A typical work day for Whitney Aschenwald starts with a drive north from Bigfork to Kalispell, where she drops off each of her two young children at separate day care centers.

After spending the day working as a grant writer, Aschenwald drives back to both facilities to pick up each kid — one almost 3 years old, the other nearly 5 months.

It's a lot of shuffling, but Aschenwald is grateful to have secured the two day care spots. She feels lucky compared to the many local families struggling to find adequate child care.

"Now I have two dropoffs and two pickups from each day care, each morning and night," Aschenwald said. "But I think our family is really fortunate compared to a lot."

Renee Harkins, another working mom of two, shares Aschenwald's gratitude.

"We got really lucky at the end of the day," Harkins said. She spent eight months on numerous waiting lists before she found spots for her daughters at two different day care centers.

It came down to the wire in the case of her younger daughter, now 3 months old. Harkins said she finally heard back about an infant care opening just a week before her second child was born.

"At the moment, there's not a lot available," said Collette Box, owner and operator of the Discovery Developmental Center on Glenwood Drive in Kalispell. She's worked as an early childhood advocate for the past 30 years.

Box said the valley's child care system is inadequate because of a lack of public investment in resources. Facilities are understaffed and underfunded, caretakers are underpaid, and families can't afford to do much but wait and hope their child finds a place at a quality facility.

Discovery charges $950 a month for a child to attend day care. Box said it would be impossible to raise the rate any higher because most families simply couldn't afford it.

But that, she said, also means she can't pay her entry-level employees more than $10 an hour, even though their positions require them to have a bachelor's degree.

That makes child care an unattractive field for new workers, creating staffing shortages and ultimately "damaging children," Box said.

THE COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the issue. At a time when disrupted workplaces forced many additional parents to seek out child care, centers were forced to limit their capacity or close down entirely due to concerns about the virus.

Among the local facilities that recently shut their doors was Flathead Valley Community College's Early Childhood Center, where Bigfork resident Aschenwald used to take her toddler son.

For four months, Aschenwald searched for a replacement while her extended family helped watch her son. Without their assistance, Aschenwald said she would have had to take time off work to care for him.

"Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to [keep working]," she said of her family's contributions. "I know a lot of people in the area don't have that luxury."

Her experience speaks to the larger effects of the child care shortage.

Box noted the problem often goes unnoticed by those without small children, but its ramifications are felt throughout the community.

AS MANY businesses in Montana and across the country say they are struggling to hire workers, Gov. Greg Gianforte recently terminated federal pandemic unemployment benefits and began offering $1,200 bonus payments to unemployed Montanans who return to the workforce.

But there have been no new major investments in Montana's child care system, even though abundant research points to the impact it can have on the state's economy.

"Approximately 40% of businesses said the shortage was impacting their ability to recruit or retain qualified workers," said a November 2020 survey report from the Montana Department of Labor and Industry.

"Inadequate child care costs Montana businesses nearly $55 million per year," reads a September 2020 survey report from the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

With better access to child care statewide, Montana's economy would save about $232 million a year, according to the UM report.

UM researchers surveyed more than 400 Montana households with children under 6 years old. They found 12% of respondents quit their jobs during the previous year because they couldn't meet their child care needs. Another 15% had to move from full-time to part-time work for the same reason.

The UM report noted inadequate child care disproportionately affects women and woman-dominated career fields, contributing to the workforce shortage in the child care industry.

PARENTS LIKE Aschenwald and Harkins are still waiting to see solutions.

Earlier this month, Gianforte vetoed House Bill 624, which would have created a task force to analyze child care inadequacies in Montana.

"Montana has never had more resources available to increase access to and invest in child care, ultimately reducing a major barrier to workforce reentry," Gianforte wrote in his veto memo.

He cited federal pandemic relief funding, and his recent decision regarding unemployment benefits, as evidence of the plentiful resources available to stimulate the state's economy. A stronger overall economy, Gianforte argued, would trickle down to support the child care industry.

The scrapped task force joins numerous other formal efforts to improve child care that have been shot down at the local and state levels.

The Republican-controlled Legislature this year nixed bills proposing the creation of a grant program for child care providers and the expansion of eligibility for the state's child care scholarship program. It also cut funding to the state health department's Stars to Quality program. In an email, Box said the former program, which offered incentives to providers, "has improved quality of programs for the past 10 years."

Box tries to stay hopeful for the future of child care in the Flathead Valley, but she isn't optimistic about the Gianforte administration's approach. She said child care deserves to be a funding priority.

"It's going to take a large, huge, billion-dollar investment in child care to make the system work for families," she said.

During a recent economic conference in Kalispell, she warned a continued lack of investment could result in "some very sad children and families."

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at 406-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.