The Municipality of Skagway updated its policy for community funding grants last year. Those changes are taking effect now. And it has some private childcare providers saying they got left behind.
Skagway’s Assembly voted to change eligibility for community grants last spring. Now, only non-profits qualify for municipal assistance. Private childcare provider Linda Calver didn’t find out the change meant she lost $10,000 in funding until this summer.
“I don’t know why they would just all of a sudden stop supporting the daycare, when they’ve encouraged us for the last five years to be available to support the workforce of Skagway,” she said.
Calver has run daycare out of her home for the past 30 years. It’s one of two year-round care options in town.
At an assembly meeting this month, Calver asked the municipality to reevaluate the funding need for private childcare facilities. She and Mackenzie Ackerman, the owner of the other private daycare, said the municipal funding helps them keep their doors open through the winter when enrollment is down.
“Without us Skagway may not have a workforce,” she said.
“We might only have two or three kids in our daycare, but we still have to be open. They have to go somewhere.”
She said she can’t charge more in the winter—if her prices aren’t reasonable it won’t be worth it for parents to work.
Skagway has funded private childcare centers over the past decade, distributing between $5,000 and $10,000 a year for each center. The municipality also supports a seasonal childcare center in a municipal building. That center is a non-profit, so it’s still eligible for funding.
But in 2019 the assembly approved a resolution to streamline accounting for grants. Only non profits are eligible and there’s a limit to how much funding they can get. The assembly has had a tough time implementing the change—even this year it made some exceptions to its own rule. Finance chair Steve Burnham said he thought previous applicants, like Calver, understood that for-profit businesses would no longer qualify, but he learned they were unaware—and had applied for funding no longer available to them.
“At least two daycares applying for those funds—I believe they have submitted applications, albeit the outdated applications. So we may have to have that discussion as well,” he said at a recent Finance Committee meeting.
Burnham said the finance committee needs to revisit the resolution and either start following it or come up with something new. He said the committee would consider private childcare at that meeting in August.
Shelly O’Boyle has spoken out at several recent finance and assembly meetings on behalf of the two private daycares in town. She owns a year round coffeehouse downtown and Linda Calver has cared for her twin 5-year olds since they were infants.
“She’s helped my family succeed,” O’Boyle said.
“And I can go to work knowing my kids are taken care of. She’s an amazing caregiver. She’s been doing it for years upon years. She raised most of, you know, the now adults in this community.”
But O’Boyle said she’s concerned that without municipal support, daycare prices may go up—or worse, could go out of business. She said she doesn’t know what she or other working parents would do without them.
