A childcare center founder explains what she learned after 3 decades and why it's so hard to make the business work

• After three decades, Julie Clark recently sold CAST Preschool and Childcare Center in Connecticut.
• She talked to Insider about the cost of early-childhood education and childcare.

Julie Clark, the cofounder of the CAST Preschool and Childcare Center in Woodbury, Connecticut, said her "goal was really to form a community, not just a school."

In fact, she said, some of her students' parents attended the center when they were kids.

After more than 30 years, Clark sold her childcare center this past summer. Clark, 68, said she will continue working as a consultant until the end of December.

"I've become very involved in advocacy for early childhood, and I would like to stay involved with that, but I will not be going to work anywhere," Clark told Insider.

She talked about her experience selling the center and the challenges childcare faces — from workers not making enough to labor shortages and the high cost of care.

"I have been writing letters to governors for 25 years about how early childhood is underfunded," Clark said. "Parents pay way too much for childcare."

Clark believes the government can do more to help out.

"I do think that the government needs to figure out a way to help fund early childhood for, not just for teachers and businesses, but for the economy," Clark said.

The American Rescue Plan bill helped centers pay their employees over the past couple of years, but as much of the pandemic-era funding ended at the end of September, childcare centers may soon be forced to close or make cuts.

Childcare can be expensive and there's a 'caregiver supply-chain crisis'

Data from the Department of Labor has found that putting a kid in childcare costs thousands of dollars a year, in every part of the country.

Clark said her center had to increase its tuition over the past few years.

Based on documents reviewed by Insider, the annual cost for kids under 3 who attended the CAST Preschool and Childcare Center three days a week, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., increased from $4,680 for the 2019-2020 school year to $5,263 for the 2023-2024 school year.

Allison Robinson, the founder and CEO of the talent marketplace The Mom Project, said parents have to think about "childcare as an investment in your career" when weighing the expense of paying for care against the opportunity cost of stay-at-home parenting.

Robinson added that childcare accessibility is also a major problem.

"We have a major kind of caregiver-supply-chain crisis happening," Robinson said. "We've got childcare deserts where many families don't actually have access to quality care."

It's hard for centers to find staff

Some teachers had worked for CAST Preschool and Childcare Center for at least 15 years.

"I was a single mother, and because I knew childcare was really expensive, I started hiring young mothers and offered childcare for free for their children," she said.

While Clark said she was usually fully staffed, she knew of many centers that had to close classrooms because they couldn't find enough teachers. Additionally, Clark said that "a lot of centers are being sold to corporations or other entities that have the money."

As the childcare funding cliff cuts off key support to providers, Julie Kashen, a senior fellow and the director for women's economic justice at The Century Foundation, told Insider two actions childcare centers may resort to so they can keep business running are increasing rates or closing a classroom.

"I think the more that centers close classrooms and the more they go out of business, it provides a real challenge for parents to find care," Clark said.

Clark said finding infant and toddler care is particularly difficult. Centers have to consider the legally required ratio of teachers to kids.

"We now have two nurseries, and we try to limit them to seven babies in each side because ratios are one-to-four, but seven babies for two people is still a lot," she said.

"So your overhead and your labor costs are a lot, even though you're not really paying those people what they deserve," she said.

The work is 'a labor of love' that deserves good pay

At the same time prices have put childcare out of the reach of many families, Clark said that that many providers still don't make "enough to run a childcare business."

"I put a lot of money into my teachers, as much as I could, and still I wasn't paying them what they're worth," she said, noting this as one of the reasons it was time to sell.

Many of her workers made between $15 and $20 an hour, per documents reviewed by Insider.

"Early-childhood educators do not make what they're worth at all," she said. "I mean, it's more than a job. It has to be a passion because you don't do it for the money."

While she described the job as "a labor of love," she added "it should be a labor of love that pays well." The Bureau of Labor Statistics' website said the median wage for childcare workers in 2022 was $13.71 an hour, compared to $22.26 an hour for all occupations.

"I ended up selling to a business that could really afford to run the business the way it needs to be run, and hopefully we'll take care of the teachers the way they should be taken care of," she said.

Clark was also diagnosed with cancer in 2019, another reason she thought it was time to sell.

"When you have a cancer diagnosis, you don't know how much longer you have in your life, and I did want to spend some quality time with my husband, and there are things we want to do as a couple," Clark said. "So it was time, and also the pandemic was difficult, and you just don't know what's around the corner. So I did want to take some time for myself."

Have you had to sell your business? Are you a family who has seen your childcare costs increase? Reach out to this reporter at mhoff@insider.com.