297: How Can We Transform Childcare to Support Families and Communities? With Crystal Campbell

In this episode of "Child Care Conversations," Kate sits down with Crystal Campbell, President of SICA, for a warm, insightful chat about the real challenges and bright spots in early childhood education. They swap stories about building resilient childcare systems, supporting staff, and why local businesses matter. Crystal shares creative ideas for workplace wellness and community partnerships, while Kate offers practical advice on financial planning for centers. 

It’s like catching up with an old friend—full of wisdom, laughs, and a few “aha!” moments for anyone passionate about supporting kids, families, and communities. 

Learn more about SECA: https://www.seca.info/conference

Check out this episode's sponsor: https://www.tryplayground.com/

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Transcript

Kate Young (00:47)
Welcome back. We are so glad that you're joining us today. And today we have Crystal Campbell, who is the president of CECA, which is the Southern Early Childhood Association. And we are so excited to have her join us. And she's going to tell us a little bit about how she ended up in early child care education. And we have got some fun stuff to talk about, or at least hopefully some stuff that will get you thinking about what you can do.

now to maybe prevent things in your community that might have happened over the last six to eight weeks. So with that, Crystal, tell us a little bit about how you ended up in early childcare and what we might need to know about you for this conversation.

Crystal Campbell (01:32)
Well, Kate, thank you so much for the opportunity to be on the podcast. This is my second one ever in my entire life. So if I mess up, it's because I just don't know. But I am who I am and I love what I do. And I love talking about it and I love new learning. So just to give you a little bit of background, I have done many things in education, particularly with early childhood.

and I retired back in 2011. And at that point, it gave me the opportunity to try a lot of different things that I used to read about. ⁓ With CCR &R being one of them, I did that for a little while. And then I did Head Start, actually was their education specialist in our area here in Monks Corner, the Dorchester, Berkeley, Charleston.

area of South Carolina. And I did that and then got the wonderful opportunity to become the executive director for a nonprofit called First Steps. And I run the Dorchester County First Steps because we have one in every county in the state. And the purpose behind what? South Carolina.

Kate Young (02:50)
And that state is,

just in case somebody didn't catch that, just wanna make sure.

Crystal Campbell (02:55)
Yes, this is the state of South Carolina and we all work toward, all the EDs work toward building up and supporting each community and each community even though we're in South Carolina and there are 46 communities, 46 counties, every last one of them is different. We cannot go in and do exactly the same thing. So my county is Dorchester.

And the unique thing about Dorchester is that there's a lot of retired inheritance kind of wealth in the area. And it's a vast area. The upper end has an average income, according to statistics, of about $56,000. And the bottom end has an income of about $92,000. Either one

You can live on average, right? But we have these pockets of need all around and for varying reasons. We have wonderful resources ⁓ in our area, the Volvo and the Bosch and all the other kinds of bear, those kinds of industry, but yet we have childcare deserts.

And that's where my focus is in helping. feel that it's important that Dorchester County First Steps gives back to the community and supports the community, lists the community up. And so 98 % of my budget goes toward doing those kinds of things. And there's a variety of them, okay? I could spend the whole time talking about all we do with a little bit of budget.

Kate Young (04:41)
love that.

What's great just about, I mean, the timing of having you on this episode is awesome. As we were talking kind of before we started to hit the record button is there's been a lot that's happened in the last eight weeks and just kind of like what happened five and a half years ago, right? When everybody started to panic or everybody really did panic over COVID, but we came out of COVID with

reminding ourselves that we need to build our own reserves as companies, as organizations, as child care centers, but now we have a whole other situation that we have to make sure that, I don't know, maybe we don't have to. I would like to think we'd all want to. How can we prevent this from having the impact it had in our community in the future? So

Let's hope we don't have this level ⁓ of shutdown that trickled in every direction that hit all of our families, especially those families that really do need that early quality child care and they, you know, they don't have other ways to get it. So what are your thoughts?

Crystal Campbell (06:06)
Well, know, you should never ask me that.

Kate Young (06:10)
I know, I opened a can of worms

here.

