The Children's Center Blog

Why Early Education is Everyone’s Business

The Children’s Center (TCC) has provided a foundation for young children on Hilton Head Island and across the Lowcountry for almost 60 years, ensuring they are ready for kindergarten and beyond. As a Trustee of our center, I see firsthand how high-quality early childhood education (ECE) is so much more than a soft social service but an integral part of the hard economic infrastructure that sustains our local workforce.  Research confirms that ECE is a "blue-chip" investment, yielding a public return of up to $16 for every dollar spent through increased productivity and massive savings in the costs of remedial education and future crime reduction. 

However, the lapse of federal pandemic-era stabilization funds is creating a national "childcare plateau" that threatens to drain our labor market.  We find ourselves at a critical juncture.

The state of South Carolina faces tough choices as federal support mechanisms disappear and the burden falls heavily on the state and local counties. Without proactive intervention, we risk following the path of states like Pennsylvania, where a recent budget impasse forced providers to take on $20 million in commercial and personal loans to stay open, resulting in 4,000 children being shut out of classrooms.

Across the country, we see innovative models for managing these funding gaps that we can adapt. New Mexico voters recently approved a constitutional amendment to use their Land Grant Permanent Fund to expand ECE access, while Vermont implemented a modest payroll tax to support provider rates and family eligibility. In Washington, the state partnered with the Ballmer Group to fund 10,000 additional preschool slots, helping to offset state-level budget cuts. Such cases show that when the public and private sectors align, we can mitigate negative outcomes.

In the Lowcountry, everyone can play a part.

To the leadership of the Town of Hilton Head Island: We applaud and encourage your continued direct support for local ECE programs, and your recognition of the indirect benefits of investment in affordable housing, transportation, and infrastructure. When workers must travel farther because of a lack of local housing, the synergy between home and school breaks down, further stressing our economy. Integrating ECE into your broader infrastructure planning is essential for community-wide stability. We invite Town leadership to include local ECE representatives in upcoming infrastructure and workforce housing conversations – a seat at the table costs nothing and pays dividends for our entire community. 

To our local employers: KPMG reported last year that the national workforce is currently experiencing a "great exit," with college-educated mothers leaving the labor force at record rates due to disruptions in access to childcare and the associated spiraling costs. On Hilton Head Island itself, the increasing unaffordability of housing risks driving your current and prospective employees further away. Supporting and partnering with local ECE programs can help you offset this challenge as well as invest in community-wide stability and the resilience of your own business. An excellent example is the Tri-Share program which is currently being developed in Beaufort and Jasper counties. Designed as a three-way cost-sharing partnership between local government, employers and employees, Tri-Share will make children’s care and education more affordable and help employers with recruitment and retention. 

To our community at large: Closing the funding gap is a shared responsibility - and an opportunity. In addition to a gift of money, volunteering time, or even just sharing a social media post, we should embrace the responsibility of supporting ECE as an engine of economic prosperity that serves our collective interest. A great start means higher graduation rates, and a better-educated and more productive workforce. Long term, it leads to a reduction in the costs of poverty, social instability and lawlessness. Taken together, ECE mitigates the long-term financial burden on every taxpayer.  

To our teachers, staff and leadership at The Children’s Center: Your commitment to the mission is reflected in the remarkable achievement of over 95% mastery of kindergarten-readiness skills amongst our graduates over the last five years, far eclipsing the statewide and county standards. And TCC’s unique sliding-scale fee system ensures that quality care remains affordable for a diverse group of working families at every economic level. 

Our prosperity depends on building a highly skilled workforce from the cradle up. Since we can no longer rely upon the old mechanisms and instruments of government funding, we must fund our own creative solutions to support early childhood education. Our actions today will ensure a more productive, safer, and more prosperous Lowcountry for generations to come. Let us work together—leaders, neighbors, employers and providers—to keep this vital engine running.

To learn more, visit https://thechildrenscentersc.org to donate or contact us to understand where the opportunity is greatest right now.