The trouble at the Sprout School started when staff began to turn over faster than they could be replaced. Twenty-five full- and part-time teachers dwindled to 10, leaving behind empty spots on the bulletin board by the school entrance that was once full of smiling faces. What has happened there over the past year has escalated into something almost unheard of in childcare: Last week, five of the remaining full-time teachers went on strike.
Childcare teachers, some of the most underpaid and under-resourced workers in the country, are rarely unionized. Unlike with K-12 education, there is no organizing structure for these teachers to strike when conditions deteriorate in an industry that at a baseline is suffering from a staffing crisis. Their work is also essential; teachers have to consider whether striking could lead babies and toddlers to be displaced from the care their families rely on.
So what would have to happen to drive a group of essential workers with no childcare organizing history to take collective action? How bad would it have to get for the parents whose childcare was disrupted to stand up in support of the teachers? And how did this all get so out of hand that now the school is disenrolling the children of parents who spoke up?
Jacque Williams, the lead teacher in Sprout’s 2-year-old classroom, said she was often caring for more children than state law allows. In Virginia, one teacher cannot be in charge of more than eight 2-year-olds, but Williams said she was sometimes caring for 12 students alone. The lack of support made it difficult for her to uphold the school’s mission.
Sprout has five play-based childcare facilities in Richmond that say they center a trauma-informed care approach. The schools are part of a program with the YWCA Richmond, whose stated mission is to eliminate racism and empower women. But Williams didn’t even have time to go to the bathroom, she said, much less provide trauma-informed care.
She avoided drinking water. She tried to not take time off work at all. The school also fired its kitchen staff in March, so teachers had new responsibilities, taking on washing the dishes and doing the laundry, which they usually did at the end of the day.
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