When you're supervising and don't have enough people to work in the industry but you're receiving all these calls of families that need care, it can stress you out.

- Does anybody know what this means?

- Sit down.

- Sit.

- Sit down.

- Yeah, sit!

- [Michelle] Running a child care center can look like child's play.

- [All] There's Thursday and then there's Friday.

- [Michelle] Students are eager to learn, and teachers get to watch them reach milestones.

- [All] I pledge allegiance to the flag.

- [Michelle] But coordinating it all is a delicate balancing act for Amy Vogel, the CEO of Dr. Day Care.

It's the largest for-profit chain of child care centers in Rhode Island, with eight locations across the state.

Vogel says finding and retaining qualified teachers is the hardest part of the job.

Without enough teachers, classrooms are forced to stay closed and families are left without someone to watch their children.

- We have wait lists, and sometimes we have to stop tours because we know we can't service families till 2026, 2027.

- Do you have an idea how many closed classrooms exist across those eight locations?

- I'm saying 20%.

- [Michelle] Vogel has been working in the industry for nearly two decades.

She says staffing was always an issue, but the pandemic made it worse.

- [All] One, two, three.

- [Michelle] She lost about 30% of her workforce during COVID.

She says low wages make it difficult to keep employees.

In 2023, the median wage for a child care provider in Rhode Island was $16.91 per hour.

That's in the same range or below what parking lot attendants, housekeepers, and retail sales workers make.

- For what child care educators do day in and day out, they'll never get paid enough.

- I love the kids.

This is my passion.

How are you feeling?

- [Kids] Better!

- Low wages long kept teacher Yeisha Pereira from putting her own children in daycare.

She's been caring for other people's kids at a non-profit called Children's Friend for 10 years.

What is it like to be a child care provider but not be able to afford the very care that you're providing other people?

- It was stress, it was hard.

Frustrated, I was mad, angry.

How much is this?

- [Michelle] Angry because Pereira, who's a single mom of two, says it was hard to find someone to watch her now five-year-old daughter while she was working and her teenage son was in school.

She says it was so bad she considered quitting her job.

- I was asking for people, borrow money.

(chuckles) Can you borrow this money?

Like, every time, every Friday, I was sitting down, checking a list, making a list.

I was crying, crying, crying, and crying.

It was terrible.

It's frustrating.

And, you know, it's hard because, I'm sorry, it just remind me all the stuff that I have pass.

It's not easy being a single mom.

- Child care is truly the foundation of Rhode Island's economy.

- [Michelle] Nicole Chiello is the assistant director for the Office of Child Care at the Rhode Island Department of Human Services.

She knows Pereira is hardly the only employee who's wrestled with quitting her job.

On average in Rhode Island, it costs nearly $17,000 a year to have an infant in a child care center, - Minimum wage in Rhode Island is $15 an hour.

And up until very recently, if you were married and had one child and were making minimum wage, you were unable to even qualify for subsidized care because you were considered making too much money.

So, it made so much more sense for a two-parent household for one of those parents to kind of just stay home and watch the child.

- These are all my colors, from here all the way up to the end.

- [Michelle] It's a story Scott Weldon has heard before.

He's the president and CEO of Rhody Rug.

The company is based in Lincoln and manufactures braided rugs.

Weldon employs about 30 people but says in the last year and a half, he's lost three employees for reasons beyond his control.

- I lost three employees due to it not being economical for them to work anymore because of the child care for their small children.

- [Michelle] He remembers an employee calling after she had a baby.

- She's like, 'I'm not gonna be able to afford to come to work and pay child care, or it's gonna be about even, so it's not worth coming back to work."

- [Michelle] Weldon says replacing a great employee is difficult and expensive.

He's tried to make the workplace friendlier for his colleagues.

- Our hours used to be 8:00 to 4:30, and we took it to a vote to the employees, and we went from 6:00 to 2:30 so a lot of our moms could be home in time for their kids so that they don't have to spend the extra money for child care.

And we were totally fine with that.

So it's not a situation on our end that we're not trying to help out, it's things that are out of our control.

- [Michelle] State Representative Grace Diaz says one way to get more people into the workforce is to start with the child care sector.

She recently introduced a bill that subsidizes the cost of child care for child care workers based on their family income.

- The Child Care for Educators is a program that came from the needs of retaining staff for every single child care centers in the state of Rhode Island.

- The Child Care Assistance Program for Child Care Staff began as a pilot program in 2023 and was extended for another year.

Diaz hopes lawmakers will soon make it permanent.

To date, more than 400 child care workers have enrolled in it.

We're going on having this program for about a year and a half.

You're saying it's a success.

How do you quantify that success?

- It's easier because the numbers talking by themselves.

For example, more than half of the centers in Rhode Island report that they have a staff, at least one staff benefiting from that.

- I want bread, please.

- [Michelle] Pereira's enrolled in the program.

She says it allowed her to put her daughter in child care for free while she worked and finished her schooling.

- Good job, five!

Five, you did a good job!

- [Michelle] She's now a lead teacher making more money.

She says it's improved her quality of life.

- I wake up every morning, get my daughter dressed, go to school with no problem.

I don't have to worry about who's gonna take care every single day.

I had no worries, I just come to work happy.

- [Michelle] The program has cost the state nearly $5 million.

Back at Dr. Day Care, Vogel says it's been a selling point when talking with candidates.

Over the years, she's lost many employees to the public school system, where they can make more money.

- It's almost like we're offering an employee benefit.

So if you come and work for us and you get free child care, you're saving yourselves anywhere from 250 to $350 a week.

So if you multiply that times 52 weeks, you can add that on as a benefit to their salary.

- What happens if that program is not made permanent and it's dissolved at the end of the fiscal year?

- I will be sad.

(chuckles) I just think it's one thing that sets us apart in the child care industry compared to other industries, and we need that.

We need something to set us apart because we need people to come into this industry.

Because if we don't have them come into the industry, there's gonna be a lot less child care available for families that need it, and you're gonna have a whole 'nother economic issue.

- And what letter's this?

- [Child] Z.

- [Michelle] Pereira is grateful the program has allowed her to stay in a profession she's passionate about.

- You like cheese, pepperoni, what do you put?

- Pepperoni.

- They make you smile every day.

The hugs, care.

They say, "I love you."

And when the parents, when the parents say thank you to you, that's the best thing.