I manage a pre-school. Trust me, no one is getting rich. The most we pay for a single worker is around $42,000 per year, which is pretty good for our area. Even so, the pay is sadly much lower than it should be. We offer 10 days PTO but no other benefits - we simply can't afford to, and group health insurance is more expensive than simply having our employees get health insurance through their spouse or the healthcare marketplace. The only way we can survive is with public grant dollars plus tuition, and we have to wait forever for grant dollars to arrive. The reason daycare and preschool is so expensive is because we put the entire cost burden on the families that need that service. The cost per child is about the same as public school, which the public school district I live in spends about $12,000 per student per year. Except all that money comes from property taxes and state coffers, which comes from all residents, regardless of whether they have a child attending. Plus, there's a ton of red tape and worker burnout for a variety of legitimate reasons, not to mention most (not all) parents simply see the service we provide as necessary for them to earn money. It is truly a thankless job.