Pierce County preschool says it’s weeks away from opening infant room in child care desert
When you love kids as much as Kimberly Shaw and Christine Luna do, you don’t take no for an answer.
Last year, the two Key Peninsula Preschool staff members learned they needed to build a firewall if they wanted to turn the Key Peninsula Lutheran Church nursery into an infant and toddler room. Knowing they couldn’t afford that, they spoke with Pierce County Fire Marshal Ken Rice and found out they could paint the wall with intumescent paint — a special fire-resistant coating that expands when exposed to heat or flames — instead.
But they couldn’t find a painter to do the job. So Luna decided to take an online certification course and do it herself.
It wasn’t easy, she told The News Tribune. The stench of the fumes was strong even with the windows open, and she often had to take breaks and go outside, she said. But she’d be willing to do it again if needed for another child care site.
Strict building codes and permitting requirements stymied the preschool’s plans to open a daycare for infants and toddlers from 3 months to 2.5 years old for nearly four years. Now, all they need to open the new space is $6,000 to pay for items like cribs, bedding, baby feeding equipment, playground gates and fencing for an outdoor play area, according to Shaw. They’ve raised $425 as of Monday evening through a GoFundMe campaign.
Two companion bills sponsored by 26th District state legislators could help lower the bar for child care centers to open in rural areas like the Key Peninsula.
House Bill 1582 sponsored primarily by Rep. Michelle Caldier, R-Gig Harbor, and Senate Bill 5655 sponsored primarily by Sen. Deborah Krishnadasan, D-Gig Harbor, would amend state law to allow regulators to calculate the occupancy load for a child care center operated within another type of building, like a church, based only “on the area in the building where the child care services are provided.” The occupancy load is the maximum number of people that can safely exit a building or part of a building, and is noted in fire safety inspections required by the Department of Children, Youth, and Families to license a child care provider, according to a bill analysis.
Currently, the occupancy load for child care centers located inside other buildings is calculated based on the size of the entire facility.
The Senate bill offers “a common sense solution to siting child care in buildings that already exist that are trusted places in the community, that have things like adequate parking and playgrounds and kitchens but are sometimes so huge that the occupancy load number really makes the child care siting way more difficult than it should be,” Pierce County Council member Robyn Denson told the House Early Learning & Human Services Committee March 18 during a public hearing.
Rice also spoke in support of the Senate bill during the hearing and said the changes won’t compromise safety for building occupants.
If the bills pass, they could allow child care providers like Key Peninsula Preschool to bypass expensive renovations while ensuring they can safely provide services in dedicated sections of buildings.
Senate Bill 5655 cleared the Senate Feb. 25 and is scheduled for executive session in the House Committee on Early Learning & Human Services March 26. House Bill 1582 remains in committee in the House.
‘A lot of grandparents raising kids’
On the Key Peninsula, which Shaw described as a “child care desert” to Key Peninsula News in 2024, families often struggle to access licensed care for their children.
The Center for American Progress defines a child care desert as “any census tract with more than 50 children under age 5 that contains either no child care providers or so few options that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots.” In Washington state, 63% of people live in a child care desert, including 64% of rural families, according to the center’s report.
The scarcity of options has been impacting Key Peninsula families, according to Luna.
“What’s happening is we’re seeing a lot of grandparents raising kids, and a lot of kids just sitting in front of TVs until they can go to kindergarten or they get accepted into a (transitional kindergarten) program,” she said. “... Kids aren’t having a childhood.”
Key Peninsula Preschool offers an outdoor child care program, Forest Friends of the Key Peninsula, because they weren’t able to get an indoor space licensed. The two staff members said they’ve since grown to believe in the power of outdoor preschool to help young children thrive — taking inspiration from outdoor models in Scandinavia — but the minimum age of kids they can serve outside is 2 and a half years, according to Luna.
The preschool wanted to open a child care space to serve 30 kids of varying ages in the basement of Lakebay Community Church, but they found out they would need to install a sprinkler system and a tank with the water pressure to power it, since there isn’t a city water line nearby to hook up to. The $500,000 price tag made those improvements impossible for them and for their grant donor, First 5 FUNdamentals in Tacoma, Shaw and Luna told The News Tribune.
The infant and toddler room with eight spots was all the preschool could manage to get permitted, and sign-ups filled up within 24 hours, they said.
Kate Landon, a 38-year-old Lakebay mom, was able to secure a spot for her 9-month-old foster son. A new child care center is a “a big buzz” in the community, she said.
“It’s a major child care desert, and so parents of young kids ... have to choose between work and transporting all the way into town for child care,” a trip that can take 45 minutes there and back, Landon said.
As foster parents, she and her husband receive subsidies for child care from the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, but they can only use that money to pay licensed providers, she added. The lack of options near their home has forced her to balance her job as a family support specialist at Food Backpacks 4 Kids with being a full-time caretaker for her 9-month-old. Enrolling her son in daycare will allow her to increase her work hours.
“The hope that it gives of potentially providing some balance for our family — it’s overwhelming,” she said.
All but one of the babies and toddlers signed up for their new daycare are from families paying for child care with state subsidies or military assistance, according to Luna.
Belinda Glenn’s two boys, ages 1 and 2, are also signed up for the daycare. Glenn, 43, lives by Jackson Lake on the Key Peninsula and said she and her husband haven’t been able to work much for the past year because they didn’t have a place to take their kids, one of whom has special needs. They received support from food stamps and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and her husband recently went back to work, but “it’s been rough,” she said.
Glenn will be one of the teachers at the new daycare.
“I’m excited,” Glenn said. “I’m relieved I’ll be able to work and I have these amazing people helping me with my children.”
State and federal funding for child care
Luna said the preschool plans to apply for a state grant through the Early Learning Facilities (ELF) program, which helps public school districts, nonprofits and other eligible organizations purchase, build, expand or renovate buildings and classrooms for early childhood education serving low-income families.
If the state legislation passes, the preschool hopes to take another shot at opening a 30-child daycare out of Lakebay Community Church. If they’re released from the requirement to install a full sprinkler system, the remaining renovations are expected to shake out to about $100,000. Money from the grant would help pay for that, she said.
Asked about what makes today’s child care so expensive, Shaw said that providers are challenged to pay their teachers “a decent living wage” on top of costs such as rent. At $1,295 a month for their full-day outdoor preschool program, they’re trying to keep prices for families down, but they’re “barely scraping by” trying to pay their teachers $20 to $21 an hour and without offering any benefits, she said.
The state also hasn’t increased their subsidy rates to reimburse child care providers serving low-income families to keep up with inflation, according to Shaw.
“When we get subsidy payments for our low-income families, we’re getting a much lower amount than what would be appropriate for our current economy,” she said.
The state Department of Children, Youth, and Families released a report in July 2024 examining the state’s child care subsidy rates. The state is required to provide subsidy rates at the 85th percentile of the market rate for care, but few subsidies met that requirement, according to the study. The 2023 budget allocated funding for subsidies at 85% of the market rate determined for 2021.
