Minnesota has an unprecedented budget surplus, which gives us the perfect opportunity to make bold and necessary investments in childcare.
Minnesota consistently ranks as one of the most expensive states for childcare. The reason is simple. We underfund childcare compared to other states, and not just by a little, but by a lot. In January, Gov. Tim Walz proposed using part of what is now a nearly $9.3 billion state surplus to make investments in childcare. These investments could transform how we do childcare in Minnesota and have huge benefits for children, families and all of us.
There is a wide gap between the actual cost of providing high-quality childcare and what most families can afford. While approximately half of the 96 families we (Pumpkin Patch Childcare and Learning Centers) serve receive Child Care Assistance, the number of families who are struggling to afford child care is so much higher. Over the past year, we have had about 20 families who have had to leave or have considered leaving because they can no longer afford the cost. That doesn’t account for the 30 percent of families who call for enrollment information and decide not to enroll only because they cannot afford to.
The Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) is intended to bridge the gap between what families can afford and what child care actually costs. But the rates providers receive from Child Care Assistance are currently far behind the federal standard, leaving providers to make up the losses to provide high-quality care. Raising the rates would allow providers to make ends meet and invest in their programs.
The way Minnesota currently funds CCAP makes it difficult for families to receive assistance when they need it. The state currently only provides a set amount of funds for assistance every year and these funds are given out on a first-come, first-serve basis. When the funds for the year are depleted, families have to wait, meaning, they may go without care for weeks or months. We can eliminate waiting lists by fully funding the program.
CCAP naturally has income limits that families must meet to receive assistance. But the current income limit is far too low. Many, many families make above the income limit, but don’t make nearly enough to pay for child care. This is not hard to imagine as the current income limit to enter the Child Care Assistance Program is 47 percent of the state median income. For a family of three, this means about $45,000. The cost of care for one child in Minnesota for a year is at least $10,000-$12,000, and often thousands more, making it impossible to both pay for child care and basic essentials like housing and food for a family of three. Once a family qualifies, they have to make less than 67 percent of the state median income to continue to qualify. Still, 67 percent is far too low. I have heard from many families who had to decide whether or not to accept a promotion at work because of a pay increase which would be enough to bump them off of assistance, but nowhere near enough to cover the costs of child care. Families are working incredibly hard. The ability to advance their careers should not prevent them from affording the child care they need to provide for their families.
House File 3861, which is currently being considered in the Minnesota House will raise the eligibility for Child Care Assistance to 85 percent of state median income. This would allow thousands more families throughout the state access to high-quality childcare like ours with copays closer to 5-14 percent of their income. With a $9.3 billion state surplus, we have the opportunity to expand Child Care Assistance across Minnesota permanently. An investment in this program is an investment that has innumerable benefits – moral, social, educational and economic – not only for families with young children, but for all Minnesotans, because Minnesota is at its best when our youngest citizens and their families have the opportunity for success.
Amanda Schillinger is the director of Pumpkin Patch Childcare and Learning Centers in Burnsville. She has been working in childcare since 1993.
When you start subsidizing any program with tax dollars the price skyrockets. Look at college tuition the past 30 years. Why should I pay for your children to go to daycare? We already pay for 13 years of public education (with worsening results yearly) and now you want taxpayers to foot the bill for 18 years of childcare? We have a huge excess of money because Federal Government has given Minnesota 78 billion in assistance the past 2 years. That money will go away but the childcare program will not. That will just put another tax burden on an already stressed tax base in Minnesota.
Joe, I don’t know your situation, but my kids were not in childcare for eighteen years.
They all have to grow up sometime, my man.
RB, 5 years of pre K childcare and 13 years of public schools equals 18 years of the state of Minnesota (taxpayers) taking care of your kids….. Nope not for me. Go ahead and donate to any childcare program you like, I am not interested in taking care of your children for 18 years.
Read your post, “Joe.” You made a distinction between education (13 years) and childcare (18 years).
