28-02-2025
Southeast Minnesota child care centers plan for National Day Without Childcare
Feb. 28—ROCHESTER — More than half a dozen Southeast Minnesota child care providers will be taking part in an annual day of advocacy Monday, March 3, 2025.
The annual National Day Without Childcare was established to help demonstrate the important role child care services play in day-to-day life. However, not all the child care providers participating will be closed per se — this year.
Although the day was established nationally four years ago to be disruptive and demonstrate how many essential workers rely on child care, Jacqueline Benoit-Petrich, executive director of the Civic League Day Nursery, said she doesn't want to leave her families without service on short notice and will remain open.
"My families would be like, 'What am I going to do?'" Benoit-Petrich said.
ISAIAH through its Kids Count On Us program is coordinating the Minnesota effort. More than 500 Minnesota child care organizations and center are participating Monday. About 100 Minnesota centers will be closed for the day.
However, lessons the public learned during COVID seem to be dimming, she said. Child care funding was dropped from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Grants and emergency funding passed during COVID to help essential workers get to work have dried up.
"We really saw during COVID how essential access to child care is," Benoit-Petrich said.
Instead, Civic League Day Nursery (CLDN) will host policy makers to make the case for more funding and support for the child care industry. Other child care center leaders will converge at CLDN for the event. Staff and leaders from Meadow Park Preschool and Childcare Center; First Steps Academy; Thrive Childcare; Early Advantage Byron and Listos Preschool and Childcare Center will be at CLDN to share their perspectives with members of the Rochester City Council, Rochester Mayor Kim Norton and DFL Rep. Kim Hicks. Listos plans to be closed on Monday.
At issue is pay for child care teachers and assistants. The median pay for child care workers in Minnesota is about $14.50, far less than licensed teachers. Often, the job child care teachers do is similar to those public school teachers, said Michael Hager, incoming board president at CLDN.
"You go from working with 4- and 5-year-olds to working with 5- and 6-year-olds and magically you deserve two, three times as much?" Hager said.
Hager, who is a teacher for Rochester Public Schools, used to work at CLDN and knows first-hand how similar the work can be despite a disparity in pay.
"Child care development is important at every age and we need educators who understand that," he said. "It makes no sense to me that there's not the same societal importance put on (early child care)."
Charity Sprunger, who has worked at CLDN for more than 12 years, left for a time to work in public schools. Sprunger said pay was the only reason she left pre-kindergarten child care.
Sprunger returned in part because funding from the Minnesota Great Start Compensation Support Payment Program has temporarily augmented child care worker pay across the state. If the pay had been competitive in the first place, Sprunger said she never would have left.
Benoit-Petrich said the profession is often seen as glorified babysitting and has historically been dismissed as unskilled work. Leading up to and during Monday's event, center staff will give out purple buttons that identify people who are at work because they have child care services.
Benoit-Petrich said she hopes to build a day into the CLDN calendar next year in which the center is closed for National Day Without Childcare. That will make the impact of the industry more visible when people have to take the day off work, she said.
However, the day and the policy asks are more than just about pay. If public funds are moved to help fund child care, those funds should help parents be able to afford it too, Benoit-Petrich added.
"That's the access part we need to address," she said.
