Screenshot of
map from the ECCE data dashboard showing the location of childcare and early childhood
education programs in the Fredericksburg area.
In the
Fredericksburg area, there are 14,961 children under the age of 5 who come from
families where all available parents are in the workforce—but there is only
enough year-round childcare available for a little over half of them.
That’s
according to data available at a public
dashboard created by the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation and
launched in the fall. It provides the most current information on the demand
for childcare in the state, pulling together data from the Census Bureau, the
five-year and one-year American Community Surveys, and state education and
social services departments.
There are 71
year-round early childhood care and education programs in Planning District 16,
which includes Fredericksburg City and the counties of Stafford, Spotsylvania,
Caroline, and King George. According to a map of locations, most programs are
clustered around Fredericksburg City, with a handful also in north Stafford.
There are six
programs in Caroline, all in the western part of the county, and five in King
George—three along Route 3, one near Dahlgren, and one on U.S. 301 in the
southern part of the county.
Stafford County
has the most children under age 5 with all parents in the workforce—6,451.
That’s followed by Spotsylvania, with 5,131; Caroline, with 1,230;
Fredericksburg, with 1,075; and King George, with 1,074.
The dashboard
also has information about the cost of childcare. The median annual rate of
care for an infant in the Fredericksburg area in 2023 was $16,380; for a
toddler, $14,924; for a preschooler, $13,780; and for a school-aged child,
$13,000.
Early childhood
care is considered to be affordable if it is 7% or less of a family’s income.
The median rates from 2023 are only considered affordable if a family makes
between $185,714 and $234,000 annually—yet in Virginia, the median income is
about $81,000 and in the Fredericksburg area, about 60% of families with
children aged 5 and under make less than that.
These families
generally qualify for publicly funded early childhood education programs, such
as Head Start, Early Head Start, the Virginia
Preschool Initiative, and the Child
Care Subsidy Program.
However, in
2024, there were only enough availability in publicly funded childcare programs
to serve 18.9% of income-eligible children, according to the dashboard.
The number of
available slots did increase between 2023 and 2024, going from 2,100 to 2,620.
The dashboard
also includes information about women’s participation in the workforce, which
is often related to childcare availability and affordability.
Statewide,
71.2% percent of women aged 20 to 64 with children under age 6 were working,
compared to 64.5% in the Fredericksburg area. And the percent of local women in
the workforce dropped between 2017 and 2022 from 65.7% to 64.5%, though it rose
statewide from 69.2 to 71%.
