A lack of child care can be a barrier for community college students. Virginia is looking for answers.

When Taneisha Mathews went back to school, her daughters went with her.

It was Mathews’ second attempt at working toward an associate degree. When she first enrolled at Central Virginia Community College in Lynchburg in 2014, she was a teen mom who felt that going to college was what she was supposed to do — but she didn’t know yet what she wanted her career to look like. 

“I ended up flunking out because I mentally was forcing myself to do it,” she said.

When Mathews returned to campus in summer 2022, she brought Aniyah, then 10, and Amirah, then 3, with her to her night class. Aniyah usually brought a book and hung out in the nearby student center. Amirah sat in the classroom near her mother.

It was an early childhood development course. Mathews had been working full time at a Head Start child care facility for about a year, but she needed to start earning credentials to advance there.

Mathews’ instructor signed off on the arrangement because there were only a handful of students in the summer class. 

But when it came time to plan ahead for the fall semester, the rules changed. Mathews’ next class would be more crowded, and Amirah couldn’t tag along. 

Mathews understood. She was able to lean on her mother and a cousin for help watching the girls when she went to class after spending the day at work.

But her journey hasn’t been easy. As a single mother with two jobs, Mathews, 30, admitted she’s thought about taking a break from working on her degree as recently as last semester.

Virginia’s community colleges are hubs for addressing the state’s workforce demands, with students ranging from traditional associate degree-seekers preparing to transfer to four-year schools to those earning an increasing number of short-term credentials to be used in the workforce immediately.

But affordable access to child care can be a major barrier for community college students, many of whom are older and have families.

Only a handful of the state’s 23 community colleges offer on-campus child care centers. The schools primarily rely on community partnerships to help students find and pay for child care.

A pilot program at five Virginia community colleges that provides stipends to single parents has had positive outcomes thus far. And across the state, there’s an effort to train more child care workers to alleviate staffing shortages. 

But child care solutions aren’t one-size-fits-all, especially for student parents and their families.

[Read more about the wraparound services that community colleges are offering: Community colleges are helping with housing, gas and food to keep students in class.]

Shortage of openings makes finding care even harder

More than 1 in 5 undergraduate students in the U.S. are parents, but on-campus child care is unavailable for most who need it. 

Just 28% of public institutions and 7% of private nonprofit institutions offered on-campus child care as of 2022, according to federal data analyzed by the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank.

Virginia offers robust financial aid programs to students pursuing in-demand fields at community colleges. But state and federal grants usually can’t cover the cost of living. Full-time formal child care in Virginia costs an average of $100 to $440 per week, per child, according to a 2023 report from Virginia’s independent Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

Even if parents can afford care, it’s often hard to find a reliable source. The state would need 140,000 additional child care slots to properly accommodate the care needs for children under age 12, the JLARC study found. And fewer than half of the state’s licensed child care providers participate in a state subsidy program that reduces child care costs for low-income households.

It’s even harder for parents in rural areas to find child care “because we’re so spread out,” said Bonnie Graham, head of the early childhood education program at New River Community College in Dublin. Most child care centers are operating at full capacity, she said, and centers that aren’t are limited by a lack of staff. 

“They cannot find providers to fill those vacancies or to teach in the classrooms,” Graham said, noting that the shortage existed before 2020 but was exacerbated by the pandemic.

The shortage is most profound for parents of infants and toddlers, Graham said. State regulations require more staff in classrooms for the youngest children, which drives up the cost for families.

In rural Southwest Virginia, where New River Community College is located, there are about 13,000 child care slots for kids under age 5. But about 6,000 more slots are needed to truly meet demand, based on data from the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that works with the state to increase access to child care.

But child care can make a difference in a student parent’s success. 

A workforce training program in Oklahoma that works with families enrolled in Head Start found that participating parents were more likely to complete their certifications and be employed after one year. 

