VANCOUVER—As exhausting as caring for young children can be, Melissa Dixon treasures the moments that make it all worth it, like being embraced years later by kids who still remember her as their preschool teacher.

Dixon has worked with children for most of her life, but after her rental building in Vancouver’s West End sold last May, it could undo her career — and B.C. has precious few early childhood educators (ECEs) to lose.

“I feel like I’m stepping on eggshells a little bit because I don’t know what my next step is,” said Dixon.

Over the past six years, she has been able to pay her bills while living in a one-bedroom apartment for $780 a month. Dixon and the rest of her building’s tenants will be evicted by the end of 2020, as the new owners are considering demolition.

“I know my work wants me but I don’t know if I have a livable wage to live in a regular housing situation because I don’t have the proper funding to live in a $1,500 or $1,700 one bedroom,” she said.

For five decades, the association that represents about 1,200 workers in early childhood education, ECEBC, has said its educators are underpaid for the education and experience they need to work in the field. The B.C. government’s online job portal, WorkBC, indicates that the median wage for ECEs in the province is $17 per hour.

Dixon works with kids ages three to five at a preschool in Strathcona, making $21 an hour. Even with some gigs as a First Nations singer and dancer helping to pay the bills, she says she won’t be able to afford Vancouver’s typical rent.

“I have allotted what I need for the bills and then I am almost paycheque to paycheque,” said Dixon.

She’s now looking for subsidized housing so she doesn’t have to leave the city or the field she loves.

Last year, roughly 20,000 ECEs and assistants were employed in the province, according to WorkBC. They typically work in daycares, child-care centres and preschools with children from infancy to age five before they make the transition to kindergarten. Educators develop and lead activities that nurture children’s intellectual, physical and emotional growth at a critical stage of brain development.

The ECEBC is calling for a “fair compensation” of $25 an hour plus benefits to allow educators to make a living wage.

In an open letter issued in March, ECEBC said the industry is facing “a crisis with recruitment and retention” of workers as it tries to meet the demands of families across the province. Daycare centres have notoriously long wait-lists, especially for infants and toddlers.

A lack of educators has forced some centres to close and others to operate undercapacity. Dixon said she has seen it in her home community of Sechelt.

“They have a multimillion-dollar child development centre, but it’s the same thing. They can hold 75 children and they’re holding 16,” Dixon said.

Early childhood educator Jaime Bellringer told Star Vancouver that some centres in her community of Prince George have closed down because they couldn’t find educators to fill the space, while families face wait lists that are “miles long.”

Early childhood education is in her blood. A third-generation ECE, Bellringer was aware of the industry’s reputation for low pay but felt its social impact is too great to ignore.

“I knew it (getting an education) was quite expensive and not necessarily pays all that well so I saved up for a couple of years so I could go back without having to take students loans,” said Bellringer.

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“It’s something that I think is really important. If my mother and grandmother hadn’t done it, those generations wouldn’t have carried on the way that they have.”

Educators are required to complete, at minimum, a certificate program that takes less than a year but can choose to get a two-year college diploma or a four-year bachelor’s degree.

Once employed, they’re often underpaid for the “complexity” of their jobs, especially when working with diverse populations, said the director of ECEBC, Lynn Reside.

“We have a very mixed population … where maybe they’re dealing with trauma, they’re dealing with English as a second language, they’re dealing with poverty,” Reside said. “There’s a lot of complexity: children’s mental health, their physical health.”

There is “positive change” on the way, Bellringer said, which she finds “really exciting.” In its 2018 budget, the B.C. government announced a four-year $1.3-billion investment in child care with the goal of improving quality and making care more affordable and accessible.

Part of that investment is going toward bursaries for ECEs to help with the cost of their education. Another portion is being used to increase wages for ECEs in licenced facilities participating in the Child Care Fee Reduction initiative: a $1 per hour increase this year and another $1 per hour increase in April 2020.

One of the educators receiving the wage bump is Jennifer Everett, who lives in Parksville, B.C.

As a single mom of two children, she pushed hard with her non-profit’s board for a significant raise from under $17 an hour — the living wage in her community — to over the living wage to eventually making $24 an hour.

She said the raise was essential in keeping her in the field she’s worked in for 15 years.

“I could not afford to stay in this sector and make that amount of money and pay to have an education, when I can go to a local grocery store in my community and make just as much,” Everett said.

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