GARDEN CITY, Idaho — Childcare is essential for Treasure Valley parents but it comes at a cost. Many parents struggle to keep up with the price tag that comes with daycare services.
- Ashley Jackson is a mom who had to quit her job to care for her kids.
- She says it would take a paycheck to keep up with childcare, so she decided to just stay home.
- Today her kids now go to the Boys & Girls Club because they are old enough.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
“It's not just about having four safe walls; it's about having those experiences and those people who are going to help them grow,” said Ashley Jackson, a local mom.
Ashley Jackson is talking about child care for which she leans on her local Boys & Girls Club. The same club she attended when she was a kid.
“In 1997, I was one of the first 100 club members to register for this location here at the Moseley Center,” said Jackson.
And for more than 25 years, she has been pretty close by. After leaving the program as a teen, Jackson became a youth development professional at the same place, but when she had kids of her own, she and her husband had to make a tough choice.
“Only one of us worked because we couldn't send our kids to daycare,” said Jackson.
The lack of affordable childcare in the area led Jackson to quit her job, staying home to take care of her kids instead of allocating entire paychecks to pay for childcare. Luckily, today her kids are old enough to attend the Boys and Girls Club, but many Idaho parents don't have that luxury. Leaders across the state know that despite a clear need for improved access to affordable options, it's a complicated issue with no easy solution.
“These folks have to go to work to put food on the table. They can't go to work if they don't have access to quality childcare,” said Beth Oppenheimer, executive director for the Idaho Association for The Education of Young Children.
“Unfortunately, in this climate with inflation the way it is, a lot of times both parents have to work, and another unfortunate occurrence is, a lot of folks are single-parent households right now so that creates the need for childcare,” said Ron Mendive, representative for District 5 of Idaho.
I called 5 daycare's in the Garden City area and found it costs between 13 to $16,000 a year per child. A hefty price to pay for parents like Jackson.
“We went without a lot at the very beginning of parenthood because we were only working off of one income, but it still made more sense not to have both parents working,” said Jackson.
