MADISON, Wis. — With less than two weeks before students head back to the classroom, some parents in Dane County are scrambling to find after-school child care after the YMCA told them it won’t be able to staff some programs when classes resume.
Scott Shoemaker, the senior director of communications for the YMCA of Dane County, confirmed to News 3 Now Tuesday night the organization is “unable to staff a few after school child care sites.” Families at the affected locations, which fall under the West branch, were notified directly by email. Programs at other Y locations are not affected.
“We have unfortunately been hit hard by the child care staffing shortage affecting similar programs in our area, throughout the state and across the country,” Shoemaker wrote in an email. “Taking care of kids is the Y’s business, and with our entire leadership team being parents too, we fully understand the ramifications.”
The group tried a number of options to recruit enough staff members, Shoemaker said, but once it became clear all options had been exhausted, there was no choice but to put the programs on “hiatus.”
While staffing shortages have been an ongoing issue for several years, he added the issue is the worst it has been in his six years with the organization.
“We quite literally have zero staff and zero applicants for these few sites,” Shoemaker wrote. “We are at capacity across the county, and all of the affected families are essentially on waitlists; we are prepped and ready to reopen sites as soon as we can staff them.”
The Y will train candidates who are at least 18 years old, pass a background check and meet other qualifications, he said, but applicants do not need to be teachers or work in education. For a list of openings, click here.
Details about the affected programs and the number of kids who participate in them were not immediately available Tuesday night.
The Y is not alone in dealing with a shortage of workers; the Madison Metropolitan School District has had the highest number of vacancies since 2017, Superintendent Dr. Carlton Jenkins said. In late July, the district was still trying to hire people to fill 199 teaching and 124 non-teaching jobs. As of last week, the number of teacher openings in the district sat at 146.
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