Over the last five years, families in Nashville have struggled to find day care in the increasingly growing city. Some child care facilities have wait lists that are more than a year long.
Jennifer Garner is the Assistant Director at Jewell's Gems Academy, a day care facility run by her family.
"It’s a large need, especially with the amount of people coming into Nashville. Even though people are coming single or without children, they get here and are building families," she said.
Adding to the city's childcare shortage is the difficulty in retaining day care workers. The rising cost of living in Nashville isn’t helping. It costs teachers more to live here, so day cares in turn have to pay them more.
Jennifer has struggled to not pass that cost down to parents. It also means facilities have a hard time retaining staff, only adding to the problem.
"If our teachers don’t have homes and they aren’t close and can’t live in the city, then you lose staff," Gems said.
