A Conversation with Fred Arcuri, Manager of Community Development, Corning Incorporated

In 1980, executives at Corning Incorporated founded the Corning Children’s Center out of the belief that high-quality child care was important both for their employees and for the entire community. Corning is a global technology-based company that engages in display technologies, optical communications, environmental technologies, specialty materials, and life sciences. CED spoke with Corning’s Manager of Community Development, Fred Arcuri, to learn more about the company’s decades-long support for child care and how it is grounded in their core values.

Corning entered the child care space when the former CEO, Congressman Amory Houghton, insisted on making it a priority. Houghton emphasized the importance of investing in child care if the company was going to be serious about providing professional growth opportunities for its female employees.

“Today, we provide direct support to three centers in the community that provide approximately 450 child care seats to the community at large. Half of those is taken by Corning employees and the other half we donate back to the community at-large as part of our broader philanthropic efforts in the community,” Arcuri explained.

For companies looking to invest in child care, Arcuri emphasized the need for a real commitment acknowledging that Corning’s experience was not an overnight success. He also underscored the need to invest in the area of greatest need – infant and toddler care.

“We subsidize infant seats and toddler seats more than we do 3–5-year-olds in pre-K. There are a number of resources out in the world for pre-K, there are a number of resources out in the world for 3-5-year-olds. There are next to none for infants and toddlers and so we try to lean our funding in that direction, and I would recommend that to every employer,” Arcuri said.

He identified the infant and toddler age group as the riskiest time to lose an employee, particularly mothers. Arcuri contended, “This is a women’s issue, there are some exceptions of course, but for the most part this is a women’s issue, and you are going to put your female employees in an extremely difficult position if you cannot provide infant and toddler care.”

Arcuri also identified the gap in early care needs as a public policy issue. “The true cost of care for an infant is a lot higher than the cost of a 3-5-year-old… I don’t think policymakers truly understand that issue… that this is a losing proposition the day you open the door,” Arcuri explained. “[In] the child care industry, you open the doors and you’re at a 30 percent operating deficit… you’re just chasing that deficit for the entire length of the business… unless people recognize that the cost of caring for children and how much you can charge parents is about a 30 percent gap… we’re not going to be successful as a country or within our small communities in providing child care.”

Arcuri believes the private sector should lead the charge in addition to public policy efforts. “When I started working 25 years ago, a 401(K) match was kind of unheard of… if you were an employer providing that you were at the top of your game… now you’d be insane not to provide it,” Arcuri said. “My boss likes to say that child care has become table stakes… you’re not playing in the sandbox for workforce if you’re not providing this.”

Listen to the full podcast episode here.