At Los Angeles Valley College, 26% of student parents who took advantage of the school’s Family Resource Center over a three-year period finished their associate degree or career program, compared to about 13% of those who didn’t use the center, according to research by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. The Family Resource Center offers parenting workshops, play groups and a computer lab, while the nearby child development center provides daytime and evening care options.

Community colleges with child care offer wide range of service levels 

The child care centers affiliated with Virginia’s community colleges each have their own specialty.

New River Community College provides space for a Head Start classroom for 3- and 4-year-old children that’s open to both students and the wider community. Head Start is a free, federally funded early childhood program for low-income families.

Tidewater Community College recently opened two child care centers on its campuses in Portsmouth and Norfolk. The centers specialize in care for children ages 3 to 5, with after-school and drop-in care available for children up to age 12. 

In Southside Virginia, Danville Community College’s Helping Hands Child Development Center has four classrooms serving infants through pre-K.

There, owner Jessica Testerman has a wait list for all four rooms. Though she’s contracted for 78 slots, she only has capacity for about 55 children right now due to staffing constraints. 

When families tour Helping Hands, “I tell them to get on every wait list,” Testerman said. 

Danville’s students are among the luckier ones: A private child care center has operated on campus since 2001; Testerman took it over in 2019. The center also serves as a training lab for early childhood education students at the community college.

Helping Hands reserves 25% of its slots for faculty and students. As of February, two part-time and six full-time students received financial assistance for their children to attend the center. The Danville Community College Educational Foundation offers grants that pay up to 40% of the weekly rate, which students can use in conjunction with the state child care subsidy.

Danville alumna Kaitlin Oldham had one child when she enrolled in 2019 to study nursing. The admissions office told her about the on-site child care and encouraged her to walk over to the center to learn more. 

For a while, Oldham didn’t have to pay anything for child care thanks to the grant she received from the school. “It was a big blessing to not have to pay for day care at an actual safe day care center where I was literally in the next building,” she said. Her nursing classes were held in a building that overlooks the Helping Hands playground.

Eventually, with three kids at Helping Hands — they’re now 6, 3 and 2 — she had to pay for care. But the grant kept her costs to half of what they would have been without it, Oldham said. 

While Oldham was in school, her family depended solely on her husband’s income as an engineer at an auto plant. “If it wasn’t for the grant, we financially could not have afforded for me to go to school,” she said. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was able to use the child care center even though her classes were online. “You can’t do nursing and have people at home — or at least children at home,” she said. “You need the peace and quiet to study and do your schoolwork.” 

Oldham graduated in 2022 and is working as a registered nurse at a local hospital while she works on her bachelor of nursing degree online. 

Other on-campus child care facilities may be smaller but still play a significant role in their communities.

New River Community College previously had an on-campus early learning center that primarily served the children of faculty members. In 2016, New River Community Action, which oversees Head Start in the region, contacted the community college about opening an additional classroom there. 

New River Community Action uses the college’s space for free but hires its own staff and supervises New River students who are earning their early childhood education practical hours.

The center, located inside an academic building on campus, serves about 20 children who are 3 and 4 years old. It’s open to the community, with priority going to families with the greatest financial need and students at New River.

But usually, just a few of the college’s students have a child enrolled in the Head Start classroom. The age limitation is one factor, as are the daytime-only hours. 

“Sometimes it’s the right fit and sometimes it’s not, depending on where in our service region they live, where they’re attending classes … the time of day they need care and what days they need care,” said Sarah Tolbert-Hurysz, the dean of arts and sciences at the college. 

Despite its constraints, the relationship between Head Start and the college is mutually beneficial. “We attend events they’re having for new students coming to their programs so they’re aware of our services,” said Felicia Ba, site administrator for the Head Start classroom on campus. “It’s really great being located here because you have workforce development, all these different supports, that Head Start can help connect families to right here on campus.”

At the same time, Tolbert-Hurysz said the children in the Head Start classroom become familiar with the community college and the people who work there at a young age. That can help them recognize their local community college as a resource throughout their lives, she said.

