Minnesota’s sagging child care industry, already strapped for cash with fewer families enrolling their children, faces even more closures in the coming year as an increasing number of facilities are finding it difficult to make it with coronavirus pandemic safety measures eating up funds already coming in.
Not that there were plenty of options out there for Minnesota families.
“We didn’t have enough capacity in child care before (the pandemic),” said Chad Dunkley, president of the Minnesota Child Care Association.
“Two-thirds of Minnesota counties are located in child care deserts,” Dunkley told WCCO’s Cory Hepola, using a term that describes communities with limited or no access to quality child care.
Dunkley said child care tuition revenues are dependent on the number of families that enroll.
“When tuition dries up, and your expenses are higher,” he said, referring to health safety measures that weren’t required until this year which he said have driven up expenses by more than one-third.
Unless funding comes from somewhere—Congress is going over proposals for child care relief—the early part of 2021 could bring about more closures.
Hopkins Early Learning Center, a non-profit offering pre-K programs since 1981, won’t make it that far.
Operators sent out a message to families that their 100-child-capacity facility closed for good December 18.
“They’re devastated,” said Hopkins Center director Jamie Bonczyk about parents she has heard from since the notice went out. “We have families who attended our program as children who now bring their own children.”
Bonczyk said parents are offering to help keep the programs active.
“This is a much bigger than any group of parents could fund-raise for,” she said. “We have a systemic issue in early childhood that doesn’t allow for much larger funding streams at this time.”
Dunkley said losing more child care facilities now will make it more difficult for parents to go back to work as COVID-19 restrictions are eased back.
“You can’t have revenue that’s half of what is was pre-COVID and survive this for long,” said Dunkley.
State grants to prop up the child care industry has kept many programs going, but those grants go away at the end of the year.
And Dunkley said depending on Congress to pass a rescue package before the year is out is a lot to count on.
He points to officials in Iowa last week saying that state has lost half of its child care providers this year.
“We’re going to start looking like that,” Dunkley said.