Crystal Campbell (06:12)
⁓

My main thought would be that we need to revamp the whole situation and fix it so it's more child-friendly and that we really truly have the best interests of the children in our world and mine. Because if we did, the families that have children, those that don't, we're still gonna take care of you, but those that have children would have opportunities to do...

what they feel they need to do that's best for their family. And sometimes, and I feel like I use my hands a lot, sometimes it is... Okay. One of the things that stands out is for me, I work a lot with childcare providers and in the childcare system.

Kate Young (06:49)
That is okay. There's a reason you can don't don't do this. You know, look so uncomfortable

Crystal Campbell (07:06)
And this is even before the issues that are happening now with the SNAP benefits and all the things that are going awry now for our families. But I had childcare providers who were working in centers who couldn't afford to put their own child into that center. Okay. And all of our centers are either chains or they're independently owned. And there's a struggle.

Kate Young (07:24)
Yep.

Crystal Campbell (07:36)
⁓ The cost for taking care of an infant, I promise you, is sometimes the mortgage for some of our families. That was already happening. During COVID, because you mentioned COVID, during COVID, we had several centers shut down and never reopened. We did also find out that we were essential.

Kate Young (07:43)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Campbell (08:02)
as everyone else did during that time period. Like, aha, duh. If we don't have quality childcare, your worker may not be able to come to work that day because they got to take care of their child. And if they don't take care of their child, then somebody is going to report them to DSS. DSS is going to try to come take their child. So you know what? They're going to stay home and take care of their child. And now they have no income. Now they have...

Kate Young (08:25)
And

as an employer, you now have no staff, right? And so here we had a similar kind of quandary over the last month or so where we had people who were willing to work, people who could work, people who wanted to go to work, but for whatever reason didn't happen, right? This can be, the same thing happens when you have a major employer that shuts down a manufacturing plant, moves a manufacturing plant.

Crystal Campbell (08:27)
There you go.

Kate Young (08:53)
the industry totally changes. ⁓ You know, those who've listened know that Carrie and I ⁓ worked in a program. Carrie took it over ⁓ for a landlord. The landlord actually called Carrie. And after we got in there and we realized what happened, what happened is the major employer in the community left, but the childcare center didn't change. And so hopefully the childcare centers who were impacted over the last couple of months

had already had a reserve where they were going to be okay if some families had to basically take some time off, right? Like they couldn't afford to send their kid. You couldn't afford to pay for staff if the kid wasn't, their money wasn't coming in, right? Like there's all those bits and pieces. If you are in a community where you have a lot of Department of Defense contractors, so not necessarily military folks, but the contractors who

Crystal Campbell (09:38)
There. ⁓

Kate Young (09:50)
weren't getting paid. You may have also had families that are like, hey, you know, my spouse has been furloughed and so my kid's gonna stay there for a while, right? And so all of sudden as a childcare center, you got like five kids showing up and only five kids paying, but you still got 10 staff. And that puts you in an awkward position. And so you might've also done a layoff, even if it's just for a few weeks. Give yourself that breathing room. I know it's hard, but...

Crystal Campbell (09:59)
There you go.

Kate Young (10:20)
Now's the time after we have an excuse my French and shit now's the time to figure out how do we get prepared for the next time we have a no shit. So what are some things that child care owners, directors, people in the community are passionate about children what can they do to kind of prep for the next crud.

Crystal Campbell (10:41)
And that's a tricky thing because the first thought would be to get financial reserves. That's the first. However that looks like for your community. ⁓ Now that doesn't mean necessarily taxing the families extra, but we've got to find a way to balance employees, the needs, the family, and make it.

the amount doable. So maybe X number of dollars go into a pot where we hold it and that kind of thing. Another thing, and I don't know if every state does this, but this is what's near and dear to my heart.

Here in South Carolina, the Department of Social Services has made an agreement with, now they already had some that they would give and they called them vouchers, but we have a special agreement with the Department of Social Services through First Steps, where we can get what we call scholarships now for our families. It's a win-win all the way around because the families get childcare coverage financially.

And the childcare is guaranteed their funding. You don't have to work.