New River is one of five community colleges participating in a pilot program called College Attainment for Parent Students, or CAPS. The program, funded for a two-year trial by the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education, provides extra support to single parents, including a $2,000 stipend each semester to put toward child care. 

Each of the participating schools is on its third semester-long cohort of up to 20 students, with some students electing to stay in the program for more than one semester. At New River, all of the participants have been first-generation college students. The average student in the cohort is in their early 30s.

CAPS has also provided $45,000 in emergency funds across the five schools since launching in summer 2023. Those funds might go toward car repairs or helping a student make rent.

Though most of the participants in the pilot have been women, New River has had three men join its CAPS cohorts. “The dads have gravitated toward one another,” said Stephanie Addikis, who runs the program there.

CAPS students work with coaches who can connect them with resources on campus and beyond. Providing emotional support and encouragement is a part of that role.

Additional programs in the works to increase child care access

Taneisha Mathews, who’s part of the CAPS program at Central Virginia, said her stipend has allowed her to cut back on her hours as a cashier at a grocery store, pay for babysitting and put a little money aside for emergencies. 

But she’s still working two jobs and caring for her daughters. She took four classes in the fall semester and felt so burned out by the end she waited to sign up for spring classes until the first day of the new semester. 

“I still have a voicemail from her,” Mathews said of her CAPS coach. “She kept calling and checking on me. And I was ignoring her. That’s how mentally checked out I was.” Mathews said she didn’t want to hear encouragement from her coach, “even though I think I did need it.” 

She had started taking classes toward her child development certification in 2022, and then she decided to keep working toward her associate degree. She’s enrolled in two classes now, which she said is far more manageable than four. She’ll graduate in August if she takes two summer classes, or in December if she spreads out her last few courses. She checks in with her CAPS coach weekly and sometimes stops by her office before class.

Across Virginia, there’s an effort underway to train more child care staffers like Mathews. The Virginia Early Childhood Foundation has started expanding its Fast Track Initiative to accelerate training and raise pay for child care workers into nine regions of the state, including Lynchburg and Danville. 

And a regional United Way is using grant funding from the U.S. Department of Labor to train workers as assistant teachers in 17 Southwest Virginia counties.

Nationwide, more than 950 Head Start programs are already located at career and technical education centers, and a five-year initiative is set to expand Head Start access at community colleges.

Funding from the Virginia General Assembly aims to further increase access to child care on college campuses. 

The state budget, which passed in early March and is awaiting Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s signature, allocates $10 million over two years for competitive grants for public and private colleges, local governments and state government agencies that want to expand access to child care. Applications to use available space on community college campuses will get prioritized, as will projects that will offer training to college students studying early childhood education. 

Applications for that grant will likely open in early 2025.

Meanwhile, Central Virginia has commissioned a feasibility study to look at offering on-campus child care, thanks to a grant obtained by the community college’s foundation. 

But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for on-campus child care, said Kim Gregory, head of the early childhood development program at the college. She’s also the instructor who let Mathews bring little Amirah to class a few summers ago — until it just didn’t work anymore.

“Eventually, I had to be like, I can’t. She’s adorable and sweet and fun,” Gregory said. But having a child in the class was a distraction. Gregory said most of her child development students are women who already work in child care. During the day, they can often take their children to work with them. “But all my classes are at night,” she said. 

Gregory is a devoted mentor to Mathews and her other students. She likes getting to see Amirah on campus from time to time. But Gregory doesn’t have all the answers. She hopes the feasibility study on her campus will help close some of the gaps for her students who need care.

“There’s certainly not enough child care for people who need it during the day,” she said. “But then when you look at our students who need it at night, because they’re in a night class, or students who work second and third shift.” 

But the challenge, she said, will be determining how to focus child care services based on the greatest benefit for the entire student body. 

This reporting is part of a collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News‘ Rural News Network, and Cardinal News, KOSU, Mississippi Today, Shasta Scout and The Texas Tribune. Support from Ascendium made the project possible.