-raisers are a fairly common way for for-profit and nonprofit child care centers to keep down fee increases. They are a useful way to raise money for one-time expenses - teacher bonuses included, she said.
Last spring, Country Bear asked its parent advisory committee about doing a fund-raising project for "large expenses such as an increase to pay or a large piece of playground equipment," Freeman said.
"They preferred not to do one," she said. "They preferred a tuition increase."
Country Bear, however, chose not to raise fees. The center absorbed all cost increases, Freeman said.
But Tech's Francis maintains that child care centers should not have to resort to candy sales or carnivals or sidewalk art shows to bolster teacher salaries. If child care centers need help to pay teachers good salaries, she said, "we as a society need to take a look at our priorities and find ways to support that.
"We need to provide support for child care for young children. If the culture says both parents need to work we really need to start changing our focus."
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff. Dale Brower, instructor with Honeytreeby CNBEarly Learning Centers, reads to preschoolers at the center on U.S.
460 in Roanoke. Brower has been with Honeytree for four years and in
the child care industry for 15 years. color. GRAPHIC: Chart by
staff: Salary averages KEYWORDS: MGR