05-03-2025
Bemidji area providers show support for 'Day Without Child Care'
Mar. 4—BEMIDJI — Child care providers across Minnesota stood in solidarity on Monday as they sought bipartisan support and solutions for issues plaguing the child care industry.
Coined "A Day Without Child Care," many providers closed up shop for the day with an overarching goal to address child care access, provider compensation and affordability. Providers in the Bemidji area shared their support during a press conference at Northwest Technical College.
"The purpose of 'A Day Without Child Care' is to highlight the incredible importance of child care to our communities and to organize for change," said Pine Pals Director Lydia Pietruszewski. "We all have the same goal: affordable and accessible, high-quality child care for families and wages for teachers and providers that allow them to stay in child care."
Pietruszewski created a survey sent to roughly 80 providers in Bemidji and the surrounding area asking about the nature of the care they provide as well as the businesses their respective families worked for. Given a relatively short turnaround time, she received 32 responses.
"The families at these providers work at 136 different businesses. If those child care providers disappeared and no longer provided care, it's not just children and families that would be affected. It's all of us," she added. "If 32 providers have families working at 136 different businesses, we can assume that 80 providers have families working at a few hundred different businesses."
Several providers and families spoke on their own experiences accessing child care and the multifaceted effects when access is limited. Bemidji Brewing owner Tina Kaney noted the difficulty of running a business while wrangling her most precious cargo.
"When you are the person with whom the buck stops, you can not easily call in or put off your work. Staff need answers and direction. My co-founders and I have all navigated numerous workdays and meetings with our children in tow. We are fortunate to have that flexibility, but now that our kids are mobile and climbers, a brewery is not really an option for 'Take Your Kid to Work Day,' " Kaney said lightheartedly.
"Without reliable child care, we cannot move our company forward in a way that responds quickly to the ever-changing business landscape," she added.
Megan Steigauf, chief human resources officer for Sanford Health, mentioned an array of issues tied to the hiring process that child care accessibility has exacerbated.
"We are hearing an increased number of employees not able to accept job offers that we make to them because they can't find child care," she said. "Our frontline leaders hear on the daily that people can't come to work that day due to child care or they can't even return from a leave due to no backup child care being available."
With a secured spot at Pine Pals for her son, Rebecca Katz praised the care that the family receives while pointing to the expense tied to that care.
"We make a lot of sacrifices to pay for our child care. Even though we are both well-paid professionals — we don't buy extras, we use coupons and we follow a strict budget — our child care costs for only one child is roughly $16,000 per year," she said. "That's 18 to 20% of our take-home pay.
"We understand that high-quality child care is expensive and it probably should be even more so that teachers can earn living wages, but it's impossible for many other parents to comfortably shoulder the cost," she added.
In an attempt to defray costs, the Minnesota Legislature has committed to the
Great Start Affordability Scholarship Program,
which would place a cap on child care costs so that no family would have to pay more than 7% of their annual income to access quality child care.
This percentage was determined by analyzing the necessary expenses that families face with young children and what would be a "reasonable" amount for those families to spend.
Previous proposals to the Legislature have targeted a greater lack of availability of care slots for infants and toddlers. Efforts have included changing current age categories for toddlers from 12 to 24 months, to 12 to 18 months. The preschooler age category would adjust from 24 months to 5 years, to 18 months to 4 years.
School-aged children would be defined as those ages 4 to 11 rather than 5 to 11. These changes aimed to free up care slots for these age groups.
Pietruszewski also shared a letter of support from House 2A Rep. Bidal Duran, which read: "I'm writing to express my strong support for day care providers across Minnesota and to highlight the invaluable role they play in our communities. High-quality child care is a cornerstone of a thriving economy and a bright future for our state — providing children with nurturing environments that foster learning, social development and confidence.
"By supporting day cares, we invest in Minnesota's future, strengthening families, empowering businesses and enriching our communities."
Pietruszewski emphasized the bipartisan nature of child care, adding: "It affects us all no matter how we voted. It's not a red issue or a blue issue. It's a purple issue."
Monday's press conference provided additional opportunities to reflect on progress already made in the Bemidji area regarding child care access as local stakeholders commit to further improvements. One such recent development included
the reimagination of the Sanford Health Lake Region Office as Pine Pals Nest,
which opened its doors in fall 2024.
Pine Pals Nest offers open slots to Sanford Health employees before being offered to the community at large.
"We hope to continue to alleviate the child care problem in our community and feel it's our duty as the largest employer to help do so," Steigauf left off, "but it takes all of us."
