T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Tessa Rundall, back, reads “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round” to kids and her coworkers at the Elim Children’s Center on Thursday morning. Like many other daycare facilities across the state, Elim has struggled to find a permanent director and hire quality staff.

When Kathy McCune, who had retired after a 30-year career with the local Area Education Agency (AEA), first took on the position of interim director at the Elim Lutheran Church’s children’s center, she was happy to do so and envisioned herself filling the void for a few months until a permanent replacement could be found. It’s now been three years and counting.

Elim’s struggles aren’t unique within Marshalltown, as the T-R has reported on the closures of at least one other center and the challenge of making childcare work financially for both families and providers over the last year. But they are another microcosm of a system many believe is broken and in desperate need of substantial change.

“The director and staff shortage is a statewide, nationwide issue. I know, in Iowa, there are a lot of interim directors working and have been for the last number of years,” McCune said.

Elim stayed open and busy throughout the COVID pandemic — masking until June of 2022 — and avoided any major shutdowns or work stoppages until last fall, when a group of employees left for other jobs, returned to college or got married and relocated.

“It’s just been really hard to fill those positions with the current trend in the workforce out there,” McCune said.

Currently, Elim is properly staffed for the number of kids it is serving (74 on the roster), but as Pastor Paul Waterman noted, they aren’t particularly close to their capacity of 109 and have the space to expand.

“We have the space to open more rooms, but until we have the reliable staff to do so, we can’t open rooms without having reliable staff, and we can’t hire more staff until we know there’s a need for that particular age,” Waterman said. “Because an infant room has to be set up differently with plumbing and changing tables and toys than a three-year-old room.”

The Elim center is now in its 35th year of existence, and both Waterman and McCune were quick to compliment the workers they do have for their commitment to kids in an industry that isn’t known for high-paying jobs or stability. Because it’s affiliated with the church, the daycare is a nonprofit — and it does accept childcare assistance — but there are still plenty of financial hurdles to jump over. Some grants have benefited the center, but competition is stiff both within the community and across the state for additional funding.

“With grants, with tuition, with pay, it’s always really tight, and we wanna pay staff more, then we have to have more income. And the ways we do that are grants and tuition,” Waterman said.

How the state and federal governments can help childcare providers and families struggling to afford the service has been a lingering question over the last few years, and so far, there haven’t been easy answers. The state legislature eased regulations on the staff to child ratio, but Waterman said Elim is still adhering to the old standards to avoid burning its employees out.

“They’ve made some changes on paper that have helped, but we don’t want to add more stress to our already overworked staff,” he said.

Through it all, Waterman and McCune keep strong in their faith and do see brighter days ahead, but in the meantime, they’ve got to address immediate issues like hiring a permanent director and finding a way to make it competitive and sustainable with pay and benefits.

“I think we’ve undervalued the profession, and that comes at the hand of people — both people who govern and legislate but also people who are customers looking for ‘Is the cheapest rate for childcare the best place to go?’ Maybe, maybe not,” Waterman said. “I call it the lifeguard syndrome, right? Who do you pay to literally protect people’s lives in the pool? It’s most often young people looking for a summer job who are making $9, $10 or $11 an hour… The idea is that you’re putting real people’s lives in the hands of those who are making minimum wage, which is a value system. And it’s kind of tough for me to stomach.”

Waterman admitted he and his own wife once had a conversation about whether they could both work and afford to pay for their three kids to go to daycare.

“It’s a thin margin every year, and the families pay a lot. I’m not saying that they’re underpaying, but I haven’t figured out how to adapt that system over the long term,” he said. “Again, grants are great, but if you get it one year and you don’t the next and your ratio is built around having that pot of money that’s here one year and gone another, that’s not a sustainable piece either.”

McCune is hopeful she’ll be able to re-retire someday and enjoy time with her own grandchildren, but she knows that whoever comes on as the director will need to be the right person for the position who is interested in a sustainable long-term plan for the center. And Waterman maintains his trademark optimism even as he realizes the situation may not immediately improve.

“We don’t expect every staff member that comes through the door to want to retire from here, but while they’re here, we want them to provide the best possible care to our families. It’s not just to the kids, it’s to the parents. We have a lot of grandparents that pick up and drop off, or aunts and uncles,” he said. “So we want to invest in them because we want them to be the best (at) whatever they’re gonna be. If they’re here for two years or they’re here during college just on breaks and summers, that’s great, but we wanna invest in the future of our community, which means that a lot of our staff aren’t gonna be here for years and years. And that’s OK.”

Elim Church and the daycare center are located at 302 W. Church St. in Marshalltown. They can be reached at (641) 752-4213.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.