Latest news with #KidsCountOnUs
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Some Minnesota childcare centers close on Monday for 'Day Without Childcare'
Some Minnesota child care centers are closed on Monday in observance of "A Day Without Childcare." The demonstration day is the work of "Kids Count On Us," which is seeking to highlight the importance of childcare that is not only affordable and accessible to families, but that pays providers a living wage. "Today is March 3 and childcare providers across Minnesota are closing their doors to show our communities and our elected leaders that childcare is vital to thriving communities and families, teachers, and providers need funding to ensure child care is affordable and accessible, kids get high quality childcare, and teachers can earn living wages!" a post reads from the organization. Kids Count On Us represents more than 500 community-based childcare centers across Minnesota. According to its website, the coalition is aiming to have more than 100 childcare centers across the state close on Monday. Bring Me The News reached out to the organization to learn an exact number of childcare businesses participating, but haven't heard back. Events have been planned in St. Paul, Virginia, Bemidji, Duluth and Rochester. A 2022 Employment and Economic Development (DEED) report shows that single parents spend nearly 22% of their income on childcare alone. The average cost of a spot for center-based childcare in Minnesota was more than $20,000 in 2024, according to the Office on the Economic Status of Women. At the same time, the average childcare worker makes just $14.53-an-hour in Minnesota. The organization believes that the state should fully find the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), which "provides support to make great child care affordable no matter one's income."
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
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.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
St. Paul: Hallie Q. Brown Center shutters what may be state's oldest early learning program
Benny Roberts has a history with the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center that goes back generations. His grandparents brought home food from its food shelf. His mother attended child care in its early learning program, which he would go on to attend decades later, as well. When Roberts became executive director of the Kent Street community center last July, he was determined to do what he could to keep the 96-year-old early learning program afloat. By his own admission, he failed. 'We tried many different things,' said Roberts, a former mental health worker and college career center director, who opened and closed the community center's doors each day, shoveled snow, helped man the front desk, served as his own executive assistant and oversaw the childcare program himself while searching in vain for a qualified lead teacher. 'We were critically understaffed for a while.' The decision to shutter what's believed by some to be the state's oldest early learning program was not an easy one, but the child care component ceased to exist on Jan. 24. Before that date arrived, Roberts said he called each of the 18 enrolled families himself, back to back in an 'emotionally taxing' single sitting, to deliver the bad news and help them find alternative placements. From its food shelf to its clothing closet and afterschool and senior programs, the work of the community center goes on, but residents of the historically Black neighborhood have lost access to a culturally-sensitive childcare provider at a time when infant and early learning placements are hard to find. Talks are underway around a potential leasing arrangement with a for-profit provider based in North Minneapolis, though the earliest they would open an early learning program at the center would be May 1. Some of the impacted parents were in attendance for a debriefing of sorts on Monday evening, when organizers with the statewide childcare collaborative Kids Count On Us held a roundtable speak-out at Hallie Q. Brown to discuss the state of the childcare industry. Lydia Boerboom, a lead organizer with Kids Count On Us, said her organization was aware of at least six childcare centers across the state that had closed in the past year. Located on the St. Paul campus of St. Catherine University, the 93-year-old St. Kate's Early Childhood Center was permanently shuttered in May. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Minnesota was short nearly 80,000 child care slots, with many facilities – especially in Greater Minnesota – maintaining months-long waiting lists, according to surveys conducted by the national advocacy organization First Children's Finance. A yawning labor shortage has only exacerbated the problem since then. The state unemployment rate dropped to a historic low of 2.3% in 2022. It now sits around 3.3%. The Hallie Q. Brown roundtable, which was attended by five state lawmakers, also drew nonprofit and for-profit providers, representatives of staffing agencies and others attached to the industry. In quick succession, provider after provider discussed the difficulty of attracting and retaining quality educators. Most in attendance said they wanted to hire licensed teachers with a passion for instruction, not just babysitters pocketing a paycheck, but that required raising their rates and pricing out many middle class families. Even then, said more than one participant, they were unable to offer their workers basic benefits, including healthcare. 'The barriers to hiring are astronomical,' said Angela Kapp, who previously ran four St. Paul-area childcare centers under the banner The Learning Garden. 'I had four staff quit at the same time during COVID, not wanting to get vaccinated and wear masks.' Kapp said she closed her Inver Grove Heights center and is transitioning two other sites in St. Paul to new owners. A fourth site, in Maplewood, is technically run by her daughter, 'but I'm there every day,' she said. 'We don't have enough staff. I can't just walk away.' Understaffing in a childcare environment is no small concern. Last May, weeks before Roberts was hired, three pre-school children ran away from the Hallie Q. Brown Center and found their way to a neighboring school playground. State licensing authorities investigated the incident but did not issue a $1,400 fine until December. At the state level, 'that's how backed up they are,' said Roberts, who described in detail in an open letter to the community how he had searched in vain for the right staff to lead the early learning program. 'What was certain was that people wanted to work. What was also true was that none of them were credentialed.' The center was fined again in January for relying on staff that had not completed a required background study, according to Minnesota Department of Human Services licensing records. Providers at Monday's roundtable also expressed frustration with eligibility requirements for the Minnesota Childcare Assistance Program, which is intended to help families with the cost of childcare but maintains what they described as prohibitive income limits of about $54,300 for a family of three and $64,700 for a family of four. Roundtable participants said those limits locked out many middle-class families unable to afford the cost of care. 'The way this whole system works, it just doesn't work,' said state Rep. Dave Pinto, DFL-St. Paul. 'You would never design this system from scratch.' Providers also bemoaned the cost of opening new centers, which some said ran to about $500,000. That's money difficult to obtain from private lenders, given the industry's tight profit margins. Burnout is high enough that when private equity firms come calling established providers with offers to buy out their small companies, some have a hard time repeatedly saying no, they said. Few saw better days ahead without a major infusion of state or federal dollars. Providers said they were nervous about potential cuts to federal block grant programs supporting state and county childcare assistance, which are up in the air. The Trump administration recently rescinded a memo that would have cut funding to Head Start, another early learning program, but dozens of Head Start programs in 23 states have reported they've been unable to draw down federal funds through their online portal. State Rep. Samakab Hussein, DFL-St. Paul, noted that through its economic development division, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development made $6.5 million in grants available last year to bolster the state's childcare industry, followed by another $6.5 million this year. The money — up to $300,000 for a single-site project or $600,000 for a multi-site project — can be used in a variety of ways, from direct subsidies and financial incentives to retain workers, to training, licensing assistance and facility improvements. Providers called that an important start, but still not enough to keep more centers from going under. For the Hallie Q. Brown Center, there may yet be a silver lining on the horizon. Since shuttering the early learning program, Roberts said he's been deep in talks with Olu's Beginnings, a for-profit childcare program based in North Minneapolis. Jessica Herod, chief operating officer of Olu's Beginnings, said she was in the process of getting the program licensed to move into the Hallie Q. Brown Center, hopefully by May 1, after some planned renovations. 'We want to bring a quality service back to the building,' Herod said. Local News | Trial for alleged ringleader in $250M Feeding Our Future fraud scheme begins Local News | Opening statements to begin Monday in trial of alleged ringleader of Feeding our Future fraud case Local News | A new, $1.75M playground is coming to Lake Elmo Park Reserve — while the old equipment heads to Ecuador and Uganda Local News | St. Paul nonprofit that highlights historical assets expands to Duluth Local News | Right Track awards St. Paul employers and seeks 2025 interns