Kate Young (11:57)
So

in South Carolina, is that part of your childcare development block grant or is that a state funded initiative?

Crystal Campbell (12:03)
That's a

state funded initiative, I think it may have some federal pieces to it. I never got into that. I didn't want the money.

Kate Young (12:10)
Well, but here's the

thing, and this is why I'm asking, because there are some states that had not been very good with their child care development grant funds. And so during this eight week period, they could not pay those reserves. So one of the things that I'm going to suggest, if anybody's listening, is make sure you don't have all your eggs in one basket. Right?

Crystal Campbell (12:33)
One basket, definitely.

Kate Young (12:34)
diversify your families. I know that

we have programs that absolutely love to serve a specific population and in some states you actually make more money on the voucher program than you do if you're on cash pay. So you know not every state's going to be the same, not every program is going to be the same, but really think about who is the makeup of your client base.

If they're vouchers, they, you know, are they, are they one kind of voucher? Okay. So some states might have some state funding, might have some federal funding. The county that I live in right now, actually, because the mess, the list, the wait list is over a hundred thousand kids in the state of Texas waiting for this voucher kind of this exact same, what you were talking about, voucher dollars. And our county said, you know, we can't

match the hunt. can't do anything about 100,000, but we can and will contribute enough to cover it. It's like two or it's like a thousand kids. Like it's a significant amount for a county. you know, Texas has like over like 260 counties. So, you know, you got 46, Ohio's got 88, and Texas, well, we just, we Texas. We'll just leave it at that, right? So we got a whole bunch of counties and one county definitely stepped up and said, hey,

Crystal Campbell (13:39)
Right.

You just thought a lot. ⁓

Bye.

Kate Young (14:00)
We're gonna do our part at least on the county level. So, ⁓ you know, can you get some self-pay? We were talking with some some programs in Indiana and they've actually started to go out to the employers and said hey, you know, some of these families have just lost like their school-age care went to a dollar is what the block grant funds from the state. They said, we'll reimburse you a dollar a month.

So now they're going out to private sector. they're on their own grassroots building these private public partnerships. How can organizations like CECA, members of CECA, what can we do? How can we all come together and be there to support the programs in advance?

Crystal Campbell (14:42)
Yeah.

And

that's the crux because now and Kate is a two-edged Seek us desire because you know, we're a grassroots organization. So we're down there in the trenches with the childcare. We've watched the childcare. We are doing what needs to happen within the childcare system itself. But I got to tell you when it gets like that

Kate Young (14:58)
Exactly.

Crystal Campbell (15:13)
We run into every state is different. Every state is different and every state can't do what the other state can do.

So everybody's got to be creative. although CICA has this desire, the only thing I could think of is if we could have had a reserve ourselves, if we could have been one of those resources that states could reach to, you know, look to, or child care providers could look to and maybe get a little bonus, get a little bit of extra help.

financially and that kind of thing. But then we run into another problem. And I'm gonna throw this one out there. After COVID, everybody thought that they could be an influencer and they could be on TikTok and they could be on all that other stuff that they do technology wise, right? And so we don't have any workers. We talk about the fact that, you know, we need to pay our employees. Well, we've got employees and I've had it happen recently. We've had employees that come

on board they last a week and then the girls say the baby cried too much.

Kate Young (16:22)
But you know what?

That's where, okay, so this is where I am gonna poke maybe a little Sika bear, okay? So one of the things that a lot of the members in Sika are a part of are part of the education programs, right? So we've got a lot of folks in Sika who are university professors. They're the ones planning and figuring things out. I'm going to stress that more of them

Crystal Campbell (16:31)
Gotcha.

Kate Young (16:54)
figure out, especially when you are training and master's degrees or administrative classes, get in there and help your students really understand the dollars and cents. Because Carrie and I have really tried hard over the last three years to find what we would call business classes in early childcare. So that if you're getting a master's degree in what is considered ECE administration,

you actually understand the business piece.

Crystal Campbell (17:29)
That's what we

do in our area. We train them. Have you seen this? We use the PASS administration scale, the program administration scale, if you will, in order to help them understand what the business. We also do the BAS. And to understand the business part. Because it's... No.

