Georgia’s Legislature Must Invest in Child Care Infrastructure by Championing SB 554

By GEEARS for The Saporta Report

While GEEARS has often emphasized the importance of highly engaged and well-trained teachers in an early childhood classroom, we also know that learning environments impact the quality of early childhood education. Children thrive when learning takes place in high-quality facilities with literacy-rich classrooms, safe playgrounds, kitchens that can churn out multiple meals each day, and kid-sized bathrooms, not to mention sturdy roofs, driveways, and HVAC systems. This is why PAACT: Promise All Atlanta Children Thrive focused a portion of the historic $20 million Mayor’s PAACT Commitment on repairs and renovations, providing grants and technical assistance to more than 70 child care programs to ensure safe and healthy learning spaces. 

It’s also why GEEARS and partners like the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) worked with a bipartisan group of legislators to draft and secure the recent introduction of Senate Bill 554, which would create the Georgia Child Care Facilities Program. This dedicated state funding program for child care infrastructure would help providers build, renovate, and modernize spaces. 

Last week, three child care providers from rural Georgia journeyed to the Capitol to testify in support of SB 554 before the Senate Committee on Education and Youth. One of the providers, Dr. Melissa Purvis, owner of Pride and Joy Developmental Learning Center in Eastman, explained to the senators that she recently shifted from elementary education to child care “intending to invest in strong teachers and rich language and literacy materials. Instead, much of my focus and funding has gone toward keeping a 30-year-old facility safe and operational—repairs that tuition dollars alone cannot sustain.

“We serve 140 children every day,” she continued. “We prepare breakfast, lunch, and snacks in a kitchen with one original oven that takes nearly two hours to heat up. We have peeling floor tiles covered with rugs for safety and doors that need updated locks. These are not cosmetic improvements. They are basic safety and infrastructure needs. In a rural community like Eastman, tuition must remain affordable. If I raise tuition to replace equipment or flooring, I price families out of care. When families lose child care, employers lose workers. Child care is workforce infrastructure.”

When that infrastructure falters or fails entirely, the effects ripple through children’s well-being, the stability of their homes, and their local economies. Child care challenges, for instance, lead to at least $2.52 billion per year in lost economic activity and an additional $131.7 million in lost tax revenue. 

The realities of the current economy pile even more challenges onto Georgia’s child care providers, who’ve long been stretched thin by the high cost of quality, including the ability to recruit and retain a skilled workforce when wages are kept low by razor-thin profit margins. 

Another issue is the increasing number of young children with developmental delays, disabilities, and other specialized needs. Such students deserve both inclusion and appropriate instruction, support, and environments. 

When Leah Watkins founded Chapel Christian Academy in Lyons in 2012, she says she had a handful of students with special needs. Today, there are about 40, many of whom require a lower teacher-to-student ratio. 

“When you give a teacher only four or five kids,” she explains, “you’re not making any money. It’s all going to pay her.” And there’s certainly no surplus to customize a classroom to meet many of her students’ sensory processing needs—a dream that Watkins is deferring for now. 

Janice Dixon, owner of Kidz Kountry Daycare in Waynesville, is in a similar position. “At any given time, we have six or seven children who are receiving visits with a therapist,” she reports. “We end up having to stick them in the lobby lots of times. But between inflation and recently reduced rates from Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS), I do not have the capital to fund an expansion.”

A state facilities fund could make that expansion possible. It would also be an investment with a tangible return. At last week’s committee meeting, the testimony of child care provider Gigi Welch illustrated the clear connection between child care infrastructure and societal and economic outcomes. 

“The Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning has asked if I could host a Georgia Pre-K class to respond to community need,” said Welch, who owns Glad Tidings Academy in Thomasville. “Regrettably, I had to say no due to lack of space. If the same government that is seeking more educational opportunities for young students would provide facility building and renovation funds through a capital grant, I would be able to give a different answer. The children who could access early learning during this critical window in their brain development would win. The families seeking a prosperous, small-town life in Thomasville would win. And our local workforce—including my staff of talented and committed teachers—would win.”