York County program gets $300,000 grant to attract, retain child care teachers

Paula Wolf//August 30, 2022

To address the challenge of attracting and retaining quality child care staff, the York County Community Foundation received a $300,000 grant from The Heinz Endowments to support the York County Early Childhood Educator Awards Program.

The awards put money in the pockets of teachers, providing financial incentives for them to stay in their jobs and advance their education.

In the first year, the program was paid for through a mix of public and private funding; the plan is to expand funding sources going forward. Child Care Consultants administers the application process and awards distribution. York County Community Foundation hosts an oversight committee to monitor results.

The average child care teacher earns $10 per hour, and the average salary for a lead teacher in Pennsylvania is $22,500, according to a release. Child care centers have difficulty raising salaries because they realize there’s a limit to how much families can pay.

The Early Childhood Educator Awards distributed $459,000 to 63 home-based family providers, groups and child care centers reaching 311 educators throughout 22 York County ZIP codes in the program’s initial year, Christy S. Renjilian, executive director of Child Care Consultants, said in the release.

“This will serve as baseline data so that we can track changes in retention and attraction rates at the participating centers to demonstrate that the program is achieving its goals.”

Paula Wolf is a freelance writer

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