A mural of cheerful flowers in the hallway leads toward classrooms filled with toys, puzzles, and cribs for naptime. Letters spelling “Infants are a hoot” stretch across paper branches and owl cutouts on the wall, and new packages of diapers sit waiting to be used.
But the toys remain in their bins, and the cribs sit empty at naptime. At Randy’s Five Star Academy, a childcare center in Durham, Director Dalphia Murphy is having trouble recruiting and retaining teachers, which means the center can’t enroll up to its capacity. She is seeking an additional six providers in order to reopen four classrooms.
“I’m used to qualified teachers that really love children,” said Murphy, who had 19 teachers on staff before the pandemic and now has seven. “That’s the only thing I know. But what I see now is that no one wants to work.”…