MEMPHIS, Tenn — The American Rescue Plan’s Child Care Stabilization grant will expire Saturday, September 30. The grant impacted dozens of childcare centers across Tennessee including Memphis.
Knicole Barrentine, the director of Kid Station in East Memphis said she’s grateful for the funding, but instead of bringing long-term solutions, it left her exactly where she started.
“That really hurts because this is the time where you get into your slow season, so now you have to dig into your savings to make sure ends meet,” Barrentine said.
She’s left struggling as grant funding runs out and her employees who got thousand-dollar bonuses from the grant are long gone.
“It helped, but the issue we ran into was employee retention,” Barrentine said.
With no clause in the grant requiring people to stay a certain amount of time after receiving the bonus, everyone left.
“They would just get the money, and then within the 30 days, they would leave because we had to pay it out within 30 days,” Barrentine said.
The Tennessee Department of Human Services won’t add a requirement for new hires to stay, saying “the grant is intended to be a good faith effort to support retention.”
But that isn’t happening everywhere.
“Not that I don’t love just me and my director and the kids here, but I’d love to have more people,” employee Shelby Eberle said.
Eberle also cited burnout as a reason many people left. The quick bonus coupled with not having worked in a daycare full-time before led a lot of people right back out the door they walked in.
“Change diapers, throw up, it’s stuff that the school systems normally don’t have to deal with that we have to deal with, and some people are just not equipped to deal with that,” Barrentine said.
She also knows funding is expiring; everyone initially hired on the grant is gone and savings are running out. Now, she’s relying on kids.
“If we don’t pick up business or get more kids to come in, then that means we would have to shut down. We would have to close,” Barrentine said.
While the Child Care Stabilization funds are coming to an end, additional funds will continue through 2024 if you applied by the September 5 deadline.
If you didn’t, the Tennessee Department of Human Services is working to provide childcare development funds regularly, and current grants can be found on the TDHS website here.