YOU’LL GO DOWN IN HISTORY
December 14, 2014 • $1.50
Recognizing the 50th anniversary of the TV special, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ / PlanIt Style, 5-7
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D-47 wants to be at the top
Child care disconnect
Lays out initiatives to boost achievement By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com
Sarah Nader – snader@shawmedia.com
Lisa Camasta plays with Vivian Beattie (left), 1, of Algonquin and Josie Spitzer, 2, of Algonquin while working Friday at her home day care in Crystal Lake. Camasta has been running the day care for seven years and has 11 children enrolled.
Costs squeeze families while providers see real wages shrink By EMILY K. COLEMAN ecoleman@shawmedia.com
C
RYSTAL LAKE – The little girl broke out into a smile once she had Lisa Camasta’s attention. The Crystal Lake woman had been caring for Vivian Beattie since she was about five weeks old and now about 16 months old, she even calls her mom. A home-based child care provider for seven years, Camasta loves what she does. But without her husband’s income, there’s no way she could afford to do it, she said. Nationwide child care workers
made on average $10.33 an hour in 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Illinois, the mean hourly salary is $10.86, a wage that has not kept up with inflation. Just more than 40 percent of child care workers in Illinois – this doesn’t include teachers – participate in the federal earned income tax credit program, a rebate given to low- to moderate-income households, according to a newly released study conducted by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. Nearly a quarter of Illinois child care workers are on food stamps.
The cost of providing services to the families of these approximately 30,000 Illinois workers is about $109.8 million a year, the study calculated. Susan Richards left her job running a video and photography company after her first granddaughter was born. Her daughter, a nurse, had begged her to take care of the little girl. Richards, who runs her child care business out of her Woodstock home, crunched the numbers and figured it could work – although she said without the income she gets from a rental property, she couldn’t afford to
HOURLY WAGE AVERAGE BY OCCUPATION OCCUPATION
1997 HOURLY WAGE
1997 HOURLY WAGE IN 2013 DOLLARS
2013 HOURLY WAGE
Child care workers
$7.03
$10.20
$10.33
Preschool teachers
$9.09
$13.19
$15.11
Kindergarten teachers
$16.42
$23.83
$25.40
Nonfarm animal caretakers
$7.67
$11.13
$10.82
Fast food cooks
$6.11
$8.87
$9.07
Tellers, financial services
$8.24
$11.96
$12.62
N A T I O N A L
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live on the salary. The two grandchildren she cared for are no longer regulars – although they love to visit and play with the four to five children she now takes care of. Most of the children Richards cares for are there full-time, and they spend a lot of their time outdoors. In the basement she converted into her child care center, she points to a wall of photos, one of which showed three children entranced by a robin that had just landed on the bird bath in her backyard.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics 1997 HOURLY WAGE IN 2013 DOLLARS
2013 HOURLY WAGE
$7.75
$11.25
$10.86
$10.47
$15.20
$14.17
$16.75
$24.32
$24.53
$7.28
$10.56
$10.91
$6.11
$8.86
$9.25
$7.99
$11.59
$12.58
See D-47, page A9
Thousands protest police killings in U.S. By MATTHEW BARAKAT The Associated Press
See CHILD CARE, page A9
1997 HOURLY WAGE
CRYSTAL LAKE – District 47 wants to be the top school district in McHenry County by the end of the 2016-17 school year. The district laid out the ambitious goal – along with the goal to rank at or above the 90th percentile nationally at each grade in both reading and math – in its annual strategic plan along with a list of projects it hopes will get it there. The K-8 district currently falls in the 63rd to the 78th percentile nationally depending on the grade in reading and the 71st to the 95th percentile in math, spokeswoman Denise Barr said, citing results from the Measures of Academic Progress assessments. All District 47 students started taking the assessments three times a year two years ago, Superintendent Kathy Hinz said, adding that by taking the tests multiple times a year, it serves as a temperature gauge for teachers so they can see where students are at and adjust accordingly.
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WASHINGTON – Thousands of protesters marched across the country Saturday – to Congress in the nation’s capital, along iconic Fifth Avenue in New York and in front of Boston’s Statehouse – to call attention to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police and urge lawmakers to take action. Chanting “I can’t breathe!” “Hands up, don’t shoot!” and waving signs reading “Black lives matter!” the demonstrators also staged “dieins” as they lay down across intersections and in one city briefly scuffled with police blocking an onramp to an Interstate. “My husband was a quiet man, but he’s making a lot of noise right now,” said Washington protest marcher Esaw Garner, widow of Eric Garner, 43, who died in July
See PROTEST, page A8
BUSINESS
LOCAL NEWS
D-26 talks Maplewood sale Cary district could bring in more a year in property taxes if school sold, redeveloped / A3 SPORTS
Second-use grains At Scorched Earth Brewing in Algonquin, spent grains from brewing process are given to farmers / D1
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NOT EVERY GOOD WORKSHOP IS FULL OF CHRISTMAS ELVES.
High school football changes Playoff changes needed, uncertain if current IHSA proposal is right fit / C1
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