Child care advocates organize stoppage to send message for funding
Children play at The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
For more than two years Wisconsin child care providers have been warning that failing to provide ongoing support will mean their fees will go up and their numbers shrink drastically.
Starting Tuesday, some providers will try to give lawmakers and the public a taste of what that could look like — by staging a strike.
Their goal is to persuade Republican leaders on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee to commit to including in the state budget a significant child care support program.
Gov. Tony Evers' proposed $480 million child care measure was among more than 600 items the committee removed on Thursday, May 8, from the draft budget Evers proposed for 2025-27. The motion to remove the items passed 12-3 with only Republican votes.
'We are demanding that the Joint Finance Committee guarantees they will put $480 million of state dollars back into the budget' for child care support, Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider and advocate, told the Wisconsin Examiner Monday.
Until they get such a guarantee, some providers have decided to close their doors, Hendrickson said.
Providers who intend to shut down their operations on Tuesday will go to the state Capitol for a press conference organized by Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), which Hendrickson cofounded. They plan to remain at the Capitol at least through the rest of this week, she said.
'The goal is that Republicans and Democrats will stop by and talk to us about our concerns,' Hendrickson said. She added she was hoping for 'a real conversation' about measures that child care providers favor as well as proffered solutions that they oppose — 'since they keep leaving us out of these conversations.'
Hendrickson said Monday afternoon that about 100 participants — providers, child care workers and parents in support of their actions — were expected at the Capitol Tuesday. She said there was not a count yet of how many child care centers might close.
Organizers have established a donation portal with Community Change Action to raise funds that will be used to offset lost wages for child care workers and providers who take part in the walkout, Hendrickson said.
The action planned to start Tuesday follows events across Wisconsin Monday for 'A Day Without Child Care' —a national campaign to draw attention to the need for child care programs and their need for stronger financial resources.
At a rally Monday morning in New Glarus, parents, state officials both elected and appointed, education leaders, local economic boosters and child care providers took turns championing the need for a state investment that would strengthen child care providers.
'Whether you're a parent, an employer, an educator or a policy advisor, child care affects each and every one of us and it touches our future as well,' Cortney Barry, director of the New Glarus Chamber of Commerce, said at the rally. 'The current system is not working, especially in small communities like ours. It's just stretched too thin. It's fragile, and it's scary to think just how close we are to a true crisis.'
Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski said business leaders she met with in central Wisconsin last week told her that child care was a pressing need for them to be able to hire locally rather than going out of state, and that they could not find workers 'not because people don't want to work for [them] — they can't find a place to send their kids.'
Democratic lawmakers and parents have since 2023 pushed to continue the monthly Child Care Counts support program that Wisconsin began with the help of federal money during the COVID-19 pandemic. The funds bolstered child care providers' revenues so they could raise wages without charging parents more for care.
'We lost 6,000 [child care] programs between 2010 and 2019,' Hendrickson said at the New Glarus rally. 'You know what stopped [the decline]? COVID — when we started getting money. All of the sudden we had more programs open at the end of the year than we had at the beginning of the year. It worked.'
A proposal to continue Child Care Counts with state funds was stripped from Evers' 2023-25 budget, and the Legislature's Republican majority repeatedly rejected attempts to restore the funding. The Evers administration was able to continue a reduced support program, but that will end with the final payment to child care centers early this summer.
That has escalated a campaign to keep the program going with state funds. In a state survey released in April 25% or more providers said they might close without continued support at the level Child Care Counts provided.
Hendrickson said at the New Glarus rally 54% of providers in Green County in the survey expected to close after the state funding program ends. Half of providers will have to raise tuition, she said — including her family child care business, which cares for eight children.
Even with fee increases totaling $50 a week phased in over the months of August and September to replace lost Child Care Counts revenue and higher expenses, 'I will still be taking a pay cut,' she added.
Brooke Legler, the other WECAN cofounder and operator of The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus, said shutting down to protest starting Tuesday is 'our last effort — it's the only thing we have as a community, as a profession, that we can say, like, 'No, I'm not going to subsidize the economy off of my pay, off of the teachers that work there.''
Other child care providers who took part in Monday's Day Without Child Care campaign across the state said they cannot shut down in protest this week, but they support providers who choose to do so.
In Waupaca, Tracy Jensen, director of Sunny Day Child Care, used the day as a teach-in for parents. 'We were raising awareness about the true cost of child care and how important it is to have child care in our community,' Jensen told the Wisconsin Examiner.
About 75 parents came through the center Monday, and Jensen said she plans to continue the opportunities for more such parent education through the week.
Sunny Day is the largest center in Waupaca County, Jensen said, with a license for 292 children at one time. There are 350 families with children enrolled currently, and a waiting list of 70 families, she said.
Jensen said that given the center's size it won't take part in the organized shut down. She said she told employees that if they want to go to Madison Tuesday to voice their concerns they can do so, and she has tried to organize staffing to make that possible.
Tricia Peterson directs Future All Stars Academy in Juneau. On Monday she closed the center for a day and took 11 employees to an event in Waunakee, where providers, staff and parents rallied.
Peterson won't close Future All Stars for the walkout starting Tuesday, however.
'I'm not in a position right now to do that,' she said, 'But I will say I will do everything I can in support of that.'
The center's long-term future will depend on the state budget, however.
'I'm one of those centers that if funding doesn't come forward in June, we'll have to close,' Peterson said. She's already notified parents about that possibility.
'They understood where we were coming from,' Peterson said. 'We didn't have one parent complain.'
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