Early Childhood Educators Receive Higher Pay with support from

RADFORD, VA Monday, June 29^th, 2026

Access to high-quality, affordable childcare is an essential part of support to families for a community: providing high-quality early childcare relies on paying teachers a living wage. Unfortunately, teacher pay rates in early childhood education centers across the country remain low. While it’s important to keep these services affordable for families, the low wages offered have a negative impact on centers retaining skilled educators, resulting in high rates of turnover at many centers.

The non-profit Radford Child Development (RCD), with partnerships from the Radford University Foundation and Carilion New River Valley Medical Center, has charted a path forward to improve teachers’ wages by fifteen percent (15%) at the Radford Early Learning Center (RELC), by providing a subsidy contracted through center operator KinderCare. These teachers are already seeing their well-deserved raise in their paychecks.

“Higher wages for these vital teachers correlate to better student outcomes,” explained Derek Neal, Chief Executive Officer of the Radford University Foundation, citing research conducted by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “The Radford University Foundation is committed to improving early education teacher compensation at the RELC to support the well-being of the youngest members of our community and their families.”

Teacher pay was the next issue, in a succession of goals for Dr. Agida Manizade, Professor and Assistant Provost for Graduate Affairs at Radford University. More than 15 years ago, she brought together Radford University and community partners to address the scarcity of high-quality early child education in Radford, helping establish Radford Child Development Inc., a 100% volunteer-led organization, with the mission to bring the highest quality childcare and early education to the Radford area.

The resulting Radford Early Learning Center is now in its tenth year of operation, with capacity for over 130 children birth – 6^th grade: a multi-year cooperative effort by RCD, the Radford University Foundation, Carilion NRV Medical Center, Price-Williams Realty, KinderCare, and other stakeholders.

To ensure quality, RCD mandated that RELC work to gain accreditation through the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), which the center achieved in 2019. NAEYC is a non-profit organization that “works to promote high-quality early learning for all young children, birth through age 8, by connecting early childhood practice, policy, and research.” Dr. Manizade described. “After successfully meeting this key milestone, we moved to ensure that RELC served more members of our community by addressing affordability.” 

To expand affordability, through RCD fundraising efforts and an award of a Mixed Delivery Preschool Grant funded through the United Way of Southwest Virginia, RCD now supports full tuition for twenty-seven children between RELC and another Radford facility, the R.O.C.K. Club.

The completion of these sequential goals allowed RCD to turn their attention to supporting teacher pay to encourage teacher retention at RELC. This newly minted 15% increase in teacher pay is a direct result of RCD and their partners’ efforts.

Radford Child Development’s board continues to grow their endowment fund, to ensure that the RELC remains affordable to all in the community through tuition discounts. If you would like to support RCD, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, tax deductible donations are accepted through their website, www.radfordchilddevelopment.org.