Kate Young (17:33)
Yep.

Yep. But not everybody does.

I so that's why I'm that's why I'm poking at the professors because when I mean, we literally have talked to hundreds of professors over the course of the last four years, trying to find what classes exist. And, you know, we ran into one university, they're like, we'd love to teach the class, but we don't have the book.

Crystal Campbell (17:54)
Yeah.

Kate Young (18:12)
Well, we helped them. We solved that problem. So now they got a class starting in January. yeah, so Charter Oak State College actually is bringing back their business administration class. ⁓ And we know that there are more and more universities trying to get there. ⁓ But I think that's one thing that we have to remember. We can love the children. We can spend hundreds of hours with CDAs and other programs training quality teachers.

Crystal Campbell (18:16)
Wonderful.

Kate Young (18:40)
but if we don't help those who end up owning the program or even those who end up in legislation because we all know that our legislators don't know how to balance a budget either right that's how we got here so and there's about there's there's there's that on the federal level and then there's a whole lot of states where people don't know that you know if you put two dollars in you can't take three dollars out i'm just that's never going to math right and so our small medium large size businesses because

Crystal Campbell (18:44)
Mm-hmm.

This is true.

Kate Young (19:09)
We have folks who go, oh, I just have a small child care center. And you're like, well, how many kids you take care of? And they're like 100. I mean, have you done the math on that, folks? 100 kids, which means if you got 100 kids, what do you think? Is that probably 80 families? What would you guess, Crystal? 80?

Crystal Campbell (19:18)
I love you.

I would

guess at the minimum, 80, 85.

Kate Young (19:27)
Okay, so let's talk about the 80 fan.

Do you have a program that size in your community? Okay, I'm gonna do the math. I'm gonna pull up my calculator. All right.

Crystal Campbell (19:34)
yeah, we've got several. We've got several. We've got several. Good, because

I don't have, my son borrowed my calculator so I can't help him.

Kate Young (19:42)
Okay, so we've got

80 families and so of those 80 families, do you think we got 70 people who work, 60 people who work? How many? Do we have 160?

Crystal Campbell (19:52)
Depending on the age, would guess at least 15 people to include the director, maybe a little.

Kate Young (20:03)
No, no, no. So, okay,

we've got 80 families. So are those two parent families or one parent families in your community?

Crystal Campbell (20:09)
⁓ it depends.

know, primarily, guess would be 70 % one parent families, 30 % both. I'm just guessing. It depends.

Kate Young (20:25)
Okay, okay. so if we guess, let's just say 120,

120 adults are now able to work because of that childcare center. Okay, so we got 120 people going to work. Now, what do you think of the childcare centers of a program that size, 100, so you got one in your head, right? It's got 100 kids, it's got 120 people going to work. How much do you think they make a year?

Crystal Campbell (20:33)
because of that job, yes.

Bye.

Anywhere from 19,000 to 25 go on the high end of 25,000 a year these I'm talking about the teachers, right?

Kate Young (21:00)
Nope, I'm talking about the parents.

Crystal Campbell (21:02)
the parents. ⁓ parents might be making anywhere from 35.

to 60, maybe.

Kate Young (21:11)
All right, well, let's go with 50. We'll make easy math. Okay, so you got 120 parents that are working out of those 80 families. They're making $50,000 a year. So they're not even making a lot of money. So that childcare center, before you add their staff, before you add the owner, anybody else who might have a direct, that childcare center is responsible for $6 million into that community.

Crystal Campbell (21:13)
Go in the middle, okay.

No.

amazing.

Kate Young (21:39)
that can't happen without the workforce but behind the workforce right and so and we weren't talking elaborate numbers right we're talking 120 people right so think about what one child care center is bringing in from a workforce development like they're bringing in six million dollars into that community

Crystal Campbell (21:43)
This is truth.

No, no, very basic.

Kate Young (21:58)
I we have to come up with a solution. I think kind of what you talked about, right? We've got to change the whole system. what can...

