Because of state funding cuts, the only licensed child care facility in Cashton will be closing next week.
Cradles to Crayons Cashton will close its doors on Aug. 25, a change initiated after Republicans voted in June to defund Child Care Counts, a Wisconsin child care subsidy program.
“Child Care Counts was a huge part of our budget,” said Morgan Meyer, one of the co-owners of Cradles to Crayons. “So financially, we’re not able to do it anymore.”
Child Care Counts distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal support to thousands of child care providers across the state during the COVID-19 pandemic. The money helped subsidize provider wages and maintain costs for parents.
In his budget, Gov. Tony Evers proposed spending $340 million to make Child Care Counts permanent. Since the funding was not approved, program dollars have shrunk and will expire entirely by February 2024.
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Since 2020, over 100 child care providers in La Crosse County have received a total of $15.9 million in support payments from the state.
A broken system
“The economics of child care is broken,” said state Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska.
“To have a situation where for the parent, it can be quite expensive,” he added. “But if you’re a provider, your margin is extremely narrow and it’s extremely difficult to get people to enter the industry because the pay can be minimum wage.”
Evers has called a special session for Sept. 20 to address child care funding as well as workforce shortages. Pfaff hopes the funding can be restored so current providers can stay in business, while addressing community level needs for more child care.
“The underlying basis for this is using these Child Care Count funds to make sure that we can have a broad plethora of child care providers,” Pfaff said. “I do believe that we need to have a hybrid approach. But part of this hybrid approach is recognizing the fact that you cannot just cut off the funding for Child Care Counts.”
The senator said he would like to see a collaborative effort from the state, local governments and businesses to address the child care need — since all those sectors are affected.
Pfaff added that the Child Care Counts funding was critical to maintaining competitive wages to keep child care staff in place.
“Many of the child care providers lose their qualified staff to other occupations because of the fact that they just can pay very well,” Pfaff said.
Shortage of providers
Cradles to Crayons Cashton was licensed to care for 50 children. Meyer said some of their clients have found alternative care in Sparta or Westby — the nearest areas with licensed providers.
“Families have been kind of finding spots like here or there at other centers,” Meyer said. “But we have some families that are still looking and haven’t found anything.”
Pfaff said while rural areas might struggle with having enough providers for children, the problem stretches to urban areas as well.
“There are child care deserts throughout western Wisconsin, in the Driftless Region,” Pfaff said. “For every one child that has child care, there’s six that are looking.”
Cashton community members tried to get a local fundraiser started for the child care facility, but Meyer asked them not to continue the fundraiser.
“That was a short-term fix for a long-term problem,” she said.
Meyer said she doesn’t think they will be the only rural providers to close and many centers are struggling to find staff.
“These rural areas, the centers in Westby or Sparta, need funding, too. I just hope the state can pull through and do something,” Meyer said.