The rise of the ‘carebnb’
FOR THE PAST SIX YEARS, BRITTANY Schultz has been a kindergarten teacher in the Denver public school system. On May 28, she left, and on June 15, she opened Ms. Brittany’s Village day care in her home in Commerce City, Colo., with her three children and one from another family. Within two months of opening, she was, she says, making the same money as she had made in a classroom but was responsible for only nine kids. She and her husband, who works with her, currently earn about $5,000 a month.
Schultz is a peppy, can-do woman with the indefatigable good cheer and focus that are key to working with little kids. But even for the very energetic, to go from zero to opening a childcare center in a matter of weeks is remarkable. The licensing procedures and safety requirements are significant, and can require home renovations. Opening your own business in the teeth of a pandemic shutdown takes some guts. And many teachers, especially those with graduate degrees like Schultz, have historically shunned a change of profession to what many see as babysitting. Home-based centers are often regarded as the used-car yards of the U.S. childcare ecosystem: the place people go when they can’t afford anywhere else, which may be why the number of fully licensed operations has more than halved in the past 15 years, from 200,000 to 86,000.
One of the reasons Schultz was able to move