Crystal Campbell (22:02)
and

You ever gonna change

your whole system? But one of the things that we did do, and we're still working on it because we haven't totally convinced them yet, but the thinking was our ⁓ technological, the businesses, the big businesses like Boeing and ⁓ Bosch and Volvo and Mercedes and all of these guys that got mega bucks. ⁓

Kate Young (22:21)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Crystal Campbell (22:31)
my proposal or my thought when we had, because we've had meetings with the business community through our Chamber of Commerce. what, yeah, you know, exactly. And one of the things that I asked for, ⁓ and this was prior to the actual meeting, I'd gone to a few of them and said, would you sponsor your families? They're already working for you.

Kate Young (22:37)
Absolutely love those chambers gotta get them involved.

Do you want them to stay working for you?

Crystal Campbell (23:00)
Thank you. And

come up with a way that if their child's going to Ms. Sukisuki's childcare, that X number of dollars, that it doesn't penalize them. not taking it. It's kind of like having insurance to a degree. We put in.

And you know that your worker's not gonna not come to work because their child's not being cared for. And you're supporting that childcare in addition to supporting the family, in addition to supporting yourself. And I put it out there and when they told me initially they said no, no, because I originally wanted them to help.

Kate Young (23:24)
Absolutely.

Crystal Campbell (23:42)
to create a childcare on site so that their workers would have care. ⁓ I remember a while back listening to Google one time and they talked about all the different aspects of

Kate Young (23:45)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Campbell (23:58)
humanism that worked in Google. Like they had a restaurant right there on the campus where all the workers could go eat and it was nice and it was well, it was pretty. It wasn't just a vending machine. And it talked about how the workers could come to work dressed in what was comfortable for them so long as it didn't.

you know, aggravate the people that were around them. They talked about how they had that room where, you know, when the stress got real bad, you could go in that room and for a few minutes, you put this thing on your head and you could sit and you could relax and, you know, go away. It talked about the fact that they were letting the children come to the childcare that was at Google. I'm sorry, but when that kind of environment is happening in the workplace, you have...

longer work for you know they stay with you longer they're more productive because they're not concerned and they know that the business cares about them you know what I mean and I'm not saying just for the big big all businesses should do that I'm I'm the leader of a staff where my staff isn't feeling good I'm not feeling good you know and I'll tell them in a minute go take care you because I would rather you come back

Kate Young (25:13)
Yeah.

Crystal Campbell (25:18)
healthy and whole and ready and sound and you know put out because all you got to do is make me look good at the end of the year that's all hey that's all i'm asking make me do what you gotta do take care of you and get the job done that's the mentality but there seems to be more of a punitive kind of thing i think with with staff because i guess you know integrity kicks in there

Kate Young (25:26)
you

Crystal Campbell (25:43)
But I think you can help develop integrity if you treat people like humans. You you treat them the way you want to be treated. And when we do that, you're going to get more benefit. You're going to have more productive workers. Your production is going to go up. You're going to have more money to give back to your community a little bit by providing the childcare and the atmosphere that the children are first. Let's talk about how, you know, some people back in the day, we tended to do what our parents did.

I mean, taking care of the children now might be building your workforce for the future.

Kate Young (26:18)
Absolutely. I love it. love it. And one of the things so if folks are listening to this podcast and you're thinking, well, that sounds great. They can do that in South Carolina or, you know, those places where there's big employers.

Crystal Campbell (26:19)
Just a thought.

I'm still working

on it, so.

Kate Young (26:32)
Well, I think what's really important to know is that there is a U.S. Chamber of Commerce and that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has actually convened their own child care groups and they're doing this on a national level of trying to figure out how to help chambers have these conversations in their community. if you're listening and you haven't, you didn't already know that.

Crystal Campbell (26:51)
Wonderful.

Kate Young (26:55)
then go do some research. Go look up the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Go look up U.S. Chamber of Commerce child care and you'll get that group's information because we have to think about the individually private-owned child care center because I don't want to call them small business because if you are a child care center taking care of anywhere from 50 to 100 kids, that means you are impacting those communities by somewhere between three and six million dollars.

Crystal Campbell (27:24)
That is wonderful. That's not. And they're giving back to their community, you know? And it spills over into all the other businesses too, like the restaurants and the laundromat. You know, I mean, it's not just...

