School-based child care rates going up

Child care rates are going up in the Coeur d'Alene and Lakeland Joint school districts.

Coeur d'Alene trustees unanimously voted Monday to raise before and after school School PLUS rates, as well as fees for extra usage throughout the morning and afternoon, for when school is closed and for delayed start only.

The current rate of $2.36 per hour will go up to $3.54 per hour. The monthly cost for one child attending morning and afternoon School PLUS five days a week will increase by $124 from $248 to $372 per month. Other rate changes can be found in the School PLUS presentation on the district's website.

The rate increases were recommended by School PLUS district coordinator Jamie Lenz after the district's finance department conducted a budget assessment and found the program would run a deficit of $327,739 if a rate increase did not occur. Even with the rate hike, School PLUS is still at 28% of the local market rate of $514 for equivalent child care for 5- to 12-year-olds in Kootenai County, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare's 2021 Idaho Child Care Market Rate Analysis.

"This has been coming for a while,” Lenz said. “Our local market really does set the tone of what our child care prices should be. This was starting before COVID, and slowly decreased, but it’s time to go back up, so that’s why we’re asking for an increase for the wages of employees and to compete with the local market.”

School PLUS, which served 425 children during the 2022-23 school year and is serving 287 children this summer, has not significantly increased fees in several years. A 3% increase was implemented last year while all other increases were frozen during COVID-19 years.

With the new rates, the School PLUS program will have a surplus of $127,552. It can now bump its starting wage from about $12.66 per hour to $16 per hour and hire four additional coordinators, allowing 60 more students into the program, which has a waitlist of 200 students.

The 2023-24 changes drop the two-day per week option, so families will now just have the option to use the program three, four and five days.

Also Monday, Lakeland Joint School District trustees approved raising rates for Lakeland's Before and After School Enrichment program. Running the BASE program costs more than the fees brought in, so money from the program’s savings covered the difference.

To prevent the program from running at a deficit, trustees voted to raise the price from $250 to $325 per month for one child for mornings and afternoons.

BASE rates vary depending on a few factors: how many kids are enrolled, if kids attend both mornings and afternoons and how many days of the week students are enrolled. The $325 would be for one student for five days per week in the morning and afternoon, which is the highest price for one student.

The rate increases bring the the cost more on par with local child care rates. For one child five days a week, morning only rates in Lakeland will go from $120 to $145 while afternoons will increase from $170 to $195.

For one child two days a week morning rates will go from $70 to $85, afternoon will increase from $90 to $135 and morning and afternoon will increase from $120 to $205.

“We were more concerned about our local child care agencies,” Lakeland Superintendent Lisa Arnold said. “One of the things that’s hard for them is they sometimes feel like we undercut them and they lose clientele because we’re less expensive.”

Like many child care programs in the area, BASE has been short-staffed, so the program has only been available at Athol and Garwood elementary schools this year.

The starting wage for BASE staff members was $14.79 per hour and will now increase to $16.22 per hour for the 2023-24 school year.