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Business executives make case for investment in child care programs
Wisconsin has a shortage of quality, affordable child care, and the COVID pandemic made matters much worse. Many child care providers closed, some permanently. Now COVID-driven federal assistance is drying up: Wisconsin received $300 million in federal child care infrastructure assistance annually for the last several years, but that will end this year. The assistance kept many Wisconsin child care providers from closing. But the funds didn’t solve the long term structural problems.
We’re members of ReadyNation, a group of business executives that is part of Council for a Strong America. ReadyNation released new research February 2 showing the infant and toddler child care crisis saddles the U.S. with a $122 billion annual economic burden, more than double the $57 billion annual impact found in ReadyNation’s 2018 research. Wisconsin’s estimated burden is $1.9 billion per year, up substantially from the $1.1 billion state estimate in 2019.
The numbers are deeply disturbing, especially to many of us here in Wisconsin who’ve been working hard warning state legislators that the child care system needs more help. Law enforcement leaders with our sister organization, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, and retired admirals and generals with another sister organization, Mission: Readiness, visited rural Wisconsin child care centers in December to raise awareness.
Members of those organizations drove home the point that the child care crisis also negatively impacts public safety and military eligibility. Research shows that children who don’t receive high-quality early support are less likely to achieve positive outcomes in school and life.
In our time in business we helped our companies prosper, but we both also became interested in childhood learning and care. We came to believe that the need for high-quality early support is both chronic and acute. More than half of Wisconsinites live in a child care “desert,” where there are more than three children under age 5 for each licensed child care slot. These “deserts” are predominantly in Wisconsin’s rural communities. And Wisconsin’s rural areas have double the shortage experienced by our large cities and towns: 3.4 kids for every child care slot in rural areas, as compared to 1.7 kids in urban areas. Even before the pandemic, Wisconsin employers cited access to child care as the second most significant challenge they faced to sustaining and growing their businesses.
The latest data on economic impact remind us the hole is getting deeper. And a report on rural child care in Wisconsin released by Council for a Strong America in December makes a convincing evidence-based case for more state investments. Lawmakers need to make child care funding a priority for the state, including investments in the Wisconsin Shares Child Care Subsidy Program. We need to identify and encourage private-public partnerships in solving our early care and education challenges–organizations like First 5 Fox Valley need community-wide engagement and support. And we must support the child care workforce through adequate wages and professional development.
With the Wisconsin Legislature in session, early childhood education and care advocates are requesting $300 million annually in new state funding for our state’s Child Care Counts program, set up to allocate federal COVID relief dollars to child care providers. We know this is significant funding, but the challenge calls for it and we are working from a position of strength and opportunity given the State’s budget surplus.
As our state legislators balance priorities, we hope they’ll consider the struggle families are facing to find child care. We’re all in this together. And things are going to get worse if the state doesn’t address this crisis now.
Dean Gruner is the retired former CEO of ThedaCare and lives in Greenville. Jon Stellmacher, of Appleton, is retired after serving as Senior Vice President of Thrivent Financial.
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