Many of Michigan’s early education providers are getting raises — at least temporarily.
An expanding pilot program, called the Early Childhood Educator Wage Initiative, supports monthly stipends of up to $200 for part-time and $300 for full-time early childhood educators and assistant teachers. The program is set to run through September 2027.
The Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential and the Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School District (GOISD) announced last week that payments will reach over 2,500 child care providers across the state in each of Michigan's 10 regional child care coalitions.
Annette Sobocinski is the executive director at Child Care Network, a group that's administering two of the regional coalitions. She said the child care providers selected for the program are based on the needs of each specific region. For Child Care Network’s regions, it looked to fund a broad representation of providers, including those in underserved communities.
“It was clear that we needed to prioritize the lowest wage-earners in our programs,” Sobocinski said.
Angela Mentink, the CEO and owner of Early Impressions Preschool and Childcare center, said her company has been participating in the program since January, when its Vandercook Lake location in Jackson County was selected after applying to the program.
Mentink said eight of the organization’s 125 employees are participating in the program. “It's a little bit of hope for all of our team,” she said. “It was really important to us at Early Impressions to get in on this at the ground level.”
Sobocinski said the goal of the project is to increase wages for early educators in the long term. “Early educators are one of the lowest-paid professions nationwide, which is kind of unfortunate given the critical nature of the work that they do in impacting young children,” Sobocinski said.
According to 2023 data from Michigan Center for Data and Analytics, childcare workers earn a median hourly wage of $13.88, which is $28,900 annually.
“We're already hearing anecdotal stories from educators who are saying things like, wow, for the first time in a while, I'm able to pay all of my bills this month,” Sobocinski said. She said it’s having a huge impact on educators who were considering leaving the field for other higher paying jobs, but didn't want to because they love the work that they're doing.
“We believe that it will lead to more consistency for children when educators stay in the field and stay working at the programs where they are, which is better for kids,” Sobocinski said.
“One of our biggest challenges is in child care and as an early childhood administrator is hiring and maintaining a solid, stable, quality workforce,” Mentink said. She added that employees have had to make sacrifices when it comes to their health care and their health insurance, because costs are so high.
Mentink said monetary support from this program has given them “a little bit of cushion” to be able to better take care of their own health. “We’ve definitely seen some improvements in our employees’ financial stability with this pilot,” she said.
“When we support educators, we strengthen the entire system, helping to ensure families across Michigan can access reliable, high-quality child care in their communities,” Beverly Walker-Griffea, director of the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential, said in the press release announcing the program's expansion.