Taxpayer funded is taxpayer funded…
My friend, the late Dick Lamm, former 3-term Governor of Colorado, used to teach a course in public policy at the University of Denver titled “Hard Choices in Public Policy.” The theme of the course was essentially that the demands for public funding always exceed the revenue available. The childcare dilemma is a prime example of that kind of “hard choice,” especially in the current circumstance, when the state is sitting on a multi-billion dollar surplus which – to a lot of people whose needs and programs have been funding-starved for years – seems like an endless amount of money.
It isn’t.
The problem – one I don’t pretend to know how to solve in the short term – is that, while essential to an industrial economy, childcare is exactly as the author describes. Basically, it’s too expensive for most families at median income level or below, and frankly, for most families at median income level as well. That’s a fair description of today’s middle class. At the same time that demand for childcare is high, and we have this pile of money sitting in front of us, childcare is essentially a very, very long-term program, and the pile of money in front of us is very much a one-time (and unexpected) event.
As work itself has changed in the past half-century and more, so has the workforce, and a substantial percentage of the current workforce is made up of women of child-bearing age. Without childcare – employers should be paying more attention to this – the economy is operating with an anchor attached to one leg, and anxiety about childcare affects a whole spectrum of the population from parents who need it to family members who may or may not feel qualified (much less enthused) about providing it to coworkers who may be drafted from time to time to employers who can’t (or won’t) provide it in relation to the jobs they have available. I’d guess there are thousands of little kids in Minnesota whose childcare roughly equates to grandparents and / or other family members who’ve been enlisted, not always willingly.
Inside or outside the family itself, daycare and pre-K workers are doing what I think is critically-important work, and as the cliché makes plain, you get what you pay for. Outside the family, good-quality pre-K workers deserve a living wage, and the private providers should be able to earn a living as well. Materials, personnel, facility rental/ownership – none of it is free, and while facilities are typically regulated to some degree (Enforcement is another matter – again, largely because it costs money to hire and train people to do the work.) I have no idea how rigorous the standards are for daycare workers in general.
Some of the people who like to call themselves “conservative” will argue that the solution is not a hard choice at all. Mom should stay home and raise the kids, Dad should go to work, and in doing so we can return to the halcyon days of the immediate post-WW 2 era when America was supreme, taxes were low, all was right with the world, etc., etc. That’s not the world we live in now, and it’s unlikely to return.
As with public school funding – another critical piece of a functioning society and economy which the legislature has failed to fund adequately – childcare is an area that merits and demands attention from the state. Putting money into the next generation is an investment, not a cost, and even fiscal conservatives ought to understand that.
So you’re on both sides of the argument? Finite amount of government money but we must spend it on childcare.
How is his comment “both sides of the argument?” Have you never heard of setting priorities?
Many arguments have more than two sides.
You missed my point entirely, Tom. I led off my comment with mention of the late Dick Lamm’s course at the University of Denver because this seems like an analogous situation – no matter how big the pile of money, competing interests generally ensure that there won’t be enough to give everybody what they want, so choices – “hard choices” – must be made. Priorities have to be set.
If I were the one making those choices, I’d see to it that childcare and education would come before tax breaks and business incentives. That little cutie in the photo leading off the article is going to be very labor-intensive for quite a few years, as any parent knows. That labor and attention can’t be provided at no cost. I’m an old retired guy living on a fixed-income pension, so keeping taxes as they are is dinging my wallet, too, but as a citizen, I’d rather live among children who are beginning to become civilized, are learning basic decorum, can read and write, and are beginning to acquire an awareness of a world beyond their own family and neighborhood. Universal Pre-K and fully-funded public schools are, I’d argue, the best way to get to that point.
Ray, I’ve got news for you, USA already out spends most other countries on education already. You seem to be mistaking results with spending.
So what about people just above the new income limit who don’t qualify? They then subsidize those when they barely miss qualifying. It is harder to be middle class and wages need to keep up. Also I would rather see all day kindergarten with a universal part time preschool starting at age 4.
Live within your means.
My wife and I worked opposite shifts so that we did not have daycare costs,
Do not expect me to pay for your childcare so that you can both have 9 to 5 jobs with Saturday /Sunday off.
You are responsible for your own life.
Suck it up. Pay your own bills or downsize your life.