Not Enough Seats
There are over 89,000 children between the ages of 0 and 5 in the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Licensed childcare facilities only have the capacity to serve 47,219 children. Service gaps are most pronounced for families facing the challenges of poverty. Just 19% of children eligible for subsidies have a seat in a program that meets accreditation quality requirements beyond the basics of licensure.

Unbalanced Infrastructure
The system lacks the infrastructure to provide access to high-quality care and education where it is needed most. Some providers have hundreds of children on their waitlists; other centers can barely fill 50% of their approved seats.

High Costs for Care
The national affordability standard for early childhood care and education is 7% of household income. In our region, costs range between 10% and 15% of household income. Since subsidies are not high enough to cover the cost of high-quality care, providers must charge higher fees or refuse to accept children who need subsidies. This further burdens low-income families.

Low Wages and High Stress
Low wages and minimal benefits for teachers and caregivers perpetuate high turnover rates that further impede efforts to create high-quality care settings. Missouri does not require that ECE educators receive paid family leave or paid sick days. Wages and benefits are insufficient to both attract and retain a strong workforce. Those who do work in early childhood care and education must balance the demanding nature of their work with the stress and anxiety of their own financial precarity. High worker turnover means providers must devote precious time and resources to finding new workers. Low wages and lack of benefits limit the number of qualified candidates available.

No Standard Metrics for Quality
Missouri is one of only 12 states that does not have a universal quality rating system to measure, improve, and sustain equitable, developmentally-appropriate ECE programming. Which means parents and ECE Providers do not have a comprehensive definition of quality to help guide decision-making and professional growth and development.

Stressors Outside the Classroom
Negative environmental factors in the first five years of life contribute to grave short-term deficits in school readiness, mental health issues, and poor language and cognitive development. In the long term, effects include lower high school graduation rates, higher teen pregnancy rates, and reduced adult income and employment.

History is Not on Our Side
We did not arrive at this moment by accident. Decades of decisions by those in power and those with the power to influence led us to this point. In most instances, the decisions made throughout our history have benefitted certain groups, typically wealthier and white families, and further marginalized and oppressed groups, typically poorer and Black and Brown families. These decisions about policy, funding, and priorities have been made at all levels of community and government, including the 1971 decision at the federal level not to create public preschool for the entire nation.