The need for more child care facilities and providers in Spokane County is straightforward: The region is characterized by a lack of access to child care, affordability, and a need for centers that offer nontraditional hours to accommodate varying work schedules.

Spokane County is home to 37,361 children under the age of 6, according to a 2024 Spokane County State of the Children Economic Impact report.

Of those children, 61% have parents in the workforce, and 39% don’t have access to early learning. According to the report, 5,500 workers with children under 6-years-old quit their jobs due to child care issues, and 2,800 workers with children under age 6 were fired due to child care issues. Every year, employers incur $178.3 million in costs because of the lack of child care.

To meet demand, the report estimates the county needs to grow the child care labor pool by 2,203 early educators.

At the heart of the problem is a workforce issue, says Jessica Clayton, division executive of programs and development at Spokane Workforce Council. The child care profession, like much of the care economy, is one that is severely underpaid, and most often does not offer its workers benefits, she says. 

“The kind of crisis we’re in sort of has two sides,” Clayton says. “You have the talent side, where child care providers are really struggling to find folks to fill those positions for those low wages, … and then you have families that are really struggling to find quality care that is affordable.”

In Washington state, the average child care worker earns $19.58 per hour, or $40,720 annually, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Operating a child care facility also comes with high costs, and while Washington state offers stipends to families, it is only a limited amount, forcing child care providers to work within that stipend, she says. There are families that pay the full amount of child care costs; however, it does not fill the gap for what the state doesn’t pay, she says.

Most child care employers can’t afford to pay benefits for their employees, or to offer wages too much over the minimum wage, Clayton adds. Furthermore, Washington state requires a certain level of higher education and skill set for child care providers, further driving a divide between skills and wages, she adds.

“Child care businesses have a lot of overhead costs,” Clayton says. “Insurance, curriculum, food, the labor of all the elements that go into that. The skills that are needed to take care of kids well and the licensing requirements of the state, … it’s a big balancing act.”

Currently, the average cost for child care in Spokane County is about $1,300 a month, says Elaina Sicilia, chief operating officer for Spokane-based Jasmin Group LLC.

While the cost is high, it is driven by high operational costs and a desire to pay workers a livable wage, Sicilia says. Because Spokane’s workforce has a lower income overall, the cost to pay for child care services further complicates affordability measures here.

The Spokane Workforce Council is currently in the process of updating its needs assessment, Clayton says. While not yet complete, preliminary results show that child care centers do have child care openings available. However, challenges in filling those spots include state benefit levels that don’t match real costs, and a labor shortage that prevents centers from operating at full capacity.

“I think that if we could pay, even as a community, our child care workers fairly and offer child care benefits for our child care workforce, I think that would be a major starting point in helping the labor market shortage,” Clayton says. “Wages, benefits, health care assistance, mental health support — we have to take care of the people that are caring for our kids.”

While these issues exist, there are efforts at the state and local levels to increase wages, as well as efforts to lift barriers to building child care facilities.

Spokane city officials say easing land-use restrictions is one way governments can ease the region’s child care shortage.

In September, Spokane City Council approved a measure to streamline the process for daycare and child care facilities, allowing more facilities in residential zones without requiring conditional use permits. City Council Member Paul Dillon, who sponsored the measure along with City Council Member Zack Zappone, says the change is meant to remove a structural barrier that has long limited the supply of child care centers.

“We really are in a child care crisis, and it comes down to workforce capacity, cost,” Dillon says. “It’s an ever-growing demand.”

Historically, Spokane’s zoning code has made it difficult to open new child care centers outside of specific commercial areas, Dillon explains. While some facilities were grandfathered in, new providers often faced lengthy and expensive permitting processes that discouraged expansion. The city’s land-use policies were designed in part to curb sprawl, he says, but they had the unintended consequence of blocking child care facilities in neighborhoods where families live and work.

“If we’re addressing the root causes of the crisis, we have to look at the facilities themselves and where they can and cannot be located,” Dillon says.

The measure is an early adoption of Senate Bill 5509, which requires cities and towns in Washington to allow child care facilities in most zones to address the child care shortage. The timeline to implement this ordinance is by 2027 for large cities and 2028 for smaller towns. The city of Spokane opted to implement the changes sooner.

Dillon says increasing the number of child care facilities is tied directly to workforce participation and economic stability. Families in Spokane, like the rest of the country, spend a disproportionate share of their income on child care, he notes, and it is far above the federal benchmark that defines affordability.

Parents pay 24% of their income on child care, Dillon says, citing the State of the Children report's data for a family with one infant and one preschooler in center-based care. The Washington State Department of Commerce states that child care should cost no more than 7% of income.

By making it easier to establish child care centers in neighborhoods, Dillon says the city's goal is to increase availability, reduce waitlists over time, and support families whose work schedules and communities make access especially difficult. While zoning alone won’t solve the affordability or workforce challenges facing the child care sector, it’s a step the city can take quickly, he says.

Beyond zoning changes, Sicilia says Spokane’s child care system also needs to better reflect the realities of its service-based workforce. Many licensed centers operate within traditional office hours, leaving shift workers in health care, hospitality, and manufacturing industries with limited options. Through Jasmin Group’s work in the Hillyard neighborhood, Sicilia has helped design a proposal that would offer extended and nontraditional hours and partner directly with employers. The work is being done in partnership with Spokane-based URM Stores Inc. and Jubilant HollisterStier LLC.

“It’s going to be catering to those nontraditional hours that working parents need,” Sicilia says. “So super early in the morning and possibly open until 11 p.m. Because that is one of the biggest needs in Hillyard right now; the working parent and nontraditional need for child care.”

Still, expanding where child care centers can be built and extending hours does not address the core issues facing providers: the inability to pay and retain workers at wages that reflect the demands of the job.

That tension is one Colleen Condon knows well. Condon is the owner of Lilac City Early Learning Center in Spokane and the regional lead for Washington Communities for Children, a coalition representing early learning providers across the state. After more than a decade running a licensed child care center, she says the workforce crisis is inseparable from how child care is funded in Washington.

In Washington, child care providers rely heavily on state stipends and reimbursements to serve families who qualify for assistance. But those payments, Condon says, fall well below the true cost of care, leaving providers with little room to raise wages or offer benefits — even as operating costs climb.

“(Washington) is not investing when they put money into subsidies because they’re not actually giving us the money that it costs to provide the care,” Condon says. “They’re buying a product at a discounted rate … and they are paying us after the fact for the service.”

Payroll costs can account for up to 80% of a child care center’s revenue, Condon contends. When wages rise, whether due to minimum wage increases or competition from other industries, providers are forced to absorb the cost or pass it on to families; many of whom are already struggling to afford tuition.

Condon has modeled the numbers herself. Using her own center's expenses, she calculated that relying solely on state subsidies while paying even minimum wage would put her business tens of thousands of dollars in the red each month.

According to the State of the Children report, the annual cost of quality child care is $23,636. The maximum subsidy provided by the state is $13,765.

To stabilize the workforce, Condon says the state needs to rethink how it funds early learning. She supports a base funding model that would provide predictable operational support to licensed providers, whether they operate child care centers or in a family home, along with higher subsidy rates that reflect the real cost of care. She also advocates for paying providers prospectively, rather than reimbursing them after services are delivered, to meet cash-flow challenges that make it difficult to meet payroll.

As lawmakers head into the next legislative session, Condon says her top concern is protecting and increasing subsidy rates tied to Working Connections Child Care. With minimum wage set to rise again in January to $17.13 per hour, she worries more providers will be forced to close if reimbursement rates remain stagnant.