GORHAM — Senate President Mattie Daughtry and child care advocates called for improvements to Maine’s child care system Monday, arguing that care is too expensive for parents even as workers aren’t paid enough and the business model is too precarious for operators.

April Tardiff, 39, of Old Orchard Beach, said she had to leave her job as a child care worker because the cost of her son’s child care was roughly equal to in-state college tuition and only left her with a new income of $90 per week. Tardiff said she’s working toward getting a medical coding license, but that’s also been delayed because she can’t secure day care for her 3-year-old son.

“If we could have affordable child care, it would be huge peace of mind for me and my husband. I could go to school full time,” said Tardiff, who volunteers for the Maine People’s Alliance, a progressive advocacy group that hosted a roundtable event Monday at the Seedlings to Sunflowers child care center in Gorham.

Daughtry and Tardiff, along with business owners and analysts, took part in a panel discussion Monday about the challenges facing the system.

Funding to shore up Maine’s child care system has been caught up in a budget fight between Gov. Janet Mills and Democratic lawmakers, who have majorities in both the Maine House and Senate.

Mills has proposed cutting monthly stipends for child care workers. The stipends began in 2021 and now range from $240 to $540 per worker. Mills has argued that the stipends, which cost $30 million per year, are financially unsustainable and has proposed cutting them to $15 million annually.

That proposal drew protests from child care workers at the State House this spring.

Democratic lawmakers have balked at the proposed cuts. The Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, with some support from Republicans on the panel, restored the full stipend in its budget recommendations to the full Legislature.

Lindsay Hammes, in a March written statement to the Press Herald, said Mills did not want to make the cutbacks, but “unfortunately, in a tough budget cycle, tough decisions have to be made and we believe it is important to return the program to a sustainable level of spending.”

But Daughtry, D-Brunswick, said Maine needs to invest in its child care industry. She said Maine is a great place to raise a family, but if it’s unaffordable, that is a disincentive to having children and would further lead to the graying of Maine, which is already the oldest state in the nation.

“You have to be able to afford to raise a family here, and you can’t do it without child care,” she said.

Daughtry said preserving the stipend is just one step toward making the system more sustainable, for child care workers, business owners and families with children.

Daughtry said she plans to go on the road this summer to speak with Mainers from various areas and political leanings about what it would take to make child care more affordable in Maine. It’s a similar approach to what she did when developing a plan for paid family and medical leave, which passed in 2023 and started going into effect this year.

Arthur Phillips, an analyst for the Maine Center for Economic Policy, said about 18,000 Maine people are not in the workforce because they can’t afford child care. Making child care affordable would help ease the workforce shortage, bring in more tax revenue to Maine and boost the economy, he said.

Phillips said one plank of any plan would be to make wages more competitive for child care workers. Even with a $200 stipend, the median wage for child care workers in 2023 was $16.35 an hour, less than 60% of an average kindergarten teacher.

Levi Franklin, an educator at Seedlings to Sunflowers, said the job is tough and owners operate on slim margins, all for a field that helps educate children during their crucial early learning years.

The lack of affordable child care also reverberates into the general economy, advocates point out. George Sotiropoulos, owner of Gorham House of Pizza, said attracting and retaining staff is challenging. Without affordable child care, sometimes workers, even after taking a job at House of Pizza, can’t stay on because they’re not making enough money after paying for child care.