Kate Young (27:24)
That is not a small business. That is not a business. And it's right there. Yeah. So go show up at your own chambers.

Well, people go spend that

six million. That's part of why we talk about it from that perspective is you've now generated six million dollars that are going to be spent in your community. You know, and that's where I love to take it a step further and try to get those people to learn to shop local, you know, and that doesn't mean not shopping at your local franchise. if the company, you know, but think about, you know.

Crystal Campbell (28:05)
or the big box force, yeah.

Kate Young (28:09)
Is that a franchise or is that a big box? Right? Like, so is it corporate owned? You know, are you supporting a corporate owned or you're supporting a local business owner, even if it's a franchise anyway, right? So is that so.

Crystal Campbell (28:19)
And

in my end, the Dorchester end of Somerville and St. George, Harleyville, Ridgeville, I'm naming them all, they're gonna all be famous. Now, we don't need anybody else to move into the area though, but we do follow our local businesses, our family, I call them the mom and pop shops.

Kate Young (28:41)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Campbell (28:41)
And nothing irritates me more, though on some level I guess we need it. when I see this happening, it means that more people are coming. And when more people comes, we've got more issues. But the mom and pops are here on this end of the street and then the big ticketed places build. right now, we had a mom and pops gas station that was right at the corner. We crossed the railroad tracks, turned right, bam, there it was. It's been there for eons. ⁓

You can get boa peanuts. Okay, you know, that's the kind of place it is and and you can sit and talk to folk Okay, and the the food trucks come and center around the perimeter so you can go over and get different things because it's the mom and pop Well just recently right now they're building one of those high-tech gas stations Right next door

And on some level they're going to because people are going to flock there because it's new and it's got all the... It's not one of them big, big ones, but it's big enough for at least 10 cars, 10 or more cars to get gas at the same time. But what it does is it changes the community. And that mom and pop, I'm wondering what's going to happen with them. My heart is there.

Kate Young (29:53)
Mm-hmm.

Well,

hopefully we've got other folks that are listening to this episode that are also going to start thinking about how can I collaborate with those mom and pops in my community? How can I drive my own business traffic there? ⁓ You know, I know that the Sam's Clubs and the Walmarts are cheaper, but have you had a conversation with your local grocery store and said, could you give me a deal on my paper products if I buy them from you?

Because I don't really want to buy them from Sam's Club and I don't want to buy them from Costco. I want to buy them from you. And that's the advantage of as a a child care center getting involved in your local Chamber of Commerce. And you know what? It doesn't have to just be you and it shouldn't just be you get your staff to go heck get your parents to go because if you've got your parents go into Chamber of Commerce functions promoting you. You know.

Crystal Campbell (30:54)
There you go.

Kate Young (30:55)
you look like the bee's knees because you have got your parents now involved in the community. boy, we did, didn't we just go in all kinds of circles today? So, that's why when you asked me, what are we going to talk about? I said, I have no idea. We'll see where the conversation leads. So hopefully if you have listened to this episode, there was something new. You got to take some notes and ⁓ make sure that you share the show with someone who needs to know.

Crystal Campbell (31:00)
Exactly.

Of course, and that's typically what I do. Sorry.

Kate Young (31:23)
and we look forward to bringing Crystal back. We'll probably bring Crystal back, I'm guessing maybe in February or March. And with that...

Crystal Campbell (31:31)
I would

love to come back. Because I still want to talk about loneliness and our social and emotional development. All of that's a piece of this. Yes.

Kate Young (31:36)
You

I know we could, like I said, we could talk all day and you know, literally

we usually try to keep it to 20 minutes and you've already got me at 32. So.

Crystal Campbell (31:51)
Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know

it was 20 minutes. I was thinking an hour, Kate. Sorry.

Kate Young (31:55)
that's OK. We could go an hour, but I'm not sure I can split that into three. So with that, thank you so much, Crystal, for joining us. And folks, don't forget to come back in a few days, and we'll talk to you then.

Crystal Campbell (31:59)
Yeah, no problem. No problem. Thank you.

All right.