Poverty in preschool: Colorado's low teacher pay leaves staffing crisis

In an October 2022 survey of Colorado child care providers conducted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 61% of programs surveyed reported they were experiencing a staffing shortage. One in three said they were serving fewer children than they would like, with the most common reason being insufficient numbers of staff. 

In a field with high demand and long waitlists for a spot — and strict rules around teacher to student ratios (e.g. 1:5  for infants, 1:10 for 3 to 4-year-olds) — having enough staff is critical. 

“We have to maintain ratios not only for licensing, but also because it's best practice.  Children need enough adults around them to support them,” said Purdin.   

“If someone calls [out for work] at Target, then the store is going to open, it's going to keep going. When you don't have enough staff or people aren't interested in coming into the field, then you run the risk of not even being able to open your program or all of your classrooms,” she said.  

On the day Rocky Mountain PBS visited Temple Sinai, Purdin was conducting interviews for an assistant teacher position. She said she initially was interested in three candidates, but they all ended up ghosting her. 

“You get that a lot,” she said.  

The severe shortage of early educators is largely driven by the industry’s low wages. 

In 2021, the median wage for a child care educator in Colorado was $30,350 — less than half the median earnings for Colorado’s full-time, year-round workers. 

In Colorado, 15% of early childhood educators live in poverty, a rate six times higher than K-8 teachers.  

With limited public funding, most early childhood sites operate on narrow margins and can’t afford to bring wages up without raising tuition — which is already cost-prohibitive for many in the state. 

“We don't pay this work what it's actually worth to us because it's not considered a federal or state level public good yet [like K-12 education is]” said Melissa Mares, a former kindergarten and first-grade teacher who is now director of early childhood initiatives at Colorado Children's Campaign, a non-partisan advocacy organization.  

“The root cause of some of these problems is that the work of care is so often considered women's work, and thus very disrespected,” she said. 

Studies show that 90% of a child’s brain development occurs before kindergarten. The skills needed to be successful, healthy adults — like motivation, self-regulation, problem solving, communication and self-esteem — are formed in the earliest years of life.  

Jen Brehmer, a lead teacher for 2-year-olds at Temple Sinai, said her work isn’t acknowledged the way it is for some of her peers working in elementary schools.  

“I want the stigma of early childhood teachers to go away of not being teachers because we most definitely are,” she said.  “If it wasn't for early childhood educators, the jobs of grade school educators would be much harder. We do professional development, we take classes, we have licenses. We don't just come here and play or watch your kids all day. We have intentionality behind our practice.” 

A student does art at Temple Sinai Preschool.  
Photo: Andrea Kramar, Rocky Mountain PBS 

While the federal government stepped in during the Covid-19 pandemic with stimulus money totaling $119 million to keep early childhood centers open, the last of that money will be gone by June. 

Now there’s a looming question mark over the future sustainability of the industry. The pool of federal money had supported a number of efforts to recruit and retain the workforce, including bringing in new certified childcare and preschool educators, providing free community college courses, and giving bonuses to educators. 

“We're now having a slow wave away from those funds,” said Elizabeth Pufall Jones, Director of Preparation and Work Environment Programs at UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. 

“Unless states are taking up the call and providing funding to supplement childcare in their states, we are going to see facilities closing classrooms and family childcare providers saying, ‘I can't afford to do this,’”  she said. 

While Colorado has been working on programs to shore up the early childhood system through temporary salary increases and through programs like universal pre-K, individual organizations such as Temple Sinai have been working to find solutions at a micro-level.   

At Temple Sinai Preschool, Purdin has been focusing much of her efforts around recruitment and retention. When she surveyed her staff and asked what their biggest pain points were, she said, “consistently benefits came up,” so she started looking at what she could do.  

Temple Sinai Preschool in Denver has been focusing the last few years on increasing teacher retention. They now offer benefits to full-time staff, implemented a pay transparency scale with incentives built in, and provide stipends to teachers to further their professional growth.  
Photo: Andrea Kramar, Rocky Mountain PBS 

Because the school, like most programs, pays its teachers hourly wages, they don’t get paid during the four weeks of the year the school is closed (over winter break, spring break, and Thanksgiving). 

With the support of the affiliate synagogue, Purdin wrote the school’s families a letter in the summer of 2022 explaining the situation and the need to recognize the staff as professionals — and thus pay them more like professionals.  

When she suggested raising tuition to cover those four weeks, she said, “We had across the board nothing but positive reactions from our families. So that's how we did it.” 

In Colorado, one in three early childhood workers rely on public assistance and one in four work second jobs to make ends meet, including some of the staff at Temple Sinai.  

“Folks may not work as many hours so they can continue to qualify for public benefits. They might work 32 hours a week instead of 40,” Pufall Jones said.  

“We shouldn't be running a system where we have educators relying on a public system in order to be able to live. We should be providing enough compensation to educators so that they don't have to do this funky math to figure out if they can have a full-time position,” she said.  

The school also started offering benefits for full-time workers. Staff who work year-round, including summer camp, are now eligible to receive medical, dental, and vision benefits, life insurance and access to a 403b retirement plan. 

Previously, only the director and assistant director at the preschool were eligible. 

The school has also worked to provide some smaller perks to keep their teachers happy. 

Last year the school applied for and received a wellness grant that offered $30 in monthly wellness reimbursements. Staff could use the money on various forms of self-care including massages, haircuts and manicures.  This year, the school also introduced a “Teacher Trolley,” a cart that goes around the school once a month with snacks for the 29 teachers. 

“It’s just a little added ‘thank you, you come to work every day, we know this job isn't easy and we appreciate you being here,’” said Brehmer.  

Temple Sinai is part of a Jewish early childhood consortium called the Efshar Project, an advocacy and membership organization offering Jewish early childhood centers in Denver and Boulder support, advice, professional development and advocacy.  The project’s goal is to increase the quality of Jewish early childhood centers – and helps schools like Temple Sinai experiment and share best practices with other schools. 

“None of us feel like we're doing this in isolation. We have the opportunity to learn from each other,” said Purdin.  

The Efshar Project recently received a grant from the state to study pay salary scales and is working with a couple of the Jewish preschools, including Temple Sinai, to implement one.  

Temple Sinai’s pay transparency scale, implemented in the summer of 2023, gives added pay and incentives for teachers with a bachelor’s and master’s degree, as well as those with prior early childhood experience and those who attain further licenses and certificates. Salaries at the school start at $20 and go up to about $25 per hour, higher than most preschool programs. With the help of the Efshar Project, the school is also able to provide professional development courses without cost to the teachers. 

 “We invest so much time, energy and money into training staff and integrating them into our culture, and we lose time and money every time someone leaves. So we wanted to incentivize people to stay, but we also wanted to incentivize their professional growth and give them a clear path that was in their control to increase their wages,” Purdin said. 

“It's a growing trend now to not have Jewish educators in Jewish preschools,” said Kelli Pfaff executive director of the Efshar Project.  “Last year 38% of teachers identified as Jewish, now it's 30%.” 
Photo: Andrea Kramar, Rocky Mountain PBS 

Because many Jewish educators across the country have left the early childhood space in search of higher wages elsewhere, schools like Temple Sinai spend a lot of time thinking about how to integrate non-Jewish teachers into their schools.  

At the beginning of the 2023 school year last fall, Temple Sinai Preschool, along with several other Efshar Project sites, began to hire newly arrived Afghan refugees. Afghan refugees have come in large numbers to the state since the Taliban returned to power in 2021 – and often struggle for months to land employment, especially if they have limited English speaking skills. 

“We have been so short staffed for so long, so we started being really creative and open to things that we might not have been open to before,” said Purdin. “Values wise, that really is who we are.”   

The school now employs four Afghan women in classrooms.