NEW GLARUS, Wis. — As a new workweek got underway, some parents in Wisconsin woke up Monday morning without a place to take their child for care.
Child care providers across the state, and even country, shut their doors for the national ‘Day Without Child Care’ in an effort to raise awareness to issues facing the industry.
As lawmakers in Wisconsin craft the next two-year state budget, parents and providers alike hope funding to help centers stay afloat does not disappear.
Mykenzie Ritschard has struggled with child care, and she is hardly alone.
“The more you think about it, you know my kids need to get into daycare, they need to be socialized,” Ritschard explained.
For Ritschard, the problem was not how much she was spending, as can be the case for many parents. Rather, she could not find a provider with enough space.
“So we got kicked out because, someone else, we were just saving a spot for somebody,” Ritschard said of her previous child care provider.
Left to search for a new place to help her two kids socialize, including her son, who was diagnosed with autism, Ritschard decided those slots were worth a new job.
“I will work for you if my kids can go here,” said Ritschard, who took a job at The Growing Tree child care center in New Glarus last September. “Like if I need to be a teacher in a classroom that my kids can fit in, but you’re just short on teachers, like that can be my job for you or however I can help you to let my kids be here, but a lot of parents maybe aren’t willing to do that.”
For Brooke Skidmore, who co-owns the facility with her brother, the help was welcome.
“I have four rooms that sit empty,” Skidmore explained. “I had over 100 children enrolled pre-COVID, and now I have 54 enrolled, so that doesn’t work as a business.”
While there is plenty of room at the daycare, there is not much room on Skidmore’s wait list.
The reason: slots are hard to come by because of staffing struggles. Even after the roughly $4,000 a month The Growing Tree receives from the federally funded Child Care Counts program, which started amid the pandemic to help providers keep their doors open and costs down.
Those funds have helped raise wages and avoid tuition hikes for Skidmore, at least for now. However, those dollars will run out at the end of the year if Wisconsin lawmakers do not invest $340 million, as Gov. Tony Evers has called for, in the program as a part of the state budget.
Even if the Republican-controlled Legislature were to fulfill that request, Skidmore would still feel a pinch for the next six months because the federal funds will be cut in half starting next month.
The unexpected reduction comes just as Skidmore has prepared to take on school-aged kids full-time during the summer recess.
“I cannot reduce our teachers’ wages,” Skidmore said. “I’ll lose teachers, so that’s not an option. Everything is on the table right now for us where we could consider closing down our 'under two' room, our infant and toddler room, because those rooms, financially, do not make any money.”
When it comes to money, for Skidmore’s employees, including Ritschard, who has a background in public health and biochemistry, she knows she could be earning more.
“I could be doing who knows what, making what kind of money, but I’m here,” Ritschard said.
However, it is a sacrifice to get a pair of slots for her children that are anything but easy to come by in Green County.