Yes, quality does cost. The state funded program that I worked at in California I had up to 96 children- 24 children per classroom. The center received around $20 per child per day. We only got paid on days children were actually there. We operated 5 days a week. We had to pay 6-7 teachers (mostly full-time), a director's salary, and a cook's salary. We paid benefits for employees, materials, building costs, everything.

We ALWAYS had plenty of supplies- had a budget of $650/month on just preschool activity supplies.

We were able to pay our teachers/director well. I had a few teachers with bachelor's degrees, and the experienced and really good ones made around $19/hour. Teachers with associates degrees would typically make around $12 starting out. Assistant teachers would often start around $11, and we never paid lower than that (yes, that's not a lot of money, but they were assistants and in a learning position, often still in school).

I don't think $20/day per child is too much to ask for really good quality programming. Plus we often had a surplus at the end of the month, sometimes just a couple thousand dollars on months with many holidays (Nov/Dec) to over $10,000 on those months with lots of school days